Borders recently selected vendor Sterling Commerce to handle order management, which orchestrates the fulfillment of an order and gives visibility into the whole process, from the sale through delivery.
For Borders, this will include giving customers the ability to pick up items ordered online in a store. The actual behind-the-scenes process to make sure inventory ends up in the right place is fairly complicated, says Ken Ramoutar, director of applications product marketing at Sterling.
Currently, Borders customers can reserve books for in-store pickup on this site, but can't pay for them online.
Borders is building the basic e-commerce platform with IBM WebSphere, while Endeca will take care of search and CyberSource's technology will handle payment processing. Ertell was reluctant to reveal details about what new capabilities customers can expect, saying he wants some of it to come as a surprise. For him, one of the most important things is "it will be a Borders-branded experience from start to finish."
Mendelsohn says she expects the new site to give customers numerous options utilizing the various channels through which Borders sells merchandise. For example, if a book is unavailable in one store a customer could use the Web to order it from another Borders store and have it shipped to the customer's house or the nearest Borders. Having a seamless operation among channels and visibility into the process is incredibly important for a large retailer, she notes.
"They do a little bit of it right now, but bringing their e-commerce business in-house brings with it a whole new set of requirements that they'll need to tackle," she says. "In some ways, they're starting with a clean slate, so it gives them the opportunity to make sure they really organize in the most optimal way."