ERP, CRM and eCommerce Blog

Ignify’s team will be at the National Sports Forum at the Renaissance Convention Center Hotel from January 30^th to Feb 1^st showcasing Ignify ecommerce for Sports Teams. Stop at our booth at #226 to meet with our team members there and see how Ignify ecommerce can deliver results to your sports franchise.

Ignify’s eCommerce Solution for sports teams and sports-affiliated organizations provides a comprehensive ecommerce system that is rich in the merchandising, inventory, and marketing functionalities that translate into a user-friendly, premium shopping experience for customers and an essential business management tool for administrators. With its native search engine optimized Web store capabilities, Ignify eCommerce provides a software platform that advances brand awareness and ensures a higher outreach to both existing and potential customers.

Product and Inventory Management

Ignify eCommerce empowers your customers’ purchasing decisions by enabling them to view the different product attributes that you specify – such as color, size, style, etc.

• Multi-level product hierarchy allows for an unlimited number of product categories
• Display an unlimited number of product attributes, such as color, size, style, capacity, etc.
• Assign items to an attribute group and enable each attribute group to have its own set of unique variants (for example, items in the Apparel category can have variants such as color, size, style, etc., while items in the Electronics category can have variants such as wattage, color, etc.)
• Display an inventory number (e.g. "7 in stock") or inventory message (e.g. "Ships in 24 hours", "Ships in 2-3 weeks"), depending on stock status
• Mark up/down prices by category, manufacturers, or product
• Add or remove products from the catalog, or hide items that are not in stock
• Ability to search by product keywords, attributes, price, and search-within-a-search

Merchandising Management

• Automatically cross-sell products to leverage customers’ interests and shopping habits
• Automatically up-sell products according to buyer behavior
• Enable customers to indicate the product variants with attributes such as color, size, style, etc.
• Allow customers to instantly see their chosen variant combinations, including either a unique price or the stock price of the combination chosen
• Enable image zooming to give customers an in-depth look at the product
• Easy creation of gift cards/gift certificates that can be easily redeemed both online and at brick-and-mortar store locations
• Ability to have multiple gift card redemptions at checkout

Product cross-sell allows you to strategically market items and move inventory by leveraging your customers’ shopping habits, as well as drive shoppers to other merchandise.

Marketing and Promotions Management

• Easily create and bundle unlimited item, product category, order, and shipping promotions
• Add usage restrictions to promotions such as minimum order size; restrict to a certain item or item category; or restrict to a certain customer or customer category (e.g. special offer for fan club members only)
• Apply promotions either automatically or manually with shoppers entering a coupon code
• Email coupons/promotions that link to a specific page to drive potential and existing customers to other inventory
• Create email marketing campaigns with segmented customers, and measure the results
• Strategically market special offers on your store with intelligent site placement (e.g. banners, navigation stickers, Deal of the Day, etc.)
• Generate sales by coupon and sales by promotion reports to track
• Offer the ability to provide gift-wrapping or gift messages to customers

With Ignify eCommerce’s robust marketing functionality, merchants increase revenue and customer conversion with the easy creation of all different types of special offers.

Web Store Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• SEO URLs: Search engine-friendly Web addresses and URL for category pages
• SEO Product Pages: Search engine optimized product detail page, with every product page automatically built to be a landing page
• Landing Pages: Search engine optimized with content and product information
• Page Tagging: Automatic generation of HTML page titles, meta tags, key words, with the ability to override this content
• Alternate Tags: (ALT TAGs) for Images. Alternate Images can be automatically generated based on item names
• Content: Detailed product content that helps improve your search engine ranking.
• Product Reviews: Editorial and customer reviews that help improve your search engine rankings, with the ability to choose which reviews to display on the product page

Customer Service Management

• Self-service capability enables end customers to view order history, track shipments in their order, and see the status of an order (Pending, Shipped, Cancelled, etc.)
• Customer Service functionality allows customer service representatives to view orders, enter orders, edit orders, and create returns
• Integrated chat for customer service reps to directly help a customer find a product, increase cross-sell and up-sell, or just to assist a customer during the checkout process
• Ability to set up return policies with various return reasons (e.g. accept returns 30 days after purchase if a customer changes their mind, but accept returns 60 days after purchase if the item is damaged, etc.)
• In-depth item return tracking for both customers and customer service reps, allowing both to view the processing status of the return online

By enabling customers to view and track their orders through a self-service account, Ignify eCommerce offers customers purchasing control and visibility throughout the order fulfillment process.

