Ordering System: E-Business Concepts - Assignment Example

? CREATING AN ONLINE QUOTING ORDERING SYSTEM: E-BUSINESS CONCEPTS ------------ ------------ ------------ ------------ Date: ------------ On one hand, each business has its own out of the ordinary set of marketing challenges and opportunities. While the roots of marketing, unique advantages that customer cares to have, are similar for most businesses, some ideas work well for one type of business in contrast to another. Small businesses have the advantage of knowing their customers on a more personal level and have easier time turning them into fans. Giving the clients more than they expect is the beginning down the success road and they do the marketing to others (Cockrum 2011). In this day, marketing takes an important role in many facets of a business’ life and process. It can be defined as a management process where goods and services are provided well to reach customer needs and satisfaction. It is a way of attracting people’s attention, arousing their interests, motivating and activating their desire to take action. One strategy that can be very useful to satisfy customer needs more easily and lead a company towards success is a set of effective marketing tools. There are many tools of marketing; marketing communication and marketing strategies, provided by means of advertising, social networking, printed materials, event marketing , branding, press release, and so on (Cone 2011). Additionally, there are many advantages of using marketing tools such as maintaining the customer’s satisfaction, promoting the new product of the company and keeping customers’ brand loyalty of customer as long as possible. It is not only useful in the business part but it is also useful for the education part as well especially for promoting higher education institutes. As a result of using marketing tools to promote institution of higher education, it can bring a good image, make more number of students’ admission and also improve the education system of any schools, colleges or universities. The marketing strategies that can be seen to be useful for promoting an IT company providing systems integration and procurement services are internet marketing, press releases and social networking. Then, the public relation such as blogging and promotion is the part of event marketing that can be very helpful to promote to online shoppers. Social networking that uses technology as a tool like internet to make the world smaller such as Google Plus, Facebook, Blogs and websites. The company provides systems integration and procurement services. I will suggest a business model that operates on the internet predominantly, E-business. E-business is doing business either over the internet or through dedicated proprietary networks and e-commerce is a part of e-business which is mostly buying and selling activity. The process of establishing an e-business is risky and involving. It also requires many changes in the existing business process and strategy to be successful. The intent of an e-business generating income, strengthening service and limiting prices by expanding using the internet as a platform. The prospects of online trading have substantial revenue and its realized when the services perform for the business. Despite the over praised successes of this new-age business concept that has recently become the goal of many commercial corporate bodies and organizations, not much has developed in the traditional way of handling the many business processes. It maintains the same principles and management requirements of business operation as traditional commerce, that people, both sellers and buyers come together to exchange commodities and services over a network of computers. Ordering, buying, bidding, selling, customer services, enquiries and virtually all the business processes still uphold the underlying principles of commerce. E-commerce is a subset of the larger e-business strategy. It chiefly improves the buy-sell transaction activities in a business entity; as a result it increases the revenue. In a way e-commerce covers many of on-line business activities for services and products, both businesses to business and to customer and business on the internet as a platform. The e-business concept breaks the process of on-line business by showing the scope activities and information provided to the customer to conduct business and online shopping. A number of different functions are required by an e-business. For instance, there are some basic functional points that cover the sort of specialized transaction processing that perform the communication that run on the e-business mode. There are also other functions that cover software and hardware requirements to carry out the same services. An analysis of how e-businesses verity credit, process orders and how they deliver the order requests as well as how they confirm shipments and all or any post sales activities needs to be considered while gauging the e-business performance. Order processing needs the transaction processing and database information mining. Speed and efficiency are factors that are considered in evaluating the usability of a system supporting e-business. Payment methods include credit cards, electronic checking and digital cash. The e-business system has to verity the credit and approve through a credit card that verifies the systems. Payment gateways that route payments through existing financial support systems are required to purposely authorize credit cards or make settlements as required. World Wide Web allows the customer to track their shipments to the very specific item. The customer has to sign up an account with