The Largest Impediment to B2B Today - Essay Example

The largest impediment to B2B today E-commerce is acquiring tremendous success around the globe. But in contrast to the developing nations e-commerce volumes there will remain negligible as long as the business-to-business (B2B) end of the market does not take off. This warning has been given by the E-commerce and Development Report 2002, released by UNCTAD in November 2002. It says that the route to a successful and sound B2B sector lies in joining regional and global supply chains together. This will also ensure attendant benefits for the economy. The main impediment to the takeoff of B2B in the today's world is inadequate information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, as well as shortcomings in physical infrastructure, logistics and trade facilitation. A rapid growth in both e-commerce and Internet use is expected to continue. This applies especially in context to the developing world with low penetration rates. Internet use recorded a growth of 30% in 2001. It should be noted here that one third of all new users belong to the developing world. E-commerce is increasing in these countries at a very slow rate especially in the case of B2B comprising around 95% of all e-commerce. Source: PRESS RELEASE, 18 November 2002. TAD/INF/PR65. GOOD PROSPECTS FOR IT INDUSTRY IN 2003, PREDICTS UNCTAD; Developing world looks to e-business for growth. Asia Pacific Network Information Centre. Official website. A short review of an article that discusses disintermediation Disintermediation is defined as the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain in terms of economics: "cutting out the middleman". companies may now deal with every customer directly like through the Internet instead of using traditional distribution channels having some type of intermediate like a distributor, wholesaler, broker, or agent. Drop in the cost of servicing customers directly is the most important feature. Disintermediation is the result of high market transparency where the buyers are aware of supply prices direct from the manufacturer. Buyers bypass all the middlemen like the wholesalers and retailers in order to buy directly from the manufacturer and thereby paying less money. Buyers can also select to purchase from wholesalers. A B2C intermediary functions as the bridge between buyer and manufacturer. A typical B2C supply chain is composed of four or five entities (in order): Supplier Manufacturer Wholesaler Retailer Buyer Source: wikipedia. Disintermediation. Review on an article on backend EC integration All enterprises are lining up into virtual alliances in order to remain competitive in the globalizing markets. Virtual enterprises constitute location-independent association of financial institutions, industrialist and many more aimed towards a shared goal. These networked organizations do integrate their value chain to enhance the customer-perceived added-value while sharing their resources in a more efficient way then ever. The paper by Ralf Reussner is entitled as Enhanced Component Interfaces to Support Dynamic Adaption and Extension. A new interface model for software components is presented in this paper that not only specifies static information but also semantic applicability information in order to ensure non-conflicting run-time behavior and to facilitate component adaptation. The paper by Niels Christian Jul compares two E-Commerce servers, IBM's NetCommerce and Microsoft's Site Server Commerce based on a B2B case study. It emphasizes on the integration of the servers with the installed back-end (ERP) servers. The paper of Marinos Themistocleous et al. focuses an empirical survey to identify and analyze problems that companies face to integrate Enterprise Resource Planning packages with other ERP and legacy systems. The paper from Martin Lippert et al. presents a complete analysis of a multi-channel approach for companies to address customers via various channels. The authors introduce domain services to concentrate business logic and encapsulate legacy system software. In their paper, Thomas Puschmann and Rainer Alt describes a sophisticated case study at the Robert Bosch Group to articulate the need for an integrated architecture for Electronic Commerce (EC) systems, ERP, Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).This paper takes a more of technical perspective while concentrating on a solution for the problematic transfer of data among ODMG data stores. The solution proposed by them can be employed to integrated ODMG databases as their framework supporting the exportation of metadata from export schemata to a federated kernel. Source : Willem-Jan Van den Heuvel. Jos Van Hillegersberg. Willi Hasselbring. Kuldeep Kumar. Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences ( HICSS-34)-Volume 9. 2001. ISBN:0-7695-0981-9. An auction mythology different from an English Auction In Dutch auction, the auctioneer starts with a high asking price which is lowered until some participant is willing to accept the price by the auctioneer or a pre-determined reserve price which is the seller's minimum acceptable price is reached. The last announced price is paid by the winning participant. This is very convenient type of auction when it is really important to auction goods quickly, since a sale never requires more than one bid. The bidding strategy and results of this auction are quite similar to Sealed first-price auction. Some experiment indicates that a Dutch auction typically results in lower sale prices. The Dutch auction is named for its best known example, the Dutch tulip auctions. This type of auction is actually known as a "Chinese auction" in Netherlands. Dutch auction is sometimes