E-business Components

1. E-business Components Professor Virginia Kleist Spring 2003

2. E-business Components (Source of all slides from textbook by Amor, additional material from Turban, et al, 2002) • CMS • CRM • KMS • Order Fulfillment • Supply Chain Management • Logistics • Electronic Commerce Payments • Interactive Communication Experiences

3. What are “components?” (Turban, et all, 2002) • There is a tremendous variability in EC applications • EC applications change over time • Building complex web applications from components is a viable strategy • One EC solution may have many components from several different vendors • EC applications may involve several business partners • The web sites and applications can be developed in house, outsourced, or use a combination of the two • Small storefronts can be written in HTML plus JavaScript and XML • Larger applications require extensive integration with existing information systems such as corporate databases, intranets, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems, and other applications programs

4. Lensdoc. com (from Turban, et al, 2002) • Online supplier of contact lenses, glasses, personal care products • relies on credit cards for sales • has had fraudulent charges from customers in Eastern Europe • also returns on contact lenses • Some say 20 to 40 percent of business online may be fraud attempts • Lensdoc has implemented special handling procedures • manually process credit cards, ask for a fax with cardholders’ address and shipping info • No other system seems suitable to this firm

5. ToysRUs.com (Turban, et al, 2002) • 1999, customers had high dissatisfaction with shipping, customer service, deliveries • etailers did not do fulfillment well • Fall, ‘99, fierce competition in online toy business • ToysRUs.com had 1.75 million unique customers a day • Orders far exceeded projections • In December, 1999, ToysRUs.com notified that only orders made prior to Dec. 14 would be shipped in time for the holidays • At the same time, Amazon had similar problems, had to ship in several batches, thus increasing charges

6. Warner Lambert Integrated Supply Chain (Turban, et al, 2002) • Listerine begins in Australia with eucalyptus trees • shipped to WL in New Jersey • Major problem to determine how much to produce • Listerine purchased by thousands of retail stores, including Wal-Mart • Warner Lambert uses sophisticated demand forcasting, manugistics.com, integrated with manufacturing, distribution, and sales data. • Sales and marketing personnel from WL meet each month with finance, procurement and other departments to schedule the production of Listerine in the amounts needed • Share data with Wal Mart over private networks, increased percent of fully stocked stores, added $ 8 million

7. Akamai (Turban, et al, 2002, pp. 336-337) • Akamai means intelligent, clever and cool • applications in ecommerce use tons of bandwidth • streaming media may reach $12 billion by 2008 • how will networks handle all of this bandwidth chewing material? • Akamai uses complicated mathematical algorithms to speed web pages from the closest Akamai web server to a customer location, distributing and caching content across thousands of servers • Charges big web sites $5500 per month, reduces delivery time for large web sites by 20 to 30 percent • Using FreeFlow technology, users mark web sites to be Akamaized

8. Whirlpool.com (Turban, et al, 2002, p. 521-2) • Leader in world in manufacture and marketing of home appliances • considers its suppliers and distributors and wholesalers to be partners in industry leadership • order processing was inefficient at middle tier trade levels • these are sellers who generate 10 percent of company revenue, but aren’t large enough to have dedicated, system to system connections • Whirlpool made a B2B portal for connectivity to selling partners • needed to integrate this with SAP R/3 inventory system and Tivoli system management tools • Used IBM Websphere Application Server, IBM HTTP server, IBM VisualAge for Java, IBM Commerce Integrator and IBM MQSeries to make a easy web self service ordering system, cut orders to under $5, or savings of 80 percent • Called Whirlpool Web World

9. Content Management Systems • Content substance of ebusiness • Content as sum total of visitor experience • Most people do not understand what content is or where it comes from • Most companies keep price data in pricing system, product data in production system • Large manufacturer may have hundreds of products to keep prices, marketing material, manuats, configurations, etc., all in a form to convert to an Internet ready format • Without CMS, becomes a nightmare

10. What is Content? • Pages • Programming Logic • Transactional Data • Downloads • Support

11. Content Management Options (Turban, et al, 2002, p. 335) • Do it yourself • Let the suppliers do it • Buy the content from an aggregator • Subscribe to a vertical exchange • Outsource to a full service exchange

12. Role of XML in CMS • Content management solutions are turning to XML • also using XSL • With XML content can be given a structure through clearly defined sets of tags • viewing content is handled through XSL • XSL lets you set up your content for different front ends, so you can set up content in templates that are structured • Can create content in XML, and then use the XSL to display the same XML content in a web browser, a cell phone and a television set • Most XML solutions have built in XML support

