Managing an E-business & Challenges before an E-business – Due to Internet capabilities and web technology, traditional business organization definition has undergone a change where scope of the enterprise now includes other company locations, business partners, customers and vendors. It has no geographic boundaries as it can extend its operations where Internet works. All this is possible due to Internet and web moving traditional paper driven organization to information driven Internet enabled E-business enterprise. E-business enterprise is open twenty-four hours, and being independent, managers, vendors; customers transact business anytime from anywhere.
Internet capabilities have given E-business enterprise a cutting edge capability advantage to increase the business value. It has opened new channels of business as buying and selling can be done on Internet. It enables to reach new markets across the world anywhere due to communication capabilities. It has empowered customers and vendors / suppliers through secured access to information to act, wherever necessary. The cost of business operations has come down significantly due to the elimination of paper-driven processes, faster communication and effective collaborative working. The effect of these radical changes is the reduction in administrative and management overheads, reduction in inventory, faster delivery of goods and services to the customers.
In E-business enterprise traditional people organization based on ‘Command Control’ principle is absent. It is replaced by people organization that is empowered by information and knowledge to perform their role. They are supported by information systems, application packages, and decision-support systems. It is no longer functional, product, and project or matrix organization of people but E-organization where people work in network environment as a team or work group in virtual mode. E-business enterprise is more process-driven, Technology-enabled and uses its own information and knowledge to perform. In E-business enterprise, most of the things are electronic, use digital technologies and work on databases, knowledge bases, directories and document repositories. The business processes are conducted through enterprise software like ERP, SCM, and CRM supported by data warehouse, decision support, and knowledge management systems.
They are using E-business, Ecommerce solutions to reach faraway locations to deliver product and services. The enterprise solutions like ERP, SCM, and CRM run on Internet (Internet / Extranet) & Wide Area Network (WAN). The business processes across the organization and outside run on E-technology platform using digital technology. Hence today’s business firm is also called E-enterprise or Digital firm. The paradigm shift to E-enterprise has brought four transformations, namely:
- Domestic business to global business.
- Industrial manufacturing economy to knowledge-based service economy.
- Enterprise Resource Management to Enterprise Network Management.
- Manual document driven business process to paperless, automated, electronically transacted business process.
These transformations have made conventional organization design obsolete. In E-enterprise, business is conducted electronically. Buyers and sellers through Internet drive the market and Internet-based web systems. Buying and selling is possible on Internet. Books, CDs, computer, white goods and many such goods are bought and sold on Internet. The new channel of business is well-known as Ecommerce. On the same lines, banking, insurance, healthcare are being managed through Internet E-banking, Billing, E-audit, & use of Credit cards, Smart card, ATM, E-money are the examples of the Ecommerce application. The digital firm, which uses Internet and web technology and uses E-business and Ecommerce solutions, is a reality and is going to increase in number.
MIS for E-business is different compared to conventional MIS design of an organization. The role of MIS in E-business organization is to deal with changes in global market and enterprises. MIS produces more knowledge-based products. Knowledge management system is formally recognized as a part of MIS. It is effectively used for strategic planning for survival and growth, increase in profit and productivity and so on. To achieve the said benefits of E-business organization, it is necessary to redesign the organization to realize the benefits of digital firm. The organization structure should be lean and flat. Get rid of rigid established infrastructure such as branch office or zonal office. Allow people to work from anywhere. Automate processes after reengineering the process to cut down process cycle time. Make use of groupware technology on Internet platform for faster response processing. Another challenge is to convert domestic process design to work for international process, where integration of multinational information systems using different communication standards, country-specific accounting practices, and laws of security are to be adhered strictly. Internet and networking technology has thrown another challenge to enlarge the scope of organization where customers and vendors become part of the organization.
This technology offers a solution to communicate, coordinate, and collaborate with customers, vendors and business partners. This is just not a technical change in business operations but a cultural change in the mindset of managers and workers to look beyond the conventional organization. It means changing the organization behavior to take competitive advantage of the E-business technology. The last but not the least important is the challenge to organize and implement information architecture and information technology platforms, considering multiple locations and multiple information needs arising due to global operations of the business into a comprehensive MIS.
E-Commerce: It is a second big application next to ERP. It is essential deals with buying and selling of goods. With the advent of intent and web technology, E-Commerce today covers an entire commercial scope online including design and developing, marketing, selling, delivering, servicing, and paying for goods. Some E-Commerce application adds order tracking as a feature for customer to know the delivery status of the order. The entire model successfully works on web platform and uses internet technology. E-Commerce process has two participants, namely Buyer and Seller, like in traditional business model. And unique and typical to E-commerce there is one more participant to seller by authorization and authentication of commercial transaction. E-Commerce process model can be viewed in four ways and categories:
- B2C: Business Organization to Customer.
- B2B: Business Organization to Business.
- C2B: Customer to Business Organization.
- C2C: Customer to Customer
In B2C Model, business organization uses websites or portals to offer information about product, through multimedia clippings, catalogues, product configuration guidelines, customer histories and so on. A new customer interacts with the site and uses interactive order processing system for order placements. On placements of order, secured payment systems comes into operation to authorize and authenticate payment to seller. The delivery system then takes over to execute the delivery to customer.
In B2B Model, buyer and seller are business organizations. They exchange technical & commercial through websites and portals. Then model works on similar line like B2C. More advanced B2B model uses Extranet and Conducts business transaction based on the information
Status displayed on the buyer’s application server.
In C2B Model, customer initiates actions after logging on to seller’s website or to server. On the server of the selling organization, E-Commerce application is present for the use of the customer. The entire Internet banking process work on C2B model where account holders of the bank transact a number of requirements such as seeking account balance, payment and so on.
In C2C model, Customer Participates in the process of selling and buying through the auction website. In this model, website is used for personal advertising of products or services. Newspaper website is an Example of advertising and selling of goods to customer.
In B2B Model, the participants in E-business are two organization with relations as buyer=seller, distributor-dealer and so on.
E-Collaboration every business has a number of work scenarios where group of people work together to complete the tasks and to achieve a common objective. The group could be teams or virtual teams with different member strength. They come together to platform a task to achieve some results. The process is called Collaboration.
The Biggest Advantage of E-Collaboration is that it taps the collective wisdom, knowledge and experience of the members. The collaboration team or group could be within the organization and between the organizations as well. Since, E Collaboration works on an internet platform and uses web technology, work group/team need not be at one physical location. E-collaboration uses E-Communication capabilities to perform collaborative tasks or project assignment. Its effectiveness is increased by software ‘GroupWare’ that enables the members of the group to share information, invoke an application and work together to create documents and share them and so on. E-Collaboration helps work effectively on applications like calendaring and scheduling tasks, event, project management, workflow application, work group application.
E-collaboration system components are internet, Intranet, Extranet and LAN, WAN networks for communication through GroupWare tools, browser. Let us illustrate the model using an event in the business such as receipt of material for a job to be processed on the shop floor. In this event there is a transaction receipt of material, which needs to be processed, and then a workgroup will use this information of material receipt. Each member of this workgroup has a different goal.