Sandeep Walia is the CEO of Ignify. Ignify is a global leader in retail and ecommerce solutions for sports teams and franchise organizations and has been ranked Microsoft Partner of the Year in 2011. Ignify has been ranked in the 100 most innovative companies globally by Red Herring in 2010 and 2011. For more information, email ecommerce@ignify.com, call Ignify at (866) IGNIFY5, or visit www.Ignify.com.

Despite a slow economy, online retail revenues jumped 22% year on year to clock in $1.25 billion on Cyber Monday as consumers continued to make the web an integral part of their holiday shopping. The $1.25 billion is the heaviest online commerce day ever according to research firm com-Score Inc. Sales were heavy during the entire holiday weekend and online retailers racked up $1.03 billion in sales cumulatively over Saturday and Sunday and $479 million on Thanksgiving and $ 816 million on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving). This growth goes to show the higher adoption of online purchasing in the mainstream and that brick and mortar retailers need to strategically morph in to multichannel retailers. Retailers that do not make the transition into online ecommerce well will see their revenues dwindle and will be in a situation where they will be forced out of business.

Contrary to the perception that the only purchases buying online are buying low ticket items or are deal seekers– the average order size online grew year over year by nearly 3% and was approximately $200 ($198.26 from $193.24 from the prior year) showing a trend towards bigger ticket items and that the online buyer community has a very significant component of shoppers that value the convenience of online purchase over going to a store. On average consumers spent almost $400 over the Thanksgiving weekend which is up nearly 10% over the prior year – again underscoring the MATOOR (Mall TO Online Retail) shift.

Internet retailers have to constantly modernize their platforms and be able to evolve to meet the increasingly sophisticated demands of the web-savvy consumer. Online retailers need to be savvy towards social media, search engine optimization; and guerilla marketing tactics that differentiates them with innovative promotions. Case in point: Atlanta Falcons – an Ignify customer is running a 20% off with Free Shipping on their online store. Amazon.com is running Cyber Monday week all of this week.

Figure. Guerilla Marketing Campaign by Atlanta Falcons to drive sales in the Holiday Season

Merchants need Dynamic ecommerce platforms that can rapidly adapt to the changing marketplace and give them the flexibility to move quickly and aggressively with innovative and differentiating offerings and promotions.

Ignify has put together a set of recommendations for online retailers to increase revenues and improve conversions this holiday season. Download this white paper from our site if you are interested in learning more.

Sandeep Walia is the Chief Executive Officer at Ignify. Ignify is the market leader in ecommerce solutions for retailers and distributes with seamless integration to Microsoft Dynamics ERP, Sage ERP and SAP. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011.

Have you ever ordered something online, and then when that something was delivered, you found that it was completely wrong from what you originally ordered? It could have been the wrong color, wrong size, or even the wrong item altogether. Having to first deal with the shock of opening up a box containing a totally different item than the one you’re anticipating, and then having to go through the hassles of either returning or exchanging it, is enough to sour anyone on the web store they ordered from. And if a business puts a customer in a bad mood, it’s pretty safe to say that the ticked-off customer won’t be rushing to return any time soon.

For any business, pushing customers away because you don’t fulfill their orders correctly is a mistake that you do not want to make. Fulfilling orders may seem like a simple enough idea, but it is an absolutely critical process. Getting your customer the product that he or she orders can mean the difference between a loyal, long-term client and a one-time-only visitor.

