Business Skills for E-Commerce
Lecture #7
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BTEC HND COMPUTING & SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT
Course Objectives
Organisations of all sizes, structures and aims can benefit from the opportunities made available by the
intelligent application of communication based technologies and there will always be a need for
practitioners who have a good understanding of those technologies.
• E-Commerce has become a vital part of an organisation‘s ability to reach out to the marketplace and position
itself to maximize commercial returns on investment.
• Poor choices of technology and processes will result in poorly managed opportunities which could lose business,
market position and profitability.
• Learners will investigate the values of business skills by exploring current, topical examples of e-Commerce
practices.
• Learners will consider how to design an e-Commerce solution to the best advantage of the organisation and its
stakeholders (for example employees, suppliers and customers).
• Learners will explore current legislation concerning e-Commerce based trading, organisational responsibilities and
finance/payment systems.
The first part of the unit considers the structure and aims of organisations to better understand how they could
benefit from an e-Commerce structure.
• Then follows an opportunity to investigate and evaluate the impact of e-Commerce systems on organisations and
their stakeholders.
• Once these areas have been studied the learner will be in a position to examine the process of the development of
an e-Commerce presence followed by the opportunity to design an e-Commerce system.
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Learning Objective (L02)
• Understand the impact of e-Commerce
– LO 2.1 - Analyse the impact, including the risks, of introducing and e-
Commerce system to an organisation
– LO 2.2 - Discuss the global impact on e-Commerce on society
• Consumer impact: Empowered customers e.g. online sales, direct communication with
customers, greater choice, lower prices, availability of new products; global markets; new
marketing models; on-line advertising
• Business impact: global business and consumer markets; issues e.g. challenge of new
technology, security issues, impact and implications of dealing with customers on-line,
creating new distribution channels, greater competition, challenge to monopoly power,
retraining of staff, lower overheads, new selling chains; legislation
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Impact of e-Commerce
• Established businesses have had to determine how to apply
new electronic communication technologies to transform their
organisations
• Some business have evolved their approaches through a series
of stages
• In order to be competitive they have also had to manage
ongoing risks such as security and performance
– Social Media (Social Networks), Virtual Worlds, Blogs
– Rich Media (online video and interactive applications)
– Mobile Commerce , Mobile Apps
– Location Based Services
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Managing Social Media
• How to engage users of social networks and communities with
brands?
• How to monitor and respond to their comments?
• Ted Speroni HP interview
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Managing E-Commerce
• In introducing E-Commerce,
organisations have to be aware of
online marketing techniques such as:
– Search Engine Marketing
– Affiliate Marketing
– Social Media
– Widget Marketing
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Internet, Intranet & Extranet
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Benefits of an Intranet
• Improved information sharing (customer service)
• Enhanced communications and information sharing
(communications)
• Increased consistency of information (customer
service)
• Increased accuracy of information (customer
service)
• Reduced or eliminated processing
• Easier organizational publishing
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Sell-Side E-Commerce
• Selling products such as books and DVDs online
• Using the Internet to Market Services
• Websites focus on five functions:
– Transactional e-commerce sites
– Services-oriented relationship-building websites
– Brand-building sites
– Portal, publisher or media sites
– Social networks
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Digital Marketing –
Communications Strategy
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Transaction Alternatives:
Business, Consumer & Government
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E-business Opportunities
• Reach
– Over 1 billion users globally
– Connect to millions of products
• Richness
– Detailed product information on 20 billion + pages
indexed by Google. Blogs, videos, feeds…
– Personalized messages for users
• Affiliation
– Partnerships are key in the networked economy.
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Internet Adoption &
Business Drivers
• Potential for increased Revenue
• Increased Reach to a larger customer based
• Encouraging loyalty and Repeat Purchases
• Cost Reduction
• Delivering Services Electronically
• Staff Costs, Transport Costs
• Cost/Efficiency Drivers
• Increasing speed with which suppliers can be obtained
• Increasing speed with which goods can be despatched
• Reduced sales and purchasing costs
• Reduced operating costs
• Competitiveness Drivers
• Customer Demand
• Improving the range and quality of services offered
• Avoiding losing market share to businesses already using e-commerce
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Barriers to development of
online technologies
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A simple stage model for buy-
side and sell-side e-commerce
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E-Commerce Environment
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Micro Environment
• Customers – which services are they offering via their web site
that your organization could support them in?
• Competitors – need to be benchmarked in order to review the
online services they are offering – do they have a competitive
advantage?
• Intermediaries – are new or existing intermediaries offering
products or services from your competitors while you are not
represented?
• Suppliers – are suppliers offering different methods of
procurement to competitors that give them a competitive
advantage?
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Macro Environment
• Society – what is the ethical and moral consensus on holding
personal information?
• Country specific, international legal – what are the local and
global legal constraints, for example, on holding personal
information, or taxation rules on sale of goods?
• Country specific, international economic – what are the
economic constraints of operating within a country or global
constraints?
• Technology – what new technologies are emerging by which to
deliver online services such as interactive digital TV and
mobile phone-based access?
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Professor Donald Sull of London Business
School talks about Strategic Agility
Source: www.ft.com
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Online Marketplace Analysis
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Google Trends for websites – useful for
benchmarking the growth of online
intermediaries and destination sites
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