E-commerce and Collaboration Strategies

Digital Economy

• Digital evolution has progressed from punched tape to magnetic tape, floppy disks, compact disks, hard drives, USB drives and cloud storage.
• Three core concepts are storage, processing speed, and bandwidth which have a large impact on digital processes.
• Associated laws include Moore's Law (processor speed doubles every two years), Metcalfe's Law (the value of a network grows proportionally to the square of the number of users), Gilder's Law (bandwidth grows at least three times faster than computer power), and Nielsen's Law (connectivity and speed have a direct and linear relationship).

Enterprise Information Systems

• Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) are organizational and management solutions for business challenges.
• They create value for businesses by providing detailed information of the business.
• Objectives include operational excellence, competitive advantages, and acceleration of innovation.
• EIS require a digital core to run business processes.

Prosumers

• Prosumers are individuals who both produce and consume information and services for a business.

Functional Structure

• EIS support functional areas, middle management and hierarchical levels.
• Related areas include operations and transactions (e.g. Finance, SCM, HCM, BI).
• CRM is not a core transaction module.

EIS Importance

• Capital management: wise investment in IT.
• Foundation of doing business: increase market share, enhance quality and lower costs.
• Increased productivity: a key tool for increased productivity and efficient business.
• Strategic opportunity and advantages: creation of new services, competitive differences, business model creation.

Network Effect

• The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants in the network.
• The author speculates the law may also be applicable to neurons in the human brain.

Technological Business Organizations

• Organizations are stable, formal, and social structures. They process resources from the environment to produce outputs.
• Routines and business processes are key in understanding how a firm operates and defines its strategy.
• The business flows include order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, plan-to-produce, design-to-deploy, forecast-to-plan, inspect-to-quality, in-to-outbound, acquire-to-retire and account-to-report.
• Firms value chains support primary and secondary activities and are linked to overarching industry value chains.

Enterprise Applications

• Enterprise applications are complex business applications that use a central repository rather than separate places for information.
• They are data-centric, user-friendly, and support secure administration and maintenance.
• Business roles include operations, finance, and sales.
• Data streams represent events and are made into useful information.

Key Technological Components for E Commerce

• E-commerce software: catalog management, product configuration, shopping cart infrastructure, transaction processing, and web traffic analysis.
• Electronic Payment Systems: digital certificates, certificate authorities, secure sockets layers, electronic cash/wallets, and credit cards.

Multistage Model for E-commerce

• Multistage e-commerce models involve search and identification, selection and negotiation, electronic purchasing, product and service delivery, and after-sales service.

Design of E-commerce

• The 7C's of website design encompass context, connections, content, commerce, community, communication, and customization.
• Three approaches to strategy include position, resources and simple rules.

Business Processes

• Processes in a supply chain consist of sales orders, purchase orders, production orders, multisite operations, warehouse management, sales and operations planning, etc.

Human Capital Management

• Responsibilities of the HR department include attraction, selection, and hiring of employees, maintaining proper employee education and training, ensuring proper employee conduct, managing employee performance, and supporting managers.
• Systems support managing an organization's roles, definitions, and personal employee information.
• Features include time management, payroll, travel management, training and development, mobile time management and domestic partner management.

Collaboration

• Collaboration is the act of working together; it is not the same as cooperation.
• Collaboration requirements include open culture, decentralized structure and breadth of collaboration. Collaboration requires effective use of technology for operations and planning.
• Key aspects for effective collaboration include communication, coordination, and collaboration and teamwork to achieve collaboration quality and, consequently, firm performance.

CRM Systems

• CRM systems are vital for managing customer interactions. Its objective is to understand, influence customer behavior through meaningful communication, thus improving customer acquisition, loyalty, and profitability.
• The three stages are acquisition (establishing a relationship), customer extension (cross-selling and upselling), and retention (understanding customer needs).
• The three sub-modules are marketing automation, sales force automation, and customer service automation.

E-commerce

• E-commerce occurs via the Internet and involves trading goods and services for payment.
• Eight unique features of this technology include ubiquity, global reach, universality, information density, personalization/customization, interactivity, social technology, and transaction cost reductions.
• E-commerce has impacted business by global reaching, convenience, reduced costs and ease of use.
• Different types of e-commerce are B2B (business to business), B2C (business to consumer), C2C (consumer to consumer), and C2B (consumer to business).
• Mobile commerce, or M-commerce, relies on cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) to conduct business.

Supply Chain Management

• Supply chain management involves the flow of materials, information, and financial resources through an organization, all the way from the supplier to the customer.
• Important stages include creation stage, integration stage, globalization stage, and specialization stages.
• Five basic areas for SCM are production, inventory, location, transportation, and information.
• Essential components of SCM include demand planning, supply planning, and demand fulfillment.

Accounting

• Accounting covers recording monetary data in transactions, events, and arrangements.
• A T-Account is a common layout to record economic activity.
• A balance sheet and profit and loss account (P&L) are key accounting tools. Balance Sheet reflects a static view and a P&L is a view of operations over a period.

Test your knowledge on e-commerce strategies and the impact of collaboration in modern business practices. This quiz covers key concepts such as user communication, economic transformation, and the benefits of teamwork. Challenge yourself with questions that explore the intersection of technology and collaboration in a digital economy.