There are many organizational challenges that businesses face when they move over to an e-commerce system. Here are four examples that I believe to be quite common among organizations:
- Training - Switching over to an eCommerce strategy usually means retraining or training up staff to enable them to understand and use this new system.
The larger the workforce, the bigger a challenge this may be. - Cost - These days, the cost of implementing a new eCommerce system isn't the only consideration... There's also the questions of how much it will cost to maintain that system and infrastructure.
- Integration with legacy system - Although it's generally accepted that implementing new technology is a positive investment, most companies also expect to import information such as previous customers, clients, or other business data - which may be stored in a non-compatible format.
So implementing a new eCommerce system means designing a way to handle the previous system: Either bringing in the info, maintaining two systems, or shutting it down. - Support - With all of the above comes a margin for errors, transitional pains, etc... Having a well-drilled support team is a challenge that most organizations face in this situation.