E-commerce can Reduce Cycle Time, Improve Employees’ Empowerment and Facilitate Customer Support

*Reduce Cycle time*
Cycle Time is the amount of time between a customer placing and order and receiving the goods. With e-commerce, substantial of the process can be eliminated. For instance, a customer does not need to queue to make order. Thus improve customer service and also reduce cycle time. Besides that, ecommerce can reduce cycle time by eliminating intermediaries between sellers and buyers which is also known as disintermediation. This is not only reducing cost but it also reduce the time where the customer have to go through intermediate person in order to enjoy the goods and services of the company. In addition, disintermediation leads to faster provision of products and services to the marketplace through streamlined and thus cheaper production. In addition, with the advances of technology nowadays, the speed of producing transaction online keep on increasing thus further reduce the cycle time.

A very successful company that uses e-commerce to reduce substantial cycle time is Dell Company. Dell revenue primarily gains from selling its products online. The whole buying process can be done online therefore customer no longer required to enter duplicate information in order to purchase. The electronic requisition can approved electronically and automatically become an electronic purchase order. This order will flows directly into Dell’s manufacturing system where the order are processed immediately. Thus, helping the customer to save time and also increase the company efficiency.

Dell Online Purchase Order

*Improve Employees' Empowerment*
Besides that, e-commerce can also lead to employee empowerment. By using e-commerce, employee training can be conducted online. The manager can provide CD-ROM to their employee and ask them to learn the necessary skills online. To further increase the efficiency of using this method to train the employees, the manager can even conduct a test to access their employees. Furthermore, many companies have developed its own company intranet where manager can easily communicate with their employees and vice versa. This is very hard in the conventional way of communication where every time the subordinate wants to communicate with their superior, they need to make formal appointment and that process takes time. With company intranet, the employees can get the most updated company announcement and manager’s instructions. They can even present their results to the manager online.

Coastal's Clarity CD-Rom training

*Facilitate Customer Support*
Moreover, good customer support plays an essential role in every business. Business studies have shown that happy customers will lure 4 other people to the business. On the other hand, unhappy customer will tell 10 people how unsatisfied they are with the company. Human behaviors are very hard to change, therefore, in order to attract more customers and retain current customers; a company must provide excellent customer support system. E-commerce certainly can facilitate customer support better than the traditional business trading. The common tool in a company website is FAQ. With this, the customers do not even have to ask a question but they can get the answer from FAQ. If it happens that the question in which the customer want to ask and it is not available in the FAQ, the question will directed to auto responders. Auto responders can perform 24hours per day without having to take a rest. Therefore, it can response to customer query and complaints anytime. For example, when a customer post a question to the auto responder, the auto responder can automatically send the customer the appropriate information in response to the standard question. If a customer replies to an auto responder they can receive an automated email with a link to the FAQ section to read those problem usually encounter by others.

For full picture please visit http://www.pizzahut.com/FAQ.aspx

Besides that, some company such as Nike and Jaguar provide a special function for their customer to design their own shoe and cars to increase their customer satisfaction. By allowing customers to track delivery of parcels in real time, the Federal Express website keeps customers in touch with the location of their goods and when they will arrive. In addition, a company website also provide shopping cart where it allows customers to track back the products that they selected and produce the order once. All these function has considerably increased customer satisfaction.

Please click the link below and have a look at this demo:

Fedex Insight Demo

Wanna experience customizing your own shoe or car?

Please click on the link below:

Nike

Jaguar

As such, more and more companies are engaging their business through e-commerce where it can greatly reduce the cycle time, improve employees’ empowerment and facilitates customer support.

An example of an E-Commerce failure and its Causes

The Internet and the growth of e-commerce have had a revolutionary effect upon business whether it is dealing with other business or whether it is business selling to consumers. Business man have view that the Internet as the perfect medium for start-up venture’s investment to make a quick capital gain. There are many successful examples in E-commerce such as Amazon.com, Google.com, E-bay.com and etc. However, they are no guarantee that all companies will success in e-commerce, it may because of they are not able to face the challenges in market by the use of Internet.

