How E-commerce can reduce cycle time, improve employees' empowerment and facilitate customer support

E-Commerce is a type of business model, or segment of a larger business model, that enables a firm or individual to conduct the business over an electronic network, usually is the internet. Electronic commerce operates in all four of the major market segments: business to business, business to consumer, consumer to consumer and consumer to business.

Cycle time is the total time from the beginning to the end of your process, as it is defined by you and your customer. Cycle time includes process time, during which a unit is acted upon to bring it closer to an output, and delay time, during which a unit of work is spent waiting to take the next action.

Improve employees’ empowerment:
By having e-commerce nowadays, employees are given the authority to act and make decision on their own is a strategy used by many organization as part of productivity improvement program. Management delegates the authority to individuals or team who can execute the work faster and within fewer days. While the empowered salespeople and customer service employees are given the authority to make customers happy and do it quickly, helping to increase customer loyalty too.

Facilitate customer support:
E-commerce can make the customers or users have more easier way to do their things, the activities are such as buying the product by online procedure, clear all the bill payments, check for the stock value, online shopping, and etc. Using e-commerce, it gives the customer an easier and convenient way which can save a lot of their time in order to purposely go out to do for all the activities that they want. They just need to have a computer or they can go to the cyber café, then everything can be settled easily already.

Example of e-commerce failure and its causes

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. Nowadays, many companies will prefer to convert their business into e-commerce system. Online retailers are sometimes known as e-tailer and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail. Almost all big retailers have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide Web.

An Example of the E-commerce Failure…..
An example of the e-commerce failure is Toys R Us Company. This company is the leading retailers of toys, children's apparel and baby products. In order to provide the customers the products and services whenever and wherever they need, Toys R Us announced its plans to create an e-commerce subsidiary- ToysRus.com. In 1999, ToysRus.com has established as a premier online toy, video game and baby store outlet. Failing to handle the orders flushed into its website, the company totally lost track of thousands of orders or failed to deliver them on time. The Federal Trade Commission fined Toys R Us $350,000. Although the company had pumped millions of dollars into setting up its own online operation and distribution network for order fulfillment it had to announced 75% slump in profit 2000.

The causes of the e-commerce failure…
I think part of the problem is when the big company jump into the e-commerce system, they forget some common factors that will affect their company during the holidays. Shipping product takes man power and during the holiday season, it tends to slow the process down simply by the sheer volume of orders of the mail service industry receives in that short period of time. Frankly, not all the companies have the capitol to invest in such a large expansion, if they are going into the e-commerce industry, they can't afford not to put in that investment.

On top of that, the other causes of the e-commerce failure in the Toyrus company is the inability of the customer to chose products that are more effectively sold online than in the real world. Clothing shopping online requires the customer to guess at what they had looked like in the garments presented on a Web site. Attempts to sell automobiles online without the test drive have been woefully unsuccessful. And even provisions are a hard sell, the people still want to pick out their own product that look for and prefer, in spite of the inconvenience of having to go to out to do it themselves.

On the other hands, the failure cause is delivery the stock to customer is not on time. As we should know that, getting customer to the site is one thing, while delivering is another thing. Bricks and mortar retailers have no such problems. Failure to deliver the ordered stock on time to customers caused eToys (Toyrus Company) to give away hundreds of $US100 vouchers to displeased consumers.

Revenue Model for Google, Amazon.com and eBay

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google is now widely recognized as the world's largest search engine -- an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.Thousands of advertisers use Google AdWords program to promote their products and services on the web with targeted advertising, and we believe AdWords is the largest program of its kind. In addition, thousands of web site managers take advantage of Google AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to the content on their sites, improving their ability to generate revenue and enhancing the experience for their users.

GOOGLE

Revenue model 2007 (US$)
Advertising
~Google web	10,624,700
~Google network web	5787,900
Lisencing	181,400
Total revenue	16,593,98

eBay is the world's online marketplace; a place for buyers and sellers to come together and trade almost anything!Here's how eBay works:
A seller lists an item on eBay, most anything from antiques to cars, books to sporting goods. The seller chooses to accept only bids for the item (an auction-type listing) or to offer the Buy It Now option, which allows buyers to purchase the item right away at a fixed price.In an online auction, the bidding opens at a price the seller specifies and remains on eBay for a certain number of days. Buyers then place bids on the item. When the listing ends, the buyer with the highest bid wins.

eBAY

Revenue model 2007 (US$)
Transaction fees
~Market place	4203,340
~Payments	1401,824
~Communications	192,756
Advertising & others	171,821
Total revenue	16,593,986

Amazon.com, a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.
Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as health and personal care, jewelry and watches, gourmet food, sports and outdoors, apparel and accessories, books, music, DVDs, electronics and office, toys and baby, and home and garden.

