Technology is Key

If there is one aspect that distinguishes e-commerce entities from their offline counterparts, it is the fact that webstores are open 24x7. To oversimplify, we are a store that remains open round-the-clock and our store, store personnel, inventory, customer service, logistics and everything else needs to be in readiness every minute. Given this framework, technology plays a critical role in what we do and how we do it and becomes the real enabler in our business. So much so, we at Flipkart often refer to ourselves as a technology company doing e-commerce.

We believe e-commerce companies do not yet occupy a lot of mindshare in consumers minds, but things are rapidly evolving. Doing e-commerce at a large scale needs a lot of good technology in all aspects of the business. At Flipkart we have built in-house most of the technology used to power the website as well as our back-end ERP systems. We have used a lot of open source software for our basic infrastructure like the operating system and the database (Linux, Mysql). We primarily use Java and MySql on Linux as our implementation technologies.

On the fulfilment side, technology helps in making accurate information available at real-time, allowing one to make informed decisions. A specific example where e-commerce entities are able to use technology to compete well is in the area of Search Engine Optimization. It certainly helped us at Flipkart to attract users at a time when traction was necessary, but we had no real advertising or marketing budget. This is crucial in the early days, more so in the case of bootstrapped startups. Thus, right from attracting users through SEO and SEM to delivering the right product to the user at their door-step, technology helps drive most of the process flows in an e-commerce organization.

At the core, it is ones responsibility to ensure customers orders reach on time and in good shape. This would involve interfacing of the front-end (website) with the backend (technology+physical systems). Systems allow businesses to keep track of every customer order, every shipment and every item in the inventory to a very detailed level and information and updates flow through this system in real-time. This is essential for efficient deliveries and quick turnaround time.

An ERP System for example is responsible for building systems for fulfilment operations, end-to-end. The number of different business flows that need to be dealt with here is a major challenge for any pure-play e-commerce business. Ever increasing users and data adds to challenges. Systems need to be capable of handling huge amounts of structured data, working with large complex code bases with software which can scale with the number of users and data.

Given the explosive rate of growth, decision making based on past experiences and rules of thumb results in sub-optimal outcomes. What is needed is data driven decision making and an analytics team to enable that. The analytics team (with functions like data mining, data warehousing, predictive analytics or in general tackling problem solving, analytical reasoning and solving fuzzy problems) goes beyond building reporting systems. The ability to develop deep functional understanding of various production processes, underlying information systems and the captured data helps build systems that present various views of the operational data to business owners and decision makers.

There are other such problems (web analytics, recommendation analytics, fraud detection and many more) that need to be tackled and engineers and analysts enable one to do just that.

At Flipkart, we use state-of-the-art technology, practice second to none customer service and sustain a reliable supply chain which adds to the dynamic selection, pricing and delivery on our website. We have leaped from the start-up tag to a full-blown brand. We no longer just sell books, but everything from cameras to phones to computers. Our workforce continues to expand so we are able to nurture our rapidly growing customer base. India is at the cusp of an e-commerce revolution and wed like to keep Flipkart at the forefront of this revolution, as pioneers and trend-setters. And we believe technology is one crucial aspect of being in the lead.

Sachin Bansal
The author is CEO &
Co-founder, Flipkart.com
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in