EToys.com is one of the top 10 dot-com flops. EToys.com was launched in 1997, it was founded by the CEO, who name Toby Lenk, COO Frank Han and Idealab Founder Bill Gross. EToys seem like the best idea for those busy parents; it offered them a chance to order thousands of toys in every catergory from the comfort of their homes. Beside that the site also had fun features, the features including gift recommendations by age and and information about popular characters, from Madeline to Barney. Etoys also has won a praise for its site design and had technically sophisicated warehouses and fulfillment operation. In 1999 during the Christmas, EToys was suffered a black eye because it failed to deliver some order in time. The first impression for new customers was ruin because of this, and people were worry of using the site again. In August 2000, the Toys"R"Us and Amazon.com has formed a partnership, it put Etoys into risk. EToys went into liquidation in March 2001, Because run out of money and other funding options exhausted.

One of the causes of the EToys.com failure in e-commerce is because of ineffective customer service or misinformation about products and services, example like the failed to deliver the order on time would destroy the image of the company, and the first impression of new customers. Customer will not feel confidence and afraid to use the site again. However, the negative response from customers is also another cause which will lead the dot-com filed into bankruptcy in E-business. This is why the reputation of a company is very important, once it is ruined; peoples will loose the confidence in such company again. For example, if the E-business fails to deliver on time, the customer will not return and they will share with their friends about their bad experience. Third, maybe effect of the errors in the company's Web site. Sometimes hundreds of errors could be found in one Web page, this is due to peoples will be frustrated to visit or log in to the company’s Web site. Beside that, inability to define clearly and to understand the market demand, the needs of the customer, or their buying habits of the marketing strategy, if it is not immensely enough or is ineffective, is another reason for failure.

Because of the causes stated above, many dot-coms have fall into liquidation. Therefore, in order to avoid the failure of an e-commerce company, useful of business strategies, and effective, strong organisational, and customer relation policies to meet the demands of its valuable customers are the key elements of the successfulness in e-commerce.

Review: Johncow.com was hacked and unhacked!

Mr. Hen's post on Johncow.com was hacked and unhacked just made me realized that people do go all the way out to get their message across! Imagine hacking your own blog! I agree with what Mr. Hen has said that this has gone a little too far as it might have upset their readers. However, based on the comments given to Johncow.com, some seem to think that it was funny as well and some were even willing to donate $100 to get Johncow back.

The post also consists of details of how to prevent our blogs from being hacked which would prove quite useful especially to amateurs. However, if it was a professional hacker, I don't think doing all that can prevent them from actually hacking our blogs but it will make life a little difficult for them though. Thus, it is still advisable to follow those tips. Here is a little video on the tips on how to prevent your blogger blog from being hacked. The linked of this website is provided in the post as well.

Watch Out! How HACKERS Steal Your Passwords! Protect Yourself Fo - video powered by Metacafe

Besides that, this post also provides links that gives tips on what you should do before your website gets hack, so that it doesn't gets hack and also a step-by-step repair if your website gets hacked. The same link also teaches you on how to know if you have been hacked. This would be useful to save all the effort which has been dedicated to the blog.

Overall, I would give a rating of 8/10 for this post as it provides useful links to learn more about protecting and saving your blog which would be useful to all bloggers. So, do go to : http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/Internet%20Security and have a look at it!

The History and Evolution of E-Commerce

E-Commerce is defined as the buying and selling of goods over the internet particularly the World Wide Web. So how actually did e-commerce come about?

It all started in the late 1970s, when technologies such as the Electronic Data Interchange and Electronic Funds Transfer allowed users to exchange business information and make electronic transactions. This allowed organizations to send commercial documentation electronically.

In 1991 when the internet was opened for commercial use, many companies started their own company websites where they started selling over the internet.

Internet popularity increased among the public in 1994. However, rapid access and persistent connection only developed after approximately four years through the development of security protocols (HTTP) and DSL. In year 2000, a large number of companies started providing services through the World Wide Web. Although the dot-com collapse in 2000 led to the disappearance of many e-commerce companies, people and organizations started to recognize the many advantages of e-commerce. By the end of 2001, the B2B model has became the largest form of e-commerce.

E-Commerce then continued growing and by year 2007, it has accounted for 3.4 percent of total sales. At present,there are 5 leading and most well-known world wide internet retailers: Amazon, Dell, Staples, Office Depot and Hewlett Packard.

http://www.amazon.com/

http://www.dell.com.my/

http://www.staples.com/

Now that we know the history of E-Commerce, let us move on and take a glance at the past, present and future of E-Commerce.

In the past..