used to describe online auctions where several identical goods are sold simultaneously to an equal number of high bidders. This auction is also called a multi-unit English ascending auction by Economists. The Dutch auction has few key advantages over book-building. More money goes into the coffers of the issuing company. Its quite fair since small investors are having an equal chance at getting IPO shares. This auction also has some disadvantages. A descending bid auction system includes pre-registered bids from various remote locations. Pre-registered bids submitted prior to an auction cycle are awarded a sale when the pricing device declines to a price that matches that of the preregistered bid. Local bidders who submit a bid are given priority just due to the first-submitted tradition. Thepriority is given to the first bid submitted when more than one remotely submitted pre-registered bid is for the same price. Competitively bidding while an auction cycle is in process is another way of using a remote bidding terminal. Bids submitted during in-process of the auction cycle are submitted when a remote clock operating in advance compared to the auction site clock reaches a desired price. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction EC implementations less disruptive to new or young firms There is clear evidence of great interest in the use and development of computer technology in countries accompanied by the recognition of the need for appropriate education and training. E-commerce not always works. A firm can not remain profitable on a consistent basis. Some Websites would imply that it is very easy to get started, also offering an online E-commerce tutorial. But in reality, certain business models work better than others and banner advertisements by themselves do not work well. As per the sources, the "click-through rate" for banner ads is under 1 %, and advertising expenditures in the U.S. dropped 14.7 % last year. Source: Au, Ka-Neng. Rutgers University Newark, New Jersey, USA. E-Commerce and Website Development:Hype ... and Reality. Review: Article on an unique industry This industry practices the auctioning of an art article of trade that is to settle on the value of a commodity that has an undetermined or capricious price. The observation of auctioning has commenced in England in 17th Century by the pictures of Lord Melford. The majority of men who were creation of huge destiny in an assortment of industries of the midlands and north of England and other interiors, approached into subsistence in the second aspect of the 19th Century. Ensue by collecting traditions and their benefaction was approximately solely comprehensive to the artiste of the day. In seventies this industry had seen a downfall as the demand for pictures by modern artists. A conspicuous paradigm at that time that was presented the premier price was given to the couple of Vandyck depiction of a Genoese senator and his wife. One of the most imperative development in an art collecting is specialism, which has noticeable in the 19th Century. And the collection was presented by the old masters such as Holford,Buccleuch,etc. Today art epitomizes a multi billion-dollar diligence in U.S itself. Art auction proceedings are now conked out to a certain extent frequently. The work of art of Bruce Bernard sold for 7.8 million, creation ever rewarded for an existing European artiste. IN Asia China and Hong Kong have a large industry of the same Nearly all the paintings of Xu Beihong's noteworthy, his Standing Among the Fallen Flowers was finally auctioned at RMB4.51 million Yuan, the Galloping Horses and the Lovely Piggy were auctioned at RMB2.178 million Yuan and 0.99 million Yuan in that order. In current years, the image and photography arts turn out to be flourishing progressively. Source: wikipedia. Art Sale. Pitfalls encountered while creating EC Strategies for new or existing firms and ways to avoid them Electronic commerce strategy is business strategy with the focus on how a business needs to adapt, both directionally and operationally in order to meet the challenges presented by the emergence of the Internet as an effective business tool. Electronic commerce (EC) strategy is the formulation and execution of an idea or a vision how an existing or new company intends to do business in an electronic way. 1. Never treat a novel E-commerce initiative as a simple technology project. Developing an E-commerce system is much more than implementing a software upgrade. It is a complete distribution and customer-service improvement strategy. 2. be careful about the infrastructure. The best E-commerce projects are useful that means heavy demands on them. Consider such extreme demands while initialization instead of getting too late so that the system crashes causing irate users to flood the help desk. 3. Do not fail to create new products and services. The Internet is not just a novel way to run the old business. With the use of a new Web site only as an alternate delivery method for already existing products, one is not just using the Web to its full potential. Creative Executives should always think beyond the box. 4. Do not limit the applications to Web browsers. Web-enabling the business is no doubt a step in the right direction. But one should be prepared for a mobile business world where people can connect through any interactive device like telephone, palm pilots, kiosks and interactive television. 5. Do not try to preserve the old job functions. Online applications always create new job boundaries and the organization should reflect new combinations of responsibilities. Source: CRN Staff. Top Electronic-Commerce Pitfalls For VARs To Avoid. From the May 14, 1999 issue of CRN. Read More