Jamming With Enterprise Architecture: The E-Commerce Set

Having a good jam session with your buddies is predicated on being able to anticipate how they plan to riff off you and vice versa, knowing your drummer will smash the high hat at the crescendo of the guitar solo. Knowing when your center plans to drive the key for an alley-oop gives basketball players a huge advantage. Reading your dance partner’s body language to tell if she is ready to be dipped or spun does likewise.  

Call it synergy. Call it being on the same wavelength. Call it chemistry. Call it whatever you want, but it is a sort of integration. It is getting everyone involved on the same page so that things run smoother.

And just like people, software also benefits from this. Having disparate software can slow business operations. Enterprise Architecture is the connection between a company’s systems under a unified umbrella. It makes things run smoothly. Here’s how.  

Strong Links Equal a Strong Chain

Ecommerce stores have many facets. Obviously, they have a website — whether Shopify, Magento or Salesforce Commerce Cloud — that allows customers to browse wares, place or cancel orders, create an account, make payments, and so on. But there are other elements to an ecommerce site.

Once the commerce part is finished, an order management system takes over. Then, things splinter off into almost innumerable directions — managing the shipping, making sure the customer’s data is secure, logging rewards for an incentive program, just to name a few. Several aspects of an ecommerce site rely on being able to communicate with one another. Every link in that chain needs to be seamless. If they aren’t it can bog down operations.

Enterprise Architecture engenders stability by building a structure that will troubleshoot challenges as your e-commerce business grows. This structure offers a clear and reliable understanding of data and direction for your company.

Once established, it gives a sort of bumper to results you’ve designated as undesirable, preventing your e-commerce business from coming off the rails. A more comprehensive bird’s-eye lens of the business allows assessment of strengths while identifying shortcomings, leaving it poised for success by informing sound investments.

Unraveling the Knot

When an e-commerce business has so many different components — shipping, inventory, pricing, commissions, supply chain management — there is no way to avoid operations being complex. These systems can often resemble a Gordian Knot. Enterprise Architecture distills a business’s essential functions, making them run more efficiently.

By outfitting ecommerce business owners with the proper tools to build a successful business, enterprise architecture drifts from the silo-based system.

It prompts you to be proactive and focus on results by enabling standardization and automation of processes by selecting the applicable standards and tools. By doing this, you bring your technology in line with your goals.

A Bird’s-eye View

Enterprise Architecture also infuses essential discernment into your ecommerce business, giving you a comprehensive view to avoid communication stalling. Its integrated data cache is almost like a toolbox chalked full of power tools that all run off the same source. That data provides a foundation for producing tangible products like paperwork.

Your business will change. Its needs will grow. Enterprise Architecture plots a path forward for that inevitable change. A savvy enterprise architect will help you make crucial decisions to embed into your enterprise architecture to make sure it is in line with your vision. Such forethought allows the enterprise architect to build a system that will grow with your business, accommodating its needs as it adapts to a changing market. This planning reduces effort in the long run.  

It also has the benefit of making management of multiple departments easier by bolstering communication, flawlessly mingling apps and services and providing increased software support. This increases efficiency, which is always good.

Fewer Errors, Better Security

By streamlining your e-commerce business with Enterprise Architecture, you eliminate clunk. This has the added benefit of reducing errors. The fewer errors in your system, the more secure it is. The tighter the communication between various systems, the less likely it is something will go awry, like a neighborhood watch for your internal business structure.  

Considering nearly all industries use updates and patches, making them two of the most frequently used tools, it is no surprise that reducing errors — both internal and external — results in better peace of mind for customers and businesses concerned about cybersecurity threats.

With its myriad functions, Enterprise Architecture can embolden your e-commerce business to run smoother by unifying systems and streamlining communication. As discussed above, its benefits are far-reaching, allowing better automation, communication and cybersecurity. So, get that synergy. Get that chemistry. Get Enterprise Architecture.