E-Commerce began as an activity solely for business. With the introduction of the Electronic Data Interchange, companies can now trade without having any face-to-face contact. However, the cost of EDI is high and thus, it fails to support the need of organizations. In 1984 the ASC X12 was adopted where it enables full communication between any EDI supported companies. The introduction of the internet to mass markets marks the beginning of e-commerce in mass markets. This changed the role of e-commerce from wholesales to retail. With the growing popularity of the internet, business have to admit the importance of online shopping. From a humble start, e-commerce has revolutionized the world of wholesale and retail and is continuing to develop with businesses ever searching for new ways to meet the needs of the online market.

Now..

The number of internet users are ever increasing. Technology plays an important role in how people shop online. The introduction of Netscape in 1994 and Internet Explorer has revolutionized e-commerce. With more and more browsers having systems that show videos, graphics and audio, internet shopping is now much more convenient.

In the future..

There would be no long lines at the cashier, invisible shopping carts and less traveling to malls. All thanks to the evolution of e-commerce. Shoppers would be able to find their desired items through a new advertising technology called narrowcasting. Narrowcasting allows the user to enter their desired items with additional information and then produces a list of results found based on the inputs. Other improvements such as quantum processors which enables the computer to move twice as fast and the HDTV which enables users to purchase their TV sets online also shapes e-Commerce.

Thus, e-commerce will continue to develop from time to time with the advancement in technology and the increase in the number of internet users. Who knows maybe one day all transactions would be made online and there would not be anymore shops and malls? Everything is possible!

Ecommerce success

~E-commerce success and its causes ~

EBay dot.com, “The World’s Online Marketplace”, a website where anyone can be a seller or a buyer with just a few clicks away. It is founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar, a French Iranian living in the United States who wrote its basic software in a weekend. It started as a hobby and at first, and only seem appealing to a few computer geeks, but soon the site attracted collector of antiques and memorabilia. In no time, Ebay has then become one of the most popular and most profitable website in the world. Let’s explore their moments of Glory and secret behind this website’s success.

Reported in the CBS news by Correspondent Charlie Rose, eBay seems to have tapped in something uniquely American and entrepreneurial. However, that does not seem to be the case when 50millon people world wide is using the Web site to trade things, making it an auction house that never sleeps. The numbers of users of eBay continue to swell until it is reported today; number of eBay users has grown more than double to 125million worldwide today. In addition, those people are selling and buying goods that worth more than $1000 goods every second.

The founder Omidyar collected small revenue initially from successful sales and used the money to expand the enterprising site. As the number of users grew, at the end of year 1998, Omidyar already earned $3million worth of personal stake in the company. Till today, eBay maintains its low overhead costs by just being managed by Omidyar and his team.

Dated back to June 11 2003 Broadcast by CBS news, the company sells a motorcycle every 18 minutes and a car every 30 minutes. The creation and success of this website even impacted countless people, who then given up their jobs to create their own businesses selling on eBay. One testimony is proven by Laurie Liss and her mother, Darlene who stated that they started off by just using a computer, a camera and something to sell. However, they then keep expanding their business and currently selling $30000 to $40000 in goods a month. She describes eBay as the world’s largest garage sale, where used items are sold, but they are selling new products.

As for the latest update on the profitability of eBay, revenue of $2.19billion was reported at April 17th 2008, representing 24% growth compared to previous year. The earnings per share growth also recorded a 26 %, what an incredible quarter for eBay.

There are several commentators who express their views on eBay's success in over 27 countries.The link below is a video about eBay's presence.

http://edcorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=320&author=42

~What lead to eBay’s Success~


eBay has its humble beginning. What is the secret behind that makes them top in e-Commerce world?

The first reason being cost control factor. EBay’s founder, Pierre Omidyar and his team were shrewd operators. They manage the enterprise with their own skills in order to keep their overheads low. Meanwhile, profits are generated from commission on sales.
The second factor that contributes to its success is eBay’s goal of building trust among and between users from all over the world. Not just getting people to sell or buy products and services, the company’s core interest is to nurture a community of users with a vast range of backgrounds. Feedbacks obtained proved that products on sales are of good quality and in very reasonable price. One customer, in the name of Reverend Steve Hance claimed “ I got an album for a lot less than I would have paid for it in a second-hand shop in London,”.

Besides trusts that exist in the users of the website, eBay is also a success because it can reach globally to hundred thousand of people enabling them to make a business of their own. EBay who gains access to a global market place can reach to more potential buyers then locally and with profits keep pouring in, eBay’s continuous success will definitely not cease yet.

