E-Business & E-Commerce Lecture 10 PDF

© Prentice Hall, 2002 Upon completion of this chapter, you will be able to: Understand the questions you must ask and answer, and the steps you should take, in developing an e-commerce presence. Explain the process that should be followed in building an e- commerce presence....

© Prentice Hall, 2002 Upon completion of this chapter, you will be able to: Understand the questions you must ask and answer, and the steps you should take, in developing an e-commerce presence. Explain the process that should be followed in building an e- commerce presence. Identify additional tools that can improve website performance. Understand the important considerations involved in developing a mobile website and building mobile applications. 3.2 Once you have developed a vision of the e-commerce presence you want to build, it’s time to start thinking about how to build and implement that presence. Building a successful e-commerce presence requires a keen understanding of business, technology, and social issues, as well as a systematic approach. The two most important management challenges are: 1. developing a clear understanding of your business objectives; which requires you to build a plan for developing your firm’s presence. 2. knowing how to choose the right technology to achieve those objectives; which requires you to understand some of the basic elements of e- commerce infrastructure.  First, you must be aware of the main areas where you will need to make decisions (Figure 3.4). Figure 3.4 On the management and human resources fronts, you will have to bring together a team of individuals who possess the skill sets needed to build and manage a successful e-commerce presence. This team will make the key decisions about business objectives and strategy, technology, design, social and information policies.  You will also need to make decisions about hardware, software, and telecommunications infrastructure. The demands of your customers should drive your choices of technology. Your customers will want technology that enables them to: find what they want easily, view the product, purchase the product, and then receive the product from your warehouses quickly. You will also have to carefully consider design. Once you have identified the key decision areas, you will need to think about a plan for developing the project. There are a number of different methodologies for building information systems such as websites. One of the most traditional methods is the systems development life cycle, described in the following section.  The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a methodology for understanding the business objectives of any system and designing an appropriate solution. It helps in creating documents that communicate objectives, important milestones, and the uses of resources to management. Figure 3.5 Figure 3.5 The five major steps involved in SDLC (1) In this step of the SDLC, you try to answer the question, “What do we want this e-commerce site or app to do for our business?” The key point is to let the business decisions drive the technology, not the reverse. This will ensure that your technology platform is aligned with your business. We will assume here that you have identified a business strategy and chosen a business model to achieve your strategic objectives. But how do you translate your strategies, business models, and ideas into a working e-commerce website?  One way to start is to identify: the specific (1) business objectives for your site, and then develop a list of (2) system functionalities and (3) information requirements. Business objectives: are simply capabilities you want your site to have. System functionalities: are types of information systems capabilities you will need to achieve your business objectives. The information requirements: for a system are the information elements that the system must produce in order to achieve the business objectives. You will need to provide these lists to system developers and programmers so they know what you as the manager expect them to do. Table 3.2 describes some basic business objectives, system functionalities, and information requirements for a typical e- commerce site. Table 3.2 End of Lecture_10