For salespeople and customer service representatives, being able to correctly enter the right customer information and view the history of a sales order is crucial for providing good customer service. An excellent tool for sales folks to use for viewing and organizing their customers’ sales information is Ignify’s Order Entry Solution for Microsoft Dynamics. Built on Microsoft technologies, including the .NET framework, the Order Entry Solution is a Web-based portal that offers salespeople and customer service representatives complete visibility over customer order information, as well as the ability to enter data quickly.

With the Order Entry Solution, a salesperson or account executive is able to easily look up and view customer and account history, and create new sales orders if needed. And if an order has not been processed, a representative can edit the information in the order, enabling him or her to add or remove items from an order, change the shipping method, or change the shipping address on an order or order line. The Excel-like interface of the solution makes viewing and editing especially easy by allowing you to tab in and out of fields, and key in products.

The Order Entry Solution improves customer satisfaction and minimizes order errors by offering salespeople and customer service representatives a comprehensive view of customer data and order history, and the ability to make appropriate changes.

Customer management is also enhanced by the fact that the solution can identify for you the customers who have earned preferential levels or VIP status, meaning that you can offer adjusted product prices to the customers who meet those special status levels. Because really, who would turn down a lower price if they can get it? When a store makes an effort to give their return customers tokens of appreciation in the form of discounts and special offers, those customers notice (and become more likely to return – which of course continues the sales cycle).

The integration of the Order Entry Solution with Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM systems also assists with providing customer-specific pricing. With this integration, any specific price lists or trade agreements that are set up in the ERP and CRM systems will be reflected in the Order Entry Solution. So for example, if there are particular retail or distributor prices that a store offers, the Order Entry Solution will have that data, allowing the customer service representative to again modify the product prices for customers to correspond with this information.

The in-built marketing functionalities of the Order Entry Solution also bolster a company’s efforts to reach out to both existing and potential customers alike. The instant alerts of an order that qualifies for a rebate, the cues given to salespeople and representatives of cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and the ability to create and apply promotional codes and gift certificates are all examples of marketing activities that can help increase a company’s revenue. By utilizing these marketing capabilities to offer customers unique, attention-grabbing promotions, businesses up their chances of immediately capturing those customers and ensuring they come back.

As with any database or software that allows monetary transactions, ensuring that all the data contained within is fully secure is of the utmost importance to both the customer making an order, and the business that is conducting the transaction with that customer. The Order Entry Solution protects against potential problems by instantly indicating to a representative when an order isn’t kosher. For example, the system contains fraud alerts for orders, as well as alerts for other order issues, and it can even be parametrically set up to track advanced fraud. The system can also automatically put orders that meet a certain criteria on hold until they are checked and verified.

By using the rich set of order entry features and functionalities within the Order Entry Solution, and by gaining the valuable insight into customer transactions and history that those functionalities provide, salespeople and customer service representatives acquire a reputation for outstanding customer service that inevitably spreads to the rest of the company.

As business icon Warren Buffet once said, "It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently." Don’t chance ruining your store’s reputation in the five minutes it takes a customer to open a box and discover their order was processed wrong. Use the tools that will ensure your company’s reputation stays spotless.

Ashley Harbaugh is a Product Marketing Specialist at Ignify. Ignify is a technology provider of CRM, eCommerce and ERP, software solutions to businesses and public sector organizations. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011.

Even though it’s still a bit early, the holiday season is just around the corner. For retailers, this is the time to start gearing up for the mad rush of shoppers who will be invading their stores, and to get ahead of the game by setting out holiday-themed stuff early to catch the folks who want to get a head start too. For customers (like me), this is the time to start strategizing on how to avoid horribly crowded malls and ridiculously long lines.

Nowadays, virtual shopping makes the experience much more easy and convenient for the people who don’t have the time or patience to deal with the crowds and lines, and also for the people who are just plain lazy (like me). And with the transformation of cell phones from just devices you use to make a call into full-fledged, mobile computers, as well as the rising popularity of tablet PCs, the mobile scene has developed into another crucial retail channel that businesses should explore. In fact, earlier this year Ignify identified and forecasted that mobile and tablet ecommerce would be one of the top retail trends of the year 2011.

