From CDN to PLM, the technical ecosystem of e-commerce is filled with daunting abbreviations that can make it difficult to discern the systems your company needs most. This infographic decodes the systems that centralize your resources and streamline your processes to bring the best online shopping experience for your consumers - no prior knowledge of abbreviations required.

1. DECODING THE TECHNICAL ALPHABET
OF E-COMMERCE SYSTEMS
An infographic about the software solutions that take your products from
conception to distribution, decoding everything from PLM to CDN along the way.
(For the best experience, read the infographic from bottom to top.)
THE CONSUMER
Think about the numerous teams, tools and other
resources that transform a product from a blueprint
to a product ready for purchase on a consumer’s
screen.
Now imagine if you could implement systems to
centralize these resources and streamline these
processes at every stage of the game - if only you
could decipher all those pesky abbreviations.
CDN: CONTENT DELIVERY
NETWORK
A BETTER ONLINE EXPERIENCE
A CDN takes the static content from your
website - including images and CSS stylesheets and hosts it in servers all over the world. Why is
this so awesome? Now, visitors who are
geographically far away from your website’s
back-end server can pull your content from a
server much closer to their location - substantially
cutting down load times.
MAJOR PLAYERS: Akamai, EdgeCast, Cloudflare
WCMS:
E-COMMERCE
PLATFORMS
WEB CONTENT
MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
CREATION & PUBLICATION OF DIGITAL
CONTENT
EASY ONLINE SHOPPING FOR
CONSUMERS
WCMS makes it easy for your non-technical users
to author and collaborate on web content. Users
simply add text, images, and videos to designated
fields, and the content is presented to visitors in a
templated display. (Think of Wordpress as an
example.) Though these sites increasingly offer
shopping cart plugins, running a digital store
through a WCMS is clunky without an e-commerce
platform integration.
The line between today’s e-commerce platforms
and WCM services is blurry. In general,
e-commerce platforms differ from WCM by
adding in the fundamental elements of a store including a shopping cart and checkout process,
more catalog-focused search and navigation, and
an essential catalog view of products.
TEAMS WHO USE THIS: E-commerce, marketing
MAJOR PLAYERS: Shopify, Magento, IBM,
Oracle, Hybris
TEAMS WHO USE THIS: E-commerce, marketing
MAJOR PLAYERS: Wordpress, Drupal, Adobe,
STL, Sitecore, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle
PIM: PRODUCT INFORMATION
MANAGEMENT
DAM: DIGITAL ASSET
MANAGEMENT
Whereas ERP systems store product content in a
“non-marketable” format (explained below), PIM
systems store the complementary product data that
is eventually pushed out to the consumer. These
include technical specs - color, size, weight,
ingredients, etc. - marketing copy, sell sheets, and
any assets pulled from the DAM. Not only do PIM
systems provide a centralized place for multiple
teams to create and store this data, but many also
publish this data to your WCM or your e-commerce
platform.
DAM systems are usually utilized by one internal
team - like creative - to manage digital assets for
the length of a particular marketing campaign.
This is especially useful for companies who
publish these assets to multiple downstream
channels - all of whom require different sizes of
images and have different copyright
requirements, for example - to keep track of each
version and modification to an asset.The assets
are eventually pushed out for storage in the PIM
system.
TEAMS WHO USE THIS: E-commerce, marketing,
merchandising, creative, R&D, sales
MAJOR PLAYERS: Stibo, SAP, Hybris, Oracle
TEAMS WHO USE THIS: Marketing, creative
MAJOR PLAYERS: Adobe, MediaBeacon, Canto
CREATION, CENTRALIZATION &
PUBLICATION OF PRODUCT INFORMATION
CREATION, CENTRALIZATION &
PUBLICATION OF DIGITAL ASSETS
PLANNING
ERP: ENTERPRISE RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT OF LOGISTICS
ERP systems provide a broad overview of the
company’s finances and scheduling as they relate to
your products. Different modules can monitor
activity from pricing to inventory management and
projection. Unlike PIM, ERP systems catalog
products by “non-marketable” information like SKU,
UPC code and price - attributes that mean little to
consumers but are vital to back-end processes. ERP
systems hook up directly to e-commerce platforms
and adjust financial and scheduling projections as
products are sold.
TEAMS WHO USE THIS: R&D, manufacturing,
logistics, inventory, purchasing
MAJOR PLAYERS: Oracle, SAP, NetSuite
MANAGEMENT
PLM: PRODUCT LIFECYCLE
A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF PRODUCT
DEVELOPMENT
Every piece of information that relates to the
development and manufacture of a product - from
early mockups to cost estimates of materials - is
centralized through PLM. This makes it easy to
manage the whole product development process,
efficiently manufacture products and quickly
pinpoint areas for improvement.
TEAMS WHO USE THIS: R&D, manufacturing
MAJOR PLAYERS: Siemens, Oracle, SAP, PTC
By:
SALSIFY