Expanding an open source e-commerce with a separate ICT system

Currently, one of the most common ways of selling goods is online trading. Almost every seller has its own online shop. Many treat e-commerce as the main or even, the only channel of distribution. Selling online became easy. There are ready to use platforms delivered as a Software as a Service (SaaS) and even full implementation is no longer much complicated. Starting simple online shop is easy but with the company’s growth, the demands become more individual and those are not supported. Unfortunately, “ready to go” solutions are often adoption-resistant, what means, that all individual changes are not very welcome. This creates a barrier for company’s further development. After easy and inexpensive beginning, comes time- and cost-consuming process of system adoption and extension. Periodical e-commerce platform updates often result in a conflict between core and individually adopted parts of the source code. On one hand, such updates improve the main platform, on the other, also crash compatibility with individualized modules. The aim of this research was to build an ICT platform, that fulfils all individual company’s needs and runs in parallel to main e-commerce open-source system. It was expected to design a separate system that meets company’s functional expectations and uses data stored on e-commerce platform, without modifying its source code. Both systems should work on the same data but stay totally independent, to leave the main open-source platform in its original form. It means no code interference, that leaves it free for all upcoming updates. Research resulted in an entirely personalized online system implementation, which is open for further functionality evolution and does not interfere with core e-commerce platform. Therefore, leaves it open for updates and changes made by its developers.