Electronic Business and Electronic Commerce - Essay Example

A B2C e-business system evolves gradually through various stages. Initially, a company may use the internet for seeking information and communication purposes. At the next stage, the company may ensure its web presence through a corporate website. This web presence is then used to provide details of the company’s products or services. At the next level of B2C e-business implementation, the company may accept online orders and integrate them with its finance department, and later on, customers may be enabled to make online payments. This requires an integration of the website with the company’s financial system. In today’s global markets customer acquisition, retention, and extension are ensured through the use of Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRMs).

A B2B e-commerce system facilitates interoperability between supply chain organizations and other business organizations. It is also integrated with the local information systems of the organization. These systems are supplier-facing and are known to be Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) systems. The performance of these systems is analyzed in terms of the time they take to complete a procurement process. B2B e-commerce systems have significantly squeezed the delays and most of the activities are automated and processed online.

Closely related to e-commerce is the procurement process, this process is usually considered to cover all activities of the supply chain process and it has a separate model for the e-procurement process. Examples of e-business and e-commerce systems http://www.ibm.com/us/en/sandbox/ver2/ http://www.walmart.com/ Chapter 8: Knowledge & Systems for Communicating Online Knowledge is the purified form of information. We come across information in our routine life very frequently and by processing this information we accumulate knowledge that has some value to us.

Using information is an important aspect of our daily life. It is important to know how to deal with information we come across and embed it with our previous knowledge to purify existing knowledge. Imagination is the other source of knowledge and we tend to imagine whatever we need to know. Imagination is a very important tool used for enhancing our knowledge base. Knowledge management is essential for its systematic acquisition and various fields of knowledge are combined to make a new field of knowledge.

Our professional knowledge is a combination of theoretical, empirical, personal, procedural knowledge, and practical wisdom. Practicing several knowledge domains with varying depths formulate professional competence. Sharing, collaboration, participation, and building knowledgebase are common functions to generate, acquire and retain knowledge. ICT technologies have contributed a lot towards building and enhancing all these knowledge functions. Wikipedia, e-mails, blogs, forums are few to mention the contribution of ICT technologies.

Knowledge Management (KM) is an important organizational objective to utilize the scattered knowledge resources like experiences, insights, and various information systems and databases to ensure learning and sharing from existing knowledge. Knowledge Management can be utilized to create a competitive advantage, avoid repetition of mistakes, and achieve sustainable growth and improvement at the organizational level. KM can also give powerful and useful inferences from an organizational CRM to make intelligent and aware business decisions.

Assessing the Use and Impact of Information Systems

            In this age of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) successful Information System (IS) defines the success of an organization. Therefore, assessing the worth of an information system is of core importance for an organization. DeLone and McLean have designed a model to assess the functionality, usability, and utility of the system. This model inspects the functionality of a system by probing into the quality of the system and information. The usability is tested through use and user satisfaction and the impact of the system on individuals, groups, and organization defines the utility of the system.

            The usability design of a successful IS should be based on the ICT infrastructure of the organization. The contents, controls, and format of an interface define its usability. These elements should enhance learning and remembrance abilities, efficiency, reliability, and satisfaction of all stakeholders of the system. Questionnaire for User Interface Satisfaction (QUIS) is used to measure this satisfaction. Moreover, the success of an IS largely depends on its alignment with the activity system without which the IS may suffer a stern resistance from stakeholders.

            The induction of an IS may introduce some individual, group, and organizational impacts. These impacts are related to the efficacy, efficiency, and effectiveness of the system and may cause shifts of power and influence among groups and individuals. The induction of ISs is supposed to boost productivity which is not true in many cases as the evidence has suggested. Technically we define it as a productivity paradox. This paradox can be attributed to a number of factors like half-hearted implementation, IT mismanagement, and development or use failures. System failure causes that are attributed to the system itself are known to be the horizontal dimension of the failure and external causes are the vertical dimension of the failure.

Lyytinen and Hirschheim have classified the system failures into correspondence, process, interaction, and expectation failures which are further linked to various forms of organization. Studies have shown that certain types of organizations are more susceptible to some particular failures. However, Sauer has proposed a model for failures that suggest that everyone IS has flaws, which are not a failure and can be corrected at a cost. These flaws can be traced in many different ways like strategic, formative, summative, and post-mortem evaluation of the system.