EBay has also a new feature for its users to list their products more systematically. The eBay stores offer its users the opportunity to increase their sales with only fees as low as $15.95 per month. Four easy steps are involved to customize an e-Bay Store. This webpage has basic to advanced layouts available to users that makes their store more user-friendly and attractive to maximize their success. Also, simultaneously listing and advertising their products in eBay’s auction, the users can also list all their products on a single website. Furthermore, with eBay Store’s promotional tools, traffic can be diverted to one’s website via eBay. Complimented with 10000 professional newsletter sent via email each month to customers, it can maximize the reach to as many customers as possible.

Other small factor is the fees systems practiced by eBay that makes all sellers and buyers love this website. The listing fees charged is to keep the items in eBay fresh. It also enables sellers to sell their items, similar to an auction. Starting from the lowest price to let each bidder offer higher price, this will prevent sellers from pricing items too high or too low. While the auction fees charged are charged by eBay only at each successful sales and charged slightly higher then the item’s minimum charge.

In conclusion, eBay is still a continuous, all thanks to the loyalty and enthusiasm of devoted users all over the world, making it into a powerhouse it is today.
For eBay's latest articles to futher enhance your understanding of eBay,the link below may shade light on this:
http://seekingalpha.com/author/onlyebay?source=more_author_name

About Myself

HELLO EVERYONE,

I'm Mah Huixin, I come from PJ(sort of neighbour with Betty and Veron). I think university life is no fun at all.. Besides attending lectures and tutorials, my life now is totally devoted to assignments and thesis. However, life is not that bad when I have three more good buddies (Veron,Mei Fung and Betty- the green apple) sharing all the burden with me ;) … My hobbies- Play portable play station, watch animation..etc. Also, during free time, especially I have extra budgets, I would very much like to go cinema. My favorite food- Popcorn!!

Five most frequent websites that I visit are:

www.googles.com

Normally, I use this search engine to search for information for all the assignments.

www.animekick.com

This website offers users to watch Japanese online free of charge. Hence, during free time, I will visit this website. Some of the animation that I like most is “One piece”.
The episodes uploaded frequently are up to date.

www.isohunt.com

I use this website to download movie for free. I can also read information about certain movies.

www.utar.edu.my
Find this website most useful of all. Cause I can, through the library OPAC, enter databases subscribed by UTAR to search and obtained journal articles for research purpose.

I normally use internet to:

>Search for information for assignment purposes.

>Secondly, I use it to watch animation.

>Thirdly, I and my family will register to Skype, to chat with my sister who is working in Singapore.

>Fourthly, to play games.

>Lastly, to check mails.

* ǍbǒǕŦ MË* ~ BËŧŧÿ~

Hey Hey Hey!!!

First of all, thanks for viewing our blog ya =) Ooops ya.. I should introduce myself =p my name is Betty. I personally think that my name is very common and very easy to remember. Thanks to “Ugly Betty” that make my name better known. hahaha.. Well, I come from PJ, an area surrounded by a lot of big shopping centre. Ahha.. That’s why one of my hobbies is to go shopping=). Besides that, I have a same hobby with Mei Fung. Both of us are addicted to Hong Kong dramas series.=) Sadly to say that during my uni life is always packed with assignment, mid term and final examination so I hardly have time to watch those dramas for very long hour.

Apart from that, during my leisure time, I will chat with my friends on msn, surf the net, hang out with friends and sleep. I had joined a few societies in my university. Though, I’m only active in one society which is Yoga Society. I’m also the treasurer in Yoga society. The reason being I’ve chosen this post as I think it is more suitable for what I’m studying now- Bachelor of Accounting. It’s almost a year I’ve hold this post and I do learnt a lot, such as become more responsible as I’ve to take care of the funds in the society and make budgets.

The following are the top 5 websites that I visited the most:

• http://www.hotmail.com/ ->> to check my mail and to send email to keep in touch with my secondary schoolmates.
• www.friendster.com ->> to view how my friends currently doing by viewing their current photos, add more new friends into my network and sometimes I will use this site to send birthdays wishes to my friends as we are able to send those animated wishes which are more interesting than just sending a full text wishes by sms.
• www.google.com ->> this is the search engine which I preferred the most to find information for my assignment. I found this search engine is more user friendly compare to others and I usually can find the information that I need easily.
• http://www.youtube.com/ ->> to watch short and funny video clips that can make my daily life more interesting.
• http://www.wble.utar.edu.my/ ->> to check the latest file uploads by lecturers.

My favorite internet activities are:

- chatting with friends

- watching video clips

- searching information for assignment

- listening to music

- forward those email which I feel is funny or useful to my friends.