According to Eisenmann, Parker and van Alstyne, authors of the praised article Platform Envelopment (2009): Platform business model beats product business model.
Michiel Schipperus, CEO of SANA, states that only 37% of the B2B companies have already started with E-Commerce. Besides he mentions that the yearly growth estimate for the B2B E-Commerce market is 19%.
These three findings together provide reason enough to invest in a platform. However, small businesses experience problems with setting up a platform due to the shortage of resources.
For these small business, I will discuss two free open source platforms which can become the foundation of their future E-Commerce activities.
Magento Community Edition
Magento is a well-known player in the platform industry. Their Magento Enterprise Edition is used by many large companies. With licence fees of over 10,000 euros per year, this platform solution is probably not affordable for all small business. For small business that still have to learn a lot about platforms and E-Commerce, spending such a big amount of money is probably not the best idea. However, there’s a great alternative for Magento Enterprise Edition, and that’s the Magento Community Edition. This open source platform provides lots of features. As the name suggests, there is a large community behind the platform. It provides useful guidelines to learn more about E-Commerce and the open source platform. Next to that, there is a lively community that is willing to help new players in the field when they experience problems or when something is unclear.
Learn more about Magento Community Edition here: https://www.magentocommerce.com/download
Opencart
Opencart is the second open source platform provider for E-Commerce I want to highlight. This platform is in particular useful for small businesses that don’t have programming knowledge. The simple platform interface allows users to add all kinds of plugins like products reviews and ratings. With Opencart, you can design an E-Commerce platform with unlimited categories, products and manufacturers. Compared to Magento, there is a smaller online community that can help you out it case of problems. However, this is getting compensated with the easiness and simplicity of the program.
Learn more about Opencart here:
https://www.opencart.com/
Sources:
Eisenmann, T., Parker, G., and Van Alstyne, M.W. 2009. Opening Platforms: How, When and Why? in Platforms, Markets and Innovation, Gawer, A. (ed.), Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, pp. 131-162.
Guestlecture Michiel Schipperus (2016) An introduction to Business-to-buiness (B2B) E-commerce, 3 October 2016
https://magento.com/products/community-edition, retrieved on October 22th 2016
https://www.magentocommerce.com/download, retrieved on October 22th 2016
https://www.opencart.com/, retrieved on October 22th 2016
https://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=feature/feature, retrieved on October 22th 2016
