WebSphere Commerce Portal V5.4 Solutions

102 WebSphere Commerce Portal V5.4 Solutions

After several discussions, the managers decide to select a portal-based

approach using WebSphere Portal, which supports the mentioned evaluation

requirements.

In addition, the Commerce Enhancement Pack provides instructions and

information for deploying WebSphere Commerce function into WebSphere

Portal. It integrates the advantages, features, and benefits of WebSphere

Commerce with WebSphere Portal to enrich the e-commerce functionality

provided by the portal.

As an outcome of the evaluation, the management team decides to initiate a

project to provide a commerce enabled portal solution for its customers.

4.2 Requirements

This section provides an analysis of the functional and nonfunctional

requirements for the business scenario. In several CEP workshops, a set of

business user requirements has been identified.

4.2.1 Functional requirements

The CEP company sells hardware and accessories online to retail customers

and business customers.

CEP brands and products

The CEP hardware and accessories sold online are categorized into the

following brands:

򐂰 Woodworking

򐂰 Power

򐂰 Cordless

򐂰 Accessories

CEP customer types

The CEP store has three distinct customer types:

򐂰 Retail customer

This includes any public Internet shoppers accessing the public CEP site.

򐂰 Business customer

This customer set is predetermined and negotiated by the business users in

the form of a contract. For example, a business may negotiate a special price

for bundled hardware and accessories. The business would enter into a

contract with the CEP site and be able to purchase the contracted goods.

Chapter 4. Business requirements analysis and solution design 103

򐂰 Business reseller customer

This customer set includes business partners that resell CEP products. CEP

grants permissions for business resellers to maintain their product data,

including all necessary administrative tasks.

CEP shopping experience requirements

The CEP has several hundred customers. Its main focus is to attract its

customers and resellers to the CEP Web site. The catalog contains a

well-defined set of goods with special discounts for customers. The CEP site

leverages the marketing spots of WebSphere Commerce but the marketing

organization would like to enhance the direct marketing based on customer

profile data. In summary, the CEP has the following functional requirements:

򐂰 Enhanced front-end user experience

The customer logs onto the CEP portal. Based on the customer’s personal

profile, a pre-configured portal application is available. The customer interacts

with the pre-arranged portlets to browse the catalog, product, product items,

and its shopping cart. If a customer selects a good and places it into the

shopping car, it is refreshed by the system.

򐂰 Order-related front-end user experience

Once a customer logs onto the CEP portal, he/she manages his/her orders

using the commerce enabled portal and the WebSphere Commerce order

subsystem. The order subsystem provides services to modify the current

order, including order-related information, to view the order history, including

the visualization of the order detail when clicking on an order, and to check

out the current order.

򐂰 Dynamic data aggregation and visualization

For the customer’s convenience, portlets within a portal application should

leverage Dynamic Context Groups such that when the user clicks a link in the

portlet with a slave relationship, the slave portlets are automatically refreshed

by the system.

򐂰 Enhanced marketing capabilities

The WebSphere Commerce marketing capabilities are powerful and are

included in several JSPs of the CEP site. The WebSphere Portal provides a

sophisticated Personalization Engine that is extended to enhance the CEP

site. Customers are able to define personalization profiles, which results in

dynamic portlet aggregation.

For example, a customer defines product profiles, which result in the dynamic

activation of portlets visualizing product-related information from WebSphere

Commerce.