PART II

3- Applications in Business and Management

Electronic Commerce Systems

E-Commerce encompasses the entire ONLINE

process of developing, marketing, selling,
delivering, servicing, and paying for products and
services transacted on internetworked, global
marketplaces of customers, with the support of a
worldwide network of business partners.

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1- The Scope of e-commerce:

Companies involved in e-commerce as either buyers or sellers

rely on internet-based technologies and on e-commerce
applications and services to accomplish marketing, discovery,
transaction processing, and product and customer-service
processes.

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Three basic categories of electronic commerce applications:

Business-to-customer (B2C) –
Develop attractive electronic marketplaces to entire potential customers and sell
products and services to them. Ex: virtual storefronts, multimedia catalogues,
interactive order processing, secure electronic payment systems, and online customer
support.

Business-to-business (B2B) –
Involves both electronic business marketplaces and direct market links between
businesses. Ex: Secure internet and extranet e-commerce catalogue web sites, auction
and exchange marketplaces for businesses, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) of e-
commerce documents.

Customer-to-customer e-commerce (C2C) –

The huge success of online auctions such as eBay, where customers (as well as
business) can buy and sell with each other in an auction process at an auction web
site, makes this e-commerce model an important e-commerce business strategy.
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Electronic Commerce Technologies: What technologies are
necessary for electronic commerce?
- The internet, intranets, and extranets are the network infrastructure or
foundation of electronic commerce.

- Customers must be provided with a range of secure information, marketing,

transaction processing, and payment services.

- Trading and business partners rely on the internet and extranets to exchange
information and accomplish secure transactions, including electronic data
interchange (EDI) and other supply chain and financial systems and databases.

- Company employees depend on a variety on internet and intranet resources to

communicate and collaborate in support of their e-commerce work activities.

- IS professionals and end-users can use a variety of software tools to develop

and manage the content and operations of the web sites and other e-commerce
resources of a company.
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2- Essential e-commerce processes:
Requirements for the successful operation and management of e-commerce
activities are illustrated in the next figure.

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Access Control and security:
Trust and secure access between the parties by authenticating users, authorizing
access, and enforcing security features.

Profiling and personalizing:

Once you have gained access to an e-commerce site, profiling processes are then
used to recognize you as an individual user and provide you with personalized
web advertising as part of a one-to-one market strategy.

Search management:
Efficient and effective search processes provide a top e-commerce web site
capability that helps customers find the specific product or service they want to
evaluate or buy.

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Content and catalog management:
Content management software helps e-commerce companies develop,
generate, deliver, update, and archive text data and multimedia
information at e-commerce websites.

Workflow management:
Workflow systems ensure that the proper transactions, decisions, and
work activities are performed, and the correct data and documents are
routed to the right employees, customers, suppliers, and other business
stakeholders.

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Event notification:
Most e-commerce application are event-driven systems that respond to a
multitude of events – from a new customer’s first web site access, to payment
and delivery processes, and to innumerable customer-relationship and supply
chain management.
Ex: When you purchase a product at a retail e-commerce web site like
amazon.com, you automatically receive an e-mail record of your order. Then
you may receive e-mail notifications of any change in product availability or
shipment status, and finally, an e-mail message notifying you that your order
is completed and has been shipped.

Collaboration and trading:

This major category of e-commerce processes compromises those that support
the vital collaboration arrangements and trading services needed by customers,
suppliers, and other stakeholders to accomplish e-commerce transactions

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Electronic Payment Processes:

Payment processes are not simple, because of the near-anonymous electronic

nature of transactions taking place between the networked computer systems of
buyers and sellers, the many security issues involved, and the wide variety of
debit and credit alternatives and financial institutions and intermediaries that may
be part of the process.

Ex: Shopping cart, electronic funds transfer (EFT), ATM machines, PayPal and
PayTrust for automatic bill payment, credit cards and debit cards…

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An example of a
secure electronic
payment system
with many
payment
alternatives

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3- E-Commerce success factors:

Selection and value:

Business must offer web shoppers a good selection of attractive

products and services at competitive prices.

Performance and service:

web shopping and customer service must be friendly and helpful, as well
as quick and easy.

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Look and Feel:
B2C sites can offer customers an attractive web storefront, shopping areas,
and multimedia product catalogues.

Advertising and incentives:

Some web stores may advertise in traditional media, but most advertise on the
web with targeted and personalized banner ads and other web page and e-mail
promotions.

Personal attention:
Personalizing your shopping experience encourages you to buy and make
return visits. Thus, e-commerce software can automatically record details of
your visits and build user profiles of you and other web shoppers.

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Community relationships:
Web site relationship and affinity marketing programs build and promote virtual
communities of customers, suppliers, company representatives, and others via a
variety of web-based collaboration tools.

Security and reliability:

As a customer of a successful web store, you must feel confident that your credit
card, personal information, and details of your transactions are secure from
unauthorized use.

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4- Web Store Requirements:

The primary focus of an e- retailer is to Develop, Operate,

and Manage their websites so that they become high-
priority destinations for customers who will repeatedly
choose to go there to buy products and services.

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 Web Hosting Plan

• PRICE
• SPACE
• CONNECTION SPEED
• TRAFFIC ALLOWED
• DOMAIN NAME HOSTING (such as my company.com) that is associated with an IP number
(such as 138.211.67.113).

• E-MAIL ACCOUNTS: Pop Email & web enabled e-mail accounts

• FTP ACCESS
• SECURE SERVER AVAILABILITY
• E-COMMERCE AVAILABILITY
• DATABASES
• STATISTICS
• SCHEDULED BACKUPS
5- Business-to-Business E-Commerce:

B2B electronic commerce is the wholesale and supply side of the

commercial process, where businesses buy, sell, or trade with other
businesses.

B2B applications include electronic catalogue systems, electronic trading

systems such as exchange and auction portals, electronic data interchange,
electronic funds transfers, ….

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E-commerce marketplaces:

Businesses of any size can now buy everything from chemicals to

electronic components, excess electric energy, construction
materials, or paper products at business-to-business e-commerce
marketplaces.

These B2B e-commerce sites make business purchasing decisions

faster, simpler, and more cost-effective, since companies can use
web Systems to research and transact with many vendors and
suppliers.

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