13. CMS Products • Rhythmyx Content Manager by Percussion Software (supports XML) • Tridion DialogServer (supports XML) • Broadvision (design content structure in XML, and content is stored in XML, while letting you publish in various formats on web page • Dynabase • eGrail • Infopark NPS • Interwoven Teamsite • Ncompass • RedDot • Roxen Platform • SiteStation

14. CRM • Allows the combination of mass consumption with personalized shopping • business strategy that can be tailored to needs of business’ customers, strategy of trying to build loyal customers • These systems are expensive • CRM objectives are to maximize the effectiveness and productivity of channels, deliver stellar service, increase selling time with each customer, enable better sharing between sales, service and marketing, decrease time in sales cycle, and achieve higher call to sales ratios

15. CRM Products • ACT! • Applix • Clarify • Epicor • GoldMine • Onyx • Avaya • Remedy • Sales Logix • Siebel • Vantive

16. KMS • KMS is area that we have not done well • Knowledge is information in a context • KMS allows users to control relatonships and the structure of information within the system. KMS need to be closer to the user’s thought processes than typical business aps • roots in AI and expert systems • advanced technology that separates valuable information from that which is not valuable • Tacit knowledge vs. explicit • Some KMS allow for the dissemination of tacit knowledge

17. Features of KMS • Info management. Finding, mapping, gathering and filtering info • Knowledge creation. Developing new knowledge • Sharing Knowledge. converting personal knowledge into shared knowledge resources • Learning. Understanding and learning by acquiring or extracting knowledge value • Adding value. Adding value to information to create knowledge • Action. Enabling action through knowledge, such as performance and managment • Processing. Information processing of shared knowledge resources • Delivery. Transferring explicity knowledge to coworkers • Creation. Building a technical infrastructure

18. Difficulties with KMS • creating one is difficult • challenges that IT rarely has power in organization to overcome • missing loyalty of knowledge workers • people do not share knowledge voluntarily, knowledge means power, giving up knowledge means giving up power • people who share info can be laid off more easily • people are compensated based on production, so why give up info that contributes to compensation edge • no obvious rewards

19. Overcoming Issues with KMS • Change reward structure for those who contribute • no KMS that can be bought completely as a product • Too complex, not a technology based issue • cannot centralize knowledge • who, what, why should be answered before how- techno may not solve this for you

20. Selecting a KMS • define corporate goals first • understand processes behind the technology • internet is not the first KM product • KM is not about technology first • technology does have some answers here, however • have a strategy and vision

21. Vendors of KM Products • Broadvision • Cogito • grapeVine • Hummingbird Fulcrum KnowledgeServer • Intraspective • KnowledgeX • Sovereign Hill • Wincite

22. KM vs. the Learning Organization • KM is an attempt to retain tacit knowledge within a firm using technology as an assist to protect corporate intellectual assets • the Learning Organization concept refers to the firm as an organic, functioning live organism that can acquire new knowledge, absorb it, act on it and make changes as a result of it, not at the human level, but as a firm • the firm as more than the people in it

23. Order Fulfillment • Order fulfillment has been tough in ec since beginning • EC is based on pull, in that it begins with an order, frequently a customized one, that has to be pulled through a system • Steps involve: 1. make sure customer will pay, 2. Checking for availability, 3. arranging shipments, 4. Insurance, 5. Production, 6. plant services scheduling, 7. purchasing and warehousing, 8, contacts with customers, 8. returns. • Also related to order fulfillment are issues like demand forecasting, accounting, reverse logistics • ex. Pets.com online logistics had fish shipping down to five days from a pet store delay of 15 days and much more expense

24. SCM (Turban, et al., 2003 • Supply chain is “integration of business processes from the end user through the original suppliers, that provides products, services, and information that adds value for customers • Includes purchasing, materials handling, production planning and control, logistics and warehousing, inventory control and distribution

25. SCM Benefits • holistic approach to entire supply chain • improves efficiency of production • reduce uncertainty and risks in supply chain • global supply chains • problems arise from uncertainty in chain • electronic payment can speed up delivery of product • can get very short order fulfillments these days

26. SCM Technology • automated warehouses • integration across “chimneys” of order taking and product inventory, of pricing with low inventory levels, with tracking systems • MRP is a subset of SCM • upstream, internal, and downstream activities

27. Logistics • Logistics refers to all activities involved in the management of product movement, delivering the right product at the right place at the right time

28. Interactive Communications Technologies • Talk to your customers, mail, email, phone, as well as partners • moderate online meetings • internet telephony (uses Resource Reservation Protocol, RSVP) • Internet gateways: telephony, fax • videoteleconferencing • Internet chat: relay, IRC, Java Chat • Virtual worlds • Internet newsgroups • digital communities • peer to peer technologies • specialized training courses