E-Business Lecture 4A Flashcards
What is a network?
A structure of ties among actors
Actors: roles, individuals, organizations, industries etc.
Ties: can be based on anything that generates relationships
What is a Corporate Network?
- A long term arrangement among distinct but related for-profit organizations
- Virtual partnership
- Operate as integral elements of a greater organization
- Retain their own authority in major budgeting and pricing matters
What is a fluid organization?
A networked enterprise that allows reorganization on the fly, depending on the innovation challenge and task at hand
What are the 3 desirable features of inter-company networks?
- Consists of nodes and relations
- Manage interdependence between companies
- Vary with respect to goals, boundaries, structures, processes and other attributes
What are the 6 characteristics of networked organizations?
- The links between network participants are based on various types of exchange
- Networks have a distinct boundary with their environments
- Network participants pursue the same goal
- Business collaboration - outsourcing, insourcing, rightsourcing
- All network participants have nevertheless their own diverse, specific goals
- Networks consist of relations characterized by mutual investments or interdependences
Name the network types between independent companies
Name the network types on the basis of network structure
- Stable networks
- Dynamic networks
- Tightly coupled networks
- Loosely coupled networks
Name the 3 characteristics of stable networks
- Long term, stable relations between limited number of selected suppliers, producers and distributors
- Designed to service mostly predictable markets by linking specialized organizations along given products or service value chains
- Partial outsourcing, strive to introduce flexibility into the overall value chain
Name the 2 characteristics of dynamic networks
- Temporary alliances between organizations in order to respond to actual market focuses
- More than a singe project or customer order. Companies along the value chain of a specific product are coupled contractually
Name the 3 characteristics of Tightly coupled networks
- Relatively stable networks of trading partners with shared planning and control cycles
- This entails organizing business activities along a virtual value chain to attain a shared goal
- They may involve predefined interaction patterns, such as trading protocols requiring detailed agreements on cross-organizational business processes
Name the 2 characteristics of Loosely coupled networks
Independent trading partners who can:
- unilaterally decide to change their internal business processes and information systems
- Without influencing one another to the extent that the collaboration is disabled
Name 12 advantages of Network Organizations
- Reduction of total cost
- Reduction of inventory
- Improved fulfillment cycle time
- Productivity increase
- Improved capacity
- Avoidance of problems of effort duplication & inefficiency
- Increase of intellectual assets
- Delivery improvement
- Diversified business and trading
- Competitive advantage
- Untapped markets
- Enhanced speed an efficiency
What are integrated supply chains?
- Multiple enterprises within a shared market segment
- Collaboratively plan, implement and monitor the flow of goods, services and information
- Aim to increase customer-perceived value and optimize efficiency
What are the features of integrated supply chains?
- Processes transcend the boundaries of single form and are not controlled by a single organization
- Production processes are flexible with different parties involved at different times
- Parties involved in producing a single product are often geographically dispersed
- Coordination is heavily dependent on IT infrastructure & telecommunications networks
What are the 4 benefits of integrated supply chains?
- Reduced inventories
- Cost savings
- Improved goods & services
- Tighter links with business partners
