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1-What are the most important contributions of e-business to overall supply chain performance?
The important contributions of e-business to overall supply chain management include, provisioning of information, negotiation of price, contract and delivery, placement and tracking of orders, payments transfer. These contributions have not only reduces the time associated with each of these but also have significantly reduced cost of each. E-business has revolutionized supply chain management and has opened better ways to run it with informed decisions. Most of the supply chain components can be made more efficient and responsive by the implementation of e-business techniques.
How does e-business support an organization's global SCM initiatives?
Global supply chain management initiatives of an organization may include expansion in foreign countries with least cost addition. E-business has made it extremely simple to implement such initiatives through the use of internet. Internet connects various regions of the world in such a way that this world has become a global village. In order to execute SCM initiatives, an organization may easily rely on e-business over the internet due to its availability in most of the countries of the world. Most of the multinational companies heavily rely on their e-business strategies in order to support their global supply chain system. The effectiveness of e-business completely depends on careful analysis of company’s objectives and its core processes .
Do e-business activities increase or decrease the return on investment of an organization?
Initially, an increase in the expenditures of an organization may be experienced due to capital investment required for the IT infrastructure in order to run the business through e-business setup. However the effect of this setup will be on almost every process of supply chain management system in terms of reduction in cost of all of these processes. This reduction in running cost will not only recover the initial investment of the IT infrastructure but increase the overall return of investment of the company.
2-What are the three different types of e-business customers?
The three different types of e-business customers are Window Shopper, Comparer, and Dedicated Shopper. Window shoppers are those customers who usually visit various websites to check the trend, fashion, prices etc. of available items and rarely buy anything online. Comparer are those customers who are more interested in comparing various suppliers of same products by visiting their websites and usually try to evaluate products on the basis of features, price, warranty, and brand name etc. Dedicated shoppers are the real customers who only site online to actually buy something. They are already aware of what they want to buy and where they will find that product. They usually avoid wasting their time on window shopping or comparing products .
How would your e-business strategy change depending on the type of customer you have?
In case of window shopper as customer, the company should always try to focus on the professional portrayal of the website with various recognitions and testimonials. A blog on the company’s website can be established to increase the interest of window shoppers in the company’s products. Similar is the case for the comparer type of customers except for a little change that is through offering various type of memberships and online programs to keep them well informed on the company’s products. For dedicated shoppers it is always better to provide excellent level of after sales service and customer support. These customers will never come back to buy anything from the company’s website if they are not satisfied with previous purchase.
How might dealing with different types of e-business customers at the same time affect the e-business strategy of an organization?
It will be very difficult for a conventional type of business to deal with these three types of customers simultaneously but in case of implementation of e-business this task becomes very simple. For most of the products all the key features can be embedded in one single website to cater for all of the three types of customers. By inclusion of all of such features the company’s website, the dedicated shoppers will continue to buy products from it and comparer as well as window shoppers will be attracted to the products offered in professional way.
References
Beyer, S. (2010). Supply Chain Performance Measurement & E-Business Supply Chain Management: Including a Practical Excursus on the Intel Case: Operations Strategy – Supply Chain Management. California (CA): GRIN Verlag.
Zhang, Q. (2007). E-Supply Chain Technologies and Management. Pennsylvania (PA): Idea Group Inc (IGI).
