eBusiness and eCommerce

Question 1

eBusiness and eCommerce

Answer 1

Comprehensive communications facilities have provided new opportunities for conducting business.
In this lecture we examine the worlds of eBusiness and eCommerce as examples of the emergence of a suite of business solutions that have been enabled by advances in the available technologies.

Question 2

eBusiness

Answer 2

eBusiness, or electronic business, is the term used to describe any business transaction or activity that uses networks, including the Internet

Question 3

eCommerce

Answer 3

eCommerce, or electronic commerce, is defined as a subset of eBusiness. Specifically, eCommerce includes all electronically mediated information exchanges between an organisation and its external stakeholders.
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Question 4

eCommerce examples include a business using information technology to:

Answer 4

buy materials from their suppliers
market to their customers
sell products and services to their customers.

Question 5

Diagram eBusiness

Answer 5

Slide 6

Question 6

Networks

Answer 6

A network can be viewed as a series of points or nodes connected by communication lines.
The nodes may be function devices (e.g. computers) or routers used for connecting networks.
The purpose of the network is to enable two endpoints, networks, servers, routers etc. to communicate in order to transfer data.

Question 7

Network types

Answer 7

Intranets
Extranets
Internet

Question 8

Intranet

Answer 8

Intranets facilitate communication within organisations. The networks can support inventory control, finance, and general best-practice business processes that will improve the enterprise’s performance

Question 9

Extranet

Answer 9

Extranets enable business-to-business transaction processing between suppliers, distributors, resellers, contractors and consultants

Question 10

Internet

Answer 10

The internet which can support both the business-to-consumer and business-to-business relationships that exist for the marketing and sale of products, information or services

Question 11

Diagram Network types

Answer 11

slide 9

Question 12

Bitcoin examople

Answer 12

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system.
The bitcoin system is not controlled by a single entity, as it is a decentralized currency
Bitcoins can be transferred directly from one person to another. Bitcoins are created as a reward for payment processing work in which users offer their computing power to verify and record payments into a public ledger.

Question 13

Blockchain example Slide 11

Answer 13

A Blockchain is a continuously growing list of records which are linked and secured. By design a block chain is secure as once recorded a block cannot be altered without alteration of all subsequent blocks., which requires collusion.information

Question 14

Business process Slide 12

Answer 14

A network of activities, resources, facilities, and information that interact to achieve some business function: sometimes called a “business system”

Question 15

Business process modelling

Answer 15

To facilitate designing new business processes, various notations have been created to record a business process design (see later slides for an example)

Question 16

Example 1 business process modelling

Answer 16

Slides 16-18

Question 17

Types of ecommerce

Answer 17

Business-to-consumer (B2C) eCommerce, where consumers deal directly with an organisation, without the involvement of any intermediaries.

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) eCommerce, which involves consumers selling directly to each other.

Business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce, where the participants in the sales transactions are both businesses.

Question 18

Examples of B2C

Answer 18

• eTailers/Storefronts – Online version of a 24/7 retail store (e.g. amazon.com).
Portals – Gateways to the Internet offering searching tools for products/services (e.g. MSN.com).
• Content Providers – Information and entertainment providers like newspapers (e.g. CNN.com).
• Transaction Brokers – Process online sales transactions (e.g. travel agents, stock brokers).
Service Providers – Companies that sell users a service online rather than a product (e.g. consultancy, expertise).

Question 19

C2C Examples

Answer 19

• Market Creators – Web-based businesses that use the Internet to create markets that bring buyers and sellers together (e.g. eBay.com).
• Community Providers - Sites where individuals with common experience can meet and compare (e.g. About.com).

Question 20

B2B Examples

Answer 20

• Supply Chain Management – Management of the movement and storage of raw materials, of work-in-process inventory, and of finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption.
• Just-In-Time (JIT) Managemnent – A strategy companies employ to increase efficiency and decrease waste by receiving goods only as they are needed in the production process, thereby reducing inventory costs.
• eSourcing - The process of obtaining bids from different suppliers via a single online portal.
• eProcurement – The counterpart to eSourcing in that it performs the requisition, authorising, ordering, receipt, and payment for supplies electronically.

Question 21

Supply chain management

Answer 21

Slide 26

Effective supply chains have been underpinned by the growth of interorganisational information systems (IOS) - Systems based on technologies that cross organisational boundaries, supported by ever more powerful information technologies (see next slide)

Question 22

JUST IN TIME

Answer 22

Effective Just-in-Time Inventory and Production Management relies upon efficient electronic communication between trusted supply chain partners and accurate demand forecasting, using interorganisational information systems (IOS)

A failure to accurately forecast demand can lead to increasing swings in inventory as one moves further up the supply chain – the “Bullwhip Effect”

Slide 28

Question 23

Bullwhip effect

Answer 23

refers to a trend of larger and larger swings in inventory in response to changes in demand, as one looks at firms further back in the supply chain for a product

Explanation:
Because customer demand is rarely perfectly stable, businesses must forecast demand to properly position inventory and other resources. Forecasts are based on statistics, and they are rarely perfectly accurate.
Because forecast errors are a given, companies often carry an inventory buffer called “safety stock”.
Moving up the supply chain from end-consumer to raw materials supplier, each supply chain participant has greater observed variation in demand and thus greater need for safety stock.
The effect is that variations are amplified as one moves upstream in the supply chain (further from the customer).

Question 24

esourcing and eprocuring

Answer 24

Two of the most widely adopted uses of B2B eCommerce in industry today are for organisations to:

Find suppliers of resources they need using the internet (eSourcing), and

Use the internet to facilitate the purchasing of those goods (eProcuring)

slide 31

Question 25

ADC

Answer 25

automatic data capture (ADC) technologies remove the need for data to be repeatedly entered manually. These automate the handling (such as tracking) of items, boxes, pallets and so on. This can be achieved using bar codes and bar code numbers. More recently Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been introduced

Question 26

RFID

Answer 26

The two major advantages of Radio Frequency ID (RFID) systems over Barcodes are:

Tags can be read through a variety of substances and environmentally challenging conditions

The remarkable speed of read capability.