e-Commerce Implementation Time - break down please

[#1]

Hi There,

I'm advised that the 'average' implementation time for Webtools e-Commerce is around the 10 day mark.

Would someone please provide a breakdown of how that 10 days would be used?

I have a prospect who beleives it should be 'plug and play' and cannot understand why the 10 days is required. A breakdown of each task which would need to be performed along with the times associated with each task would be most helpful right now.

Best Regards

Richard

[Former Member]

I don't know where that 10 days is from, but every implementation that I'm aware of has taken weeks and months longer than that. WebTools is just an ecommerce framework that happens to sync with B1, and to really make it work, you're going to need a lot of time.

Site Design - This could take an enormous amount of time, depending on how picky your customer is. If you're just going to use the default theme, which isn't very good looking or easy to use in my opinion, then you're looking at very little time. I can't imagine that they would really want you to not spend at least a day doing minor customizations, and that is the bare minimum in my mind, like simply putting on a logo and changing site names.

Plugin Design - Again, you don't have to have this, but I think any store just would be completely ineffective with out them.

SynchManager - This has always worked for me without too much difficulty, but I'm working on a project from the ground up, so there aren't many items or business partners to sync. From reading this forum, this causes a lot of people grief. I am however trying to sync more data between B1 & WebTools which requires building a custom sync plugin.

Item Customization - If all your items are straight SKUs, this won't be too tough, but if you have options on any products, that'll take a lot of data entry work to go through and add the different variants.

Theoretically it should be a plug and play solution, but now that I'm going through this list, I realize that I don't have any idea what it is going to take. I was supposed to be live last October and I'm trying to rush to get something up by March 5 trade show deadline, but I'm not very optimistic that I'll make it.

Hopefully this isn't a waste of your time, but I really have a hard time believing that it will only take you 10 days to get the site done where the client is happy with it. How to tell a client that without making them feel like you are stealing their money however is a different story, and one I'm glad I don't have to deal with since I am the client.

Derek