Alternatives for acquiring e-business systems

The basic alternative acquisition methods for e-business systems are similar to those for traditional business information systems:

1. Bespoke development. With a bespoke development, the application is developed from ‘scratch’ through programming of a solution by an in-house or external development team or systems integrator.
2. Off-the-shelf In a packaged implementation a standard existing system is purchased from a solution vendor and installed on servers and clients located within the organization. Alternatively, free or low-cost open-source software maybe used. A web design tool such as Dreamweaver is a simple example of an off-the-shelf packaged implementation.
3. Hosted software as a service (SaaS) solution. With a hosted solution, a standard system is used, but it is not managed within the company, but using a third-party applications service provider variously known as ‘on-demand’, ‘web services’ or a ‘managed solution’. The merits and examples of the SaaS approach have been discussed in Chapters 3 and
4. Tailored development. In a tailored development, an off-the-shelf system or SaaS solution is tailored according to the organization’s needs. This form of project is often based on integrating components from one or several vendors.

These acquisition alternatives have been reviewed, for example, in Chaffey and Wood (2005) where it was demonstrated that the prevalent approach is the tailored off-the-shelf or hosted approach, which is often the best compromise between meeting an organization’s specific needs and reliability while minimizing cost and development time. Decisions also have to be taken as to whether bespoke development or tailoring occurs in-house or using a consultant who is familiar with the latest e-commerce development tools.

Regardless of the source of the system, the main criteria used to select the solution are common. They are:

1. Functionality. The features of the application. Describes how well the e-business application meets the business need.
2. Ease of use. Every system takes some time to use, but systems should be intuitive to mini­mize the time needed to learn how to use them. A well-constructed piece of software will make it fast to conduct common tasks.
3. Performance. The speed of the application to perform different functions. This is measured by how long the user has to wait for individual functions to be completed such as data retrieval, calculation and screen display. It will depend on the power of the computer, but can vary significantly between applications.
4. Scalability. Scalability is related to performance; it describes how well a system can adapt to higher workloads which arise as a company grows. For example, an ERP system will require more customer details, suppliers and products to be held on it as the company grows. The workload will also be higher as the number of internal and external users of the system increases.
5. Compatibility or interoperability. This refers to how easy it is to integrate the application with other applications. For example, does it have import and export facilities, does it support transfer of data using XML?
6. Extensibility. Related to scalability and interoperability, this describes how easy it is to add new functions or features to a package by adding new modules from the original vendor or other vendors.
7. Stability or reliability. All applications have errors or bugs and applications vary in the number of times they fail depending on how well they have been tested since they were first introduced.
8. Security. Capabilities for restricting access to applications should be assessed. This is partic­ularly important for hosted solutions.
9. Support. Levels of support and the cost of support from the software vendor will vary. There is a risk that small companies may cease trading and the product may no longer be supported.

Source: Dave Chaffey (2010), E-Business and E-Commerce Management: Strategy, Implementation and Practice, Prentice Hall (4th Edition).