According to a survey of 1,500 adults presented at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition 2011, 38% of the people surveyed own a smartphone, with 41% of them having made a purchase on the device. Also in the survey pool, 3% of those surveyed owned a tablet computer, with 65% saying they made a purchase from their tablet. Now, of the 5% who owned both a smartphone and a tablet, a whopping 85% made a purchase from a mobile device (also called "m-commerce").

So why not tap into the mobile gadget-loving streak of these potential customers and offer a mobile retail channel? With U.S. ecommerce sales reaching $165.4 billion in 2010 (a 14.8% increase from 2009’s $144.1 billion), retailers should look at any way they can carve out a bigger chunk of retail ecommerce. And with mobile retail, you can easily accomplish this.

For creating a slick, user-friendly mobile retail experience that keeps your customers returning in droves, here are some helpful tips and guidelines that you can follow.

1. Make Sure Your Website is Fully Functional and Accessible

First of all, you need to make sure that your mobile website is completely accessible and functional from a mobile browser. If this seems like an extremely common sense first step, and you’re even annoyed that I’m mentioning something so basic and essential, then great; it’ll be burned even more into your brain. Because really, what use is a website that caters to mobile users if the mobile users can’t access the website? So it’s best to keep in mind that most mobile operating systems, including Windows Phone 7, iPhone, and iPad, do not support Flash. So, to provide a similar experience without using Flash, use AJAX or Animated GIFs to get the same effect.

Also, don’t be shy in personally testing your mobile site. Whip out your smartphone (or if you don’t have one, borrow a smartphone from someone who does), and access your site. Does typing in your mobile address automatically direct you to the correct site, or does an error page pop up? Do the links on your site work okay? It’s better for you to be the first one to find and fix bugs and broken links than to have them stay on your site unreported for too long… and inevitably scaring off potential customers from visiting again.

2. Make Sure You Have an Optimized Mobile Browsing Experience

Now, I don’t mean to stereotype all mobile shoppers, but if I go off of my own personal experience as a shopper, I can tell you one thing: mobile shoppers are lazy. In other words, people who are using their mobile phone to access retail sites do not want to encounter a cluttered, difficult-to-use interface that makes them squint or scratch their heads while navigating through. In fact, having an overwhelmingly crowded homepage can immediately turn off a mobile user from spending time on your site, and can actively drive them towards seeking out your competitor.

The Ignify eCommerce mobile store provides an optimized mobile screen for customers to your site, giving them a sleek, user-friendly browsing experience.

Knowing that the first moment a mobile visitor opens up a store’s mobile site is crucial for customer retention, the latest version of Ignify eCommerce optimizes the mobile experience by offering the ability to create a separate mobile store in addition to the web optimized store available on desktop computers. With this mobile store, the main mobile devices popular with users – such as iPhone, Android phones, Windows Phone 7, iPad, HP Slate, and all Windows 7 Tablets – are natively supported so that you have the option to allow a customer to view your product catalog, or purchase items online from your mobile store.

And just like in the first tip, remember to try out your mobile site for yourself. Is it easy for you to navigate through your site? Is the correct information displayed prominently for visitors to see and access? Does it look aesthetically pleasing? Tweak and tune your site until it offers your visitors the best possible user experience.

3. Always Remember: Your Mobile Site is Different from Your Main Site

This tip really goes hand-in-hand with the second tip: when you’re optimizing your mobile site, always keep in mind that your mobile site is completely different from your regular site. So, different functionalities and appearances have more appeal to mobile users on a mobile site than for visitors on a regular website. For example, if you have brick-and-mortar retail stores in addition to a website and mobile store, make sure that the mobile store has your brick-and-mortar store hours, along with store locations, displayed front-and-center on your mobile site. This is important because since mobile users are usually, well, mobile, chances are that they’re trying to access this information if they’re looking it up on a mobile device (and hopefully it inspires them to jaunt on down to your store if they’re in the neighborhood).

