JOB PROFILES FOR ECOMMERCE PROFESSIONALS
"E.BIZ Today or No.BIZ tomorrow" Yeah this is the caption featuring advertisements for the Ecommerce Trade show currently underway at the World Trade Centre, Mumbai. Yeah, this is partly becoming true. Either learn to do business electronically or fail to do business itself. Imagine taking a client to a good restaurant and having a 3 course meal. While your client is busy sipping the coffee, you come to know that the particular restaurant does not accept credit cards. Can you today imagine a good quality restaurant which does not accept credit cards? No! and if that is your answer, then let it be clear there cannot be any business that does not allow business to transacted over the Internet.
With the growth of ecommerce clear, let us now understand the job openings in the Ecommerce market. Before we go on to understand the different job profiles let us understand the Client Server Technology better. Initially we had Unix Server, where the entire processing was done on the server. Whether it was a simple validation, such as Checking a name in the database or checking a valid date, it was all done on the server side. This increased the response time of the software. So Client Server Technology came into existence which allowed validations and other checks to be performed on the client side. With Internet based technology, Client side code will cover all the Graphics and Client side validations. Whereas Server side scripting will basically involve validations on the database that would be used in the Ecommerce application.
As is explained in the earlier section, any web site will have two parts. The Server side and the Client side. The most important part in the client side is the Graphics part. Initially web pages were very static. Due to the static nature of the web pages, very little programming was involved. This gave a lot of importance to Web designers. Nowadays web sites have to be very interactive. To create a static Web site, you can use the time tested HTML, which is the back bone of the internet. Other tools are also available such as Front Page , Netscape Gold etc.. All these RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools intrinsically use HTML to design the Web pages. In order to add interactivity to the site, the programmer can make use of a scripting langauge such as VBScript or JavaScript. JavaScript is universally acceptable with most browsers. Visual Interdev is a RAD which can develop scripting code and not just static pages.
To enhance the graphics, one can also use available cliparts. Readymade cliparts are available in the market on CDs. One can also download cliparts from some Freeware sites on the Internet. Some sites require cliparts which are not currently available. In that case cliparts have to be generated. This is a very time consuming job and requires that the designer has got tremendous artistic flair. You can use GIF construction set, to create GIF images.
Scope - The growth of a Web designer is limited as RAD tools are making designing Web pages very simple. Only really creative professionals can make a niche for themselves. Other wise with the simplicity of use of these RAD, any novice can create good looking web pages.
The web server provides a lot of features. We will list some important ones
Internet Information Server (IIS), Unix and Apache are some Web servers. A web master job is to understand the intricacies of his / her Web server and increase the throughput of the server. One of the key issues is to be able to manage throughput and avoid down time.
Scope :- Web Administrators are in good demand, especially if one knows the specific server very well. But just as you require only 1 network administrator for a group of around 20 programmers, the number of openings required for Web Administrators would also be less. Anyway A web administrator’s job is a more responsible job as he singularly shoulders a lot of responsibility. A major disadvantage for pursuing a career as a Web Master, is that most servers are physically located in the US, it is difficult to get exposure to a real functioning server.
WEB Programmers / Developers
This according to me is the most important segment. Of course the Graphics make the site very attractive, but without the business logic, there cannot be any interactive sites. Also an important point to note, is that a lot of chaos and problems can crop up, if the business logic of the software has any bugs. Usually in a software that has been designed for a company, only the employees of the company will use the software. In this case, any bugs or malfunctioning in the software would have limited repurcussions. But on the web, any person in the world can use the software, and can cause heavy damage to the database.
Web programmers also need to know a lot about databases. Anyway, I hope it is clear that, all information in most software is maintained in a database. SQL server, Oracle 8i, mySQL are some common databases used on the internet. Mysql is fairly popular because it is freely available. SQl SERVER, is the most commonly used Database. Oracle 8i is also a very good database on the Internet, but is preferred in case of an extraordinarily large database, keeping the cost in mind.
Development tools
ASP and JAVA are the most popular Development tools for the server side programming. ColdFusion and CGI are also used but are not as popular as ASP and JAVA. ASP developed by Microsoft is picking up very fast. The main reason for ASP’s growth is faster execution time and faster development cycle.
Scope
The scope for Web Programmers is tremendous. Despite the media hype about Ecommerce, not much progress has been made on this front. The next 5 yrs. would see a big surge in ECOMMERCE and subsequent growth in opportunity for the WEB developer.
ECommerce Specialists
A new breed of professionals are arriving on the scene who understand how business can be promoted on the Internet. In every E Commerce development team, you will find such professionals who have the ability to find out ideas to promote business on the internet. Such specialists need not be technical professionals but need to have an overview of the Internet technology.
The internet also puts forth problems regarding exchange rate fluctuations, custom duties and other problems related to international trade. An Ecommerce Specialist will also have to keep in touch with latest trends in international trade and manage to maintain the site on the right side of international law.
B2B, B2C
Most readers must have heard about these acronyms. B2B stands for Business to Business whereas B2C stands for Business to Consumer. B2C has more volume with each transaction not of a very high denomination.
Common examples of B2C could be selling chocolate, Greeting cards etc. on the internet. Example of a B2B site can be an Auto Manufacturing company selling cars to their dealers. Naturally a lot of documents have to be maintained in a B2B solution. Naturally providing a B2B solution across the globe, would require tremendous knowledge of international law, justifying the demand for an ECOMMERCE specialist.
I hope with this article, I have highlighted on the major job openings in Ecommerce. Of course ancillary jobs such as testers, quality auditors etc.. would always be available. But my aim was to discuss job opportunities which would interest professionals trying to shift to the Ecommerce field. Any way I wish you the best and feel free to raise your queries @
The author Mr. Sandeep Tapaswi, is Director FANDS INFONET, which is a leading IT recruiter for US.