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E-commerce continues to hold tremendous profit potential for many companies. It still offers faster response to customer needs, reduced operating costs, and increased cooperation among customers and trading partners—if it is done right.

This means not bringing an e-commerce offering to market before planning a workable architecture. Now, more than ever, companies must thoroughly plan and carefully build their e-commerce architecture before the first customer ever comes on board. That’s because capital, time, and resources are scarcer today; margins for error are slimmer; and shareholders are less in the mood to support initiatives that don’t work out of the gates.

As a corollary, chief information officers (CIOs) frequently have to be the voice of reason in their companies to ensure that a truly robust, reliable system is built. ClOs may be the company’s only executive-level people who understand the architectural firepower needed to build and run a scalable, reliable e-commerce backbone. Only you may be able to explain to your CEO why you need an integration layer or how your architecture plan is the best among competing models in the market. And, only you may be able to explain how much time it takes to build the architecture correctly.

Putting the cart before the horse has never been a wise move, but it was briefly accepted as a viable business strategy in e-commerce initiatives. In 2001, a company could tout its e-commerce offering, get customers, and then worry whether it had the scalability, reliability, and security needed to support business. But that’s over. With the first casualties of the e-commerce revolution fresh in mind, potential users of your e-commerce system want to know that you can deliver. ClOs can help their companies by insisting that they take the following steps:

1. Plan: The architecture is the structure of the e-commerce system and will determine what the company can and cannot do, both now and in the future. Therefore, it’s critical for the system’s software engineers to develop an architecture blueprint up front. The blueprint should include the highest-level design of the business solution and processes; highest-level technical design and lower-level designs; and information on any relevant special structures, interfaces, or algorithms.

2. Plan for the “ilities”: When well-planned and well-built, the architecture will deliver on all of the key “ilities”—such as scalability, reliability, availability, and serviceability. But, in their hurry to get to market, far too many companies short themselves on the necessary components and vendor partners. CIOs can insist on components from best-in-class technology providers and consult development firms that have implemented applications within a broad range of architectural schemas.

3. Plan for integration: The technology infrastructure must allow you to integrate customers’ legacy systems, third-party vendors, and applications to come in the future. For example, insurance companies have extensive legacy systems and various business partners that must be accommodated. For example, DriveLogic, the e-commerce arm of CCC Information Services and a leading provider of technology solutions to over 460 of the nation’s top insurers, has implemented an architecture that will be able to communicate with all of these systems. It allows insurers to leverage existing technology and data—a considerable asset—and accommodates insurer business partners and other technology vendors as well.

4. Make good vendor choices: A robust system calls for the best vendor partners. Like a house built with cheap materials, architecture pieced together with Iow-rent components and vendors won’t wear well—and, may jeopardize your company’s reputation for years to come.

Today, it’s more critical than ever to get the e-commerce strategy right in the preplanning stages, well before you ever bring the offering to market. To be a leader, and avoid the mistakes of the past few years, a company must build it right from the star