these companies and once their shipment is ready, they can conveniently track it. Tracking follows the stage of fulfilling an order as promised to the customer. It is not sensible for a company to offer products to the general public if the lead time for completing an order is longer than what another company offers. In the business world, there existed a distinction between the different fields of production, management, sales and marketing. In this era of technology, all these areas have merged and been given short descriptions and abbreviations like CRM, ERP etc. It all has to do with the availability and integration of information and the road to information is through computer systems. Gathering information and acting on it is primal and it is largely from the available data that custom made solutions are developed. Several advantages exist for using the internet for business activities. Faster communications to vendors and customers can be achieved. Shopping during non-business and business hours is availed to the customers. This provides the ability to reach more customers and expands the client base. Implementing e-business comes with flexibility to the business process. The flexibility is squarely on the customer interaction and a platform to reach them. Using the internet gives the e-business owner a global reach and a global market. Economic benefits of e-business are a key part of the success and why many companies run towards that direction. First, transmitting information is done fast and quickly. This has the capability of reaching, more quickly and completely, a broader group of buyers and sellers. Additionally it broadens the scope of particular markets or the exchange of services and goods. The changes, aforementioned, in which the companies compete, bring about the efficiencies of reduced costs and supply and demand consolidation (Rhee and Sprague 2004). Buyers are able to get better information about quality, price and terms of trade. On the suppliers end, they have better information about the lower costs and their buyers, from automating transactions. Operational efficiency: Improving the efficiency of service delivery and business operation. In e-business operation, the company is able to move resources towards a more efficient and productive direction. This could be inventing new products and bringing them online to the customers or improving an existing part of the business and ensuring, for example, the product production is timely and of quality. In implementing an e-business sales people no longer need to hand deliver confidential product information, since the company legal and human resource department is in direct control of the small numbers of staff. Potential sales are enormous, because of the increasing client base and this puts the company at an advantageous position. E-businesses have pricing strategies, they have adopted several types of pricing strategies in order to generate revenue competitively and satisfy customers in the long run. Predominantly they follow; dynamic pricing, static pricing and reverse pricing. In dynamic pricing, products prices are updated in real time according to various customers and various markets that the e-business reaches. The business may adjust prices depending upon the customers, where they shift their prices according to business customers and individual customers based on purchasing history. Dynamic price shifts may also depend on various situations and conditions on the pricing a particular product. Lastly the competitors pricing tends to influence the dynamic price change as a company is trying to keep abreast and in range of the reasonable price to make sales. Market segmentation exists due to the similar needs of a certain set of consumers for the products they consume. E-business, similar to the traditional business systems, has to take care of the existing market segments, decide the section to target and promote business in that section. With the three tier systems that encompass requests, transaction processing and data mining, e-businesses are able to personalize their service. A particular media article, message etc. could be sent to the set of customers so that they are informed of what is happening around their local area or around the globe. An e-business must aim to reduce the rate of customer defection and this is dependent on technical and quality management team of the independent since when it comes to online business physical presence is not readily available. Carefully managing detailed information about individual customer of a company and all customer contact points can help maximize customer loyalty with the company References Cockrum, J 2011 , Free marketing: 101 low and no-cost ways to grow your business, Wiley, New York. Cone, S 2011 , Steal these ideas!: Marketing secrets that will make you a star, Bloomberg Press, New York. Govindarajan, V & Trimble, C 2005,Building breakthrough businesses within established organizations., John Wiley & Sons, New York. Jianfeng Wang, “A study of the Impact of Individual Differences on Online Shopping,” International Journal of E-Business Research, 6, no. 4 (2010): 52-67. Michaels, N & Karpowicz, D 1999 , Off-The-Wall marketing ideas: Jump- Start your sales without busting your budget, Adams Media,Cincinnati. Rhee Hyuk Jay and David Sprague, “Information Technology and E-commerce Strategy of Entrepreneurial Ventures: A contingency approach based on information –processing theory,” Journal of E-Business, 4, no. 1 (2004): 80. Tames-Locking, R 2011, Local business power system: Small business marketing strategies and ideas to attract local customers, Ambiguity Press,New York. Read More