Other examples of a mobile user’s browsing experience being different from a desktop computer user’s browsing experience is the fact that a person at a computer is sitting down in front of the screen, and thus putting more of a concerted effort in searching and browsing. So, a computer user is more likely to take their time to check out more of what the site has to offer, and to do more thorough searches. With mobile users, however, speed and simplicity are the key factors. A mobile user could be on their smartphone at home, sure, but most likely they’re out-and-about; so if they’re using their device to look up something in particular, they want to get to a search box quickly, and see their results instantly. Also, viewing a screen that’s much smaller than that of a computer means that they cannot access all the bells-and-whistles that are on a regular website.

Streamline the offerings on your main website to fit the reduced screen size of a mobile device. Speed and simplicity are crucial for mobile users, so make sure your search box and products are displayed prominently, as well as that your site is simple-to-click and easy to navigate.

So remember to accommodate for these considerations. So for instance, make your search box easy-to-spot on the page, and make your content simple-to-click. Streamline all the stuff that’s on your main website, boiling it down to only the essential items that a mobile user would be looking for. Know that a mobile user has a limited screen view, so adjust for that by, once again, making sure that the screen holds only the necessary information that a user would be searching for, or wanting to access. A visitor won’t stick around if they have to scroll down volumes of text just to find what they’re looking for. Even though it can be tempting to try to throw as much stuff as you can on your mobile site to entice potential customers, remember to simplify, simplify, simplify.

And the last rule for you to remember: you’re only limited by your imagination. It’s up to you to think of the new, creative, and exciting things that will make your mobile ecommerce site stand out from the rest. With the countdown on to the holiday season already, what are you waiting for – it’s time to start brainstorming before you get left behind!

Ashley Harbaugh is a Product Marketing Specialist at Ignify. Ignify is a technology provider of CRM, eCommerce and ERP, software solutions to businesses and public sector organizations. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011.

In late 2009, I had forecasted that security breaches in 2010 and 2011 would increase significantly in spite of more advanced security technology. The recent spate of hack attacks underscores the importance of security for ecommerce merchants and retailers that have online stores. The latest organization to fall victim is the IMF where hackers obtained sensitive documents including e-mail and other documents during the intrusion. However, other high profile organizations that have been hacked in the recent weeks have included security expert RSA, defense contractor Lockheed Martin, Citi where the personal details of about 210,000 Citi Group cardholders were stolen after a security breach via Citi's web portal, Sony, Epsilon, the world's largest permission-based e-mail marketer. Certainly all of these large organizations had well-defined security policies and several safeguards in place and yet the fell to hackers. How then do smaller companies that are running e-commerce stores with smaller IT budgets and fewer people manage the security of the store?

A good first step is to ensure your ecommerce vendor has PCI Certified software or rather meet the PA-DSS standard. For many the definition of PCI-DSS, PA-DSS and PABP can be confusing. The excerpt below from the Ignify ecommerce PCI Implementation guide should help explain the difference between the three

• What is PABP? – Payment Application Best Practices (PABP) was developed by Visa to provide software vendors guidance in developing payment applications that help merchants mitigate compromises, prevent storage of sensitive cardholder data and support overall compliance with PCI Data Security Standard. In October 2008, the PCI Security Standards Council adopted Visa’s PABP and released the standard as the Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS).

• What is PA-DSS? – Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS) is derived from PCI DSS. Traditionally PCI DSS compliance may not apply to software vendors since most software vendors do not store, process or transmit cardholder data. In such cases, PA-DSS applies to software vendors and consultants who develop payment applications that store, process, or transmit cardholder data as part of authorization & settlement.

Many organizations make the mistake of assuming that PCI Certified and PCI compliant software mean the same thing. There is a very significant difference between the two! PCI certification involves not just self-audit but also involves rigorous auditing by a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) that is certified by the PCI Standards Council and then a final validation is done by the PCI Standards Council. Additionally PCI Certified Vendors have to publish guides on how the product deploys in a way that is PCI Compliant. Finally PCI Certified Vendors will typically build in security and its impact in every release. The combination of these things makes for a very significant different and can increase your level of security by choosing the right platform.