Amazon.com

Revenue model 2007 (US$)
Sales
~Media	9242,000
~Electronic& Merchandise	5210,000
~Other	383,000
Total revenue	14,835,000

The History and Evolution of E-commerce

Ecommerce meant the process of execution of commercial transactions electronically with the help of the leading technologies such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), which gave an opportunity for users to exchange business information and do electronic transactions. The ability to use these technologies appeared in the late 1970s and allowed business companies and organizations to send commercial documents like purchases orders or invoices electronically. Ecommerce became possible in 1991 when the Internet was opened to commercial use. Since that date thousands of businesses have taken up residence at web sites.


In 1984, EDI, or electronic data interchange, was standardized through ASC X12. This guaranteed that companies would be able to complete transactions with one another reliably.


During year 1992, the Mosaic web-browser was made available; it was the first ‘point and click’ browser. The Mosaic browser was quickly adapted into a downloadable browser, Netscape, which allowed easier access to electronic commerce. The development of DSL was another key moment in the development to of e-commerce. DSL allowed quicker access and a persistent connection to the Internet.


During 1994, Netscape released the Navigator browser in October under the code name Mozilla. Pizza Hut offered pizza ordering on its Web page. The first online bank opened. Attempts to offer flower delivery and magazine subscriptions online.


In 1995, Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com. History of ecommerce is unthinkable without Amazon and Ebay which were among the first Internet companies to allow electronic transactions. Amazon.com, Inc. is one of the most famous ecommerce companies. It was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and was one of the first American ecommerce companies to sell products over the Internet. Ebay was founded by Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb. Dell and Cisco began to aggressively use Internet for commercial transactions.


In 2000 a great number of business companies in the United States and Western Europe represented their services in the World Wide Web. At this time the meaning of the word ecommerce was changed. People began to define the term ecommerce as the process of purchasing of available goods and services over the Internet using secure connections and electronic payment services.
History of ecommerce is a history of a new, virtual world which is evolving according to the customer advantage. There would be a glorious future of ecommerce in the 21st century. In the foreseeable future ecommerce will further confirm itself a major tool of sale.

Related link
http://www.ecommerce-journal.com/

→ Fishpond's success ←

America has its own famous dotcom company, need not me to further introduce, who does not know Amazon.com or eBay.com? Yahoo! and Google have also subsequently made the e-commerce business a great success. But have you guys heard about the fishpond.com? Certainly you would not think it is some kind of online fish market, won’t you?

Similar to Amazon.com and the rest that I have mentioned, fishpond.com.au is the Australia’s largest online bookstore that sells all kinds of books, CDs and DVDs. It is founded by Daniel Robertson in 2005. With its global headquarters located in the Auckland, New Zealand and also the satellite offices in Melbourne and Perth, this online bookstores has successfully enter the e-commerce market and stands out from the crowd. What are the competitive advantages it holds in order to feed the growing market? Let’s explore for more details.

A good customer services, efficient and wide variety of choices would have earn the trust and loyalty of its customers. In the context of e-commerce, fishpond.com has done it in a nice way with innovations. For example, it provides special features like cash rewards, a loyalty program that allows users to write the product review in the webs and the first reviewer will earn a $0.20 credit each time for future purchases.

Besides, the launch of ‘Sell Yours’ program in 2005 enable the public users to sell their own products through Fishpond's high traffic site. This move diversified the supplier base for many products, giving shoppers greater choice. It allows independent authors and other motivated sellers to offer their products on sale and also second hand items that must be priced at least 10% lower than listed price. It benefits the customers because they can get lower price than other bookstores offers.

Want to buy music CDs but not sure you like it or not? Fishpond’s sample music allows users to listen to short clips of each track on the CDs. So customers can have the privilege of listening to the music first whether they like it or not before they order. Besides its global shipping destinations enables customers from all around the world to purchase online. Any enquiries will also be entertained by the dedicated help desk team via email. Therefore, they can understand the customers well.
Other than that, the method of payment is equally important for the company. With the multiple payment methods, shoppers are not restricted to credit card payments, they can use Paypal, bank transfer and cheque as well.
Fishponds.com has make itself successful by providing shoppers with all kinds of unique features that makes online shopping even more easier than u think. That’s the ‘secret weapon’ every dotcom company must have to make e-commerce a success.

Screenshots of the homepage of fishpond.com.au :

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