PA-DSS Certification by the PCI Standards Council for Ignify has been a four year journey. We started our preparation and self-assessments in 2007, contracted with our QSA in 2008 and completed our security audit and PCI Certification in 2009. In 2010 we went through a PCI update of the latest version that was released then Version 4.11. In 2011 we are now going through the PCI update of Version 5.0 which we are just in the process of finalizing. The difference between PCI Compliance and PCI certification for us was 2 years. In 2007 we were PCI Compliant but it took till 2009 to become PCI certified. And there was a lot of learning, improvements in the software that we bundled in between those 2 years.

If you wish to find the PCI Certified vendors, please visit the PCI Standards Council Website that lists all of the PCI Certified applications.

Here are some basics that are important for PCI Certification

1. Separation of Database Servers and web servers: This is very basic and almost something that everyone knows.. You need separate servers and your database server should be behind the firewall and the web server should be in the DMZ. It’s the obvious flossing rule of security – but just like flossing we find many sites where it is not done – so if you’re not doing it, start with this one.

2. Encryption and Key Management: Card holder information needs to be encrypted (PA DSS requirement 2.5, 2.6 and PCI DSS requirement 3.5, 3.6). Ideally this means customer name, credit card information etc. You also need encryption during transmission and you need it for storage and while having web servers connect to the database server to protect credentials. So there are at least 3 points that you want to ensure you have encryption.

   For Transmission, you would typically use an HTTPS SLL Certificate. HTTPS encryption keys are managed by public SSL certificate providers. Since HTTPS, uses Asymmetric Cryptography, private key is available on the web server while public key is distributed in the form of HTTPS certificate to browsers. For storage encryption (or database encryption) you would need to use your ecommerce systems native encryption mechanism or if it doesn’t provide one then a 3rd party solution. Ignify ecommerce uses AES 128 encryption for database encryption. In addition, you need to have a key management process so you can update your encryption keys on a regular basis. You should regenerate your keys at least once a year and ideally every quarter. These keys should be stored in a safe place and not anywhere where a hacker can get to them from the server hosting the information being encrypted. Ideally you’d put this on paper (even though that is old-fashioned) and put it in some sort of safe that is accessible by a limited set of custodians.

3. User Login and Session timeouts: To be compliant with the PCI DSS requirement 8.5.15 the duration of session time out should be no more than 15 minutes. Both the Ignify eCommerce Store Front and Manager Panel Applications permit configurable session time out duration – this setting requires the user to login again using his credentials in case the user’s system is idle for specified time duration. To be compliant, By default this setting is 15 minutes with an out of box installation of Ignify eCommerce.

4. Disabling unnecessary services and Daemons on the server: Minimum services / daemons required to support technologies mentioned against each server should be kept running on each server. All other services are recommended to be disabled to meet PCI DSS requirement 2.2

5. Audit Trail and Application log: PCI DSS (requirement 10.1 to 10.3) and PA DSS (requirement 4) require that the application maintain an audit trail. This is required in multiple places. For example, Ignify ecommerce maintains the following

   1. a security audit trail with logs of who logged in when, for how long and what they did. Ignify ecommerce comes with the audit trail enabled by default.
   2. Application log: listing any uncommon events in the application
   3. Order Log: A log of all changes done on the order including price updates, ship method updates, address updates. This ensures that if any customer service representative engages in fraud then the system essentially captures every action they did.

Figure 1. Audit Trail on an Order in Ignify eCommerce showing every change made on the order by a sales person or a CSR

Though this article covers the highlights, there are several other requirements required for PCI compliance. If you are in the market for a PCI certified ecommerce solution, web store or order entry solution please email us at ecommerce@ignify.com so we can have a great discussion on security.

Pankaj Kumar is the Chief Technology Officer at Ignify. Ignify eCommerce is the only PCI certified eCommerce solution in the market that integrates with mid-market ERP systems including the Microsoft Dynamics ERP and Sage ERP. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for four years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine. Ignify was ranked in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011 – this list represents the top businesses world-wide with disruptive and innovative technology.