Sheffield Hallam University

Module: Digital Economy, Second Assignment

Tutor: Roy Butcher

Ali Sayyadi zadeh Submission date: 18/01/2008 2750 words

One of the most important modules in the MBA course was Digital Economy. The course started from September 2007 so the modules. In this essay I'm going to focus on reflecting on my learning on this module, my knowledge, my expectation from it, my learning from it and how this module could help me to success in the future as a businessman. What did I know? I graduated in business management 3 years ago and started to work as a sales manager. I had learnt some aspects of Managing Information Systems, DSS, and E-Commerce. Those learning were unclear and inexperienced for me because I couldn't work or experience much of them. On one hand, lack of electronic infrastructure such as suitable internet connections, DATA lines or Wi Max Systems on the other hand the lack of knowledge of using electronic systems in the business or working globally by the senior managers of the company which I worked for, were the most important reasons that I couldn't experienced the Electronic Commerce or E-business. I always think about doing things differently and finding a better way of doing things so I started to persuade the manager director of the company to change the software system of the company for the first step. The central office of the company, the production system, inventory system were not worked integrated and online together which caused the company missed some information or delay to respond to the customer's needs. Our company finance manager, I and another person from IT centre were responsible to find an integrated system for the company. This was my first opportunity and experience to test my information in Electronic business and increase them. What were my expectations? According to my previous information experience I expected to know more aspects of the E-Business world. Living in the UK, using electronic purchase and payment, web based software, web based companies and etc, were the major concepts that I expected to know more about them during the course. Moreover, I knew a lot about the globalisation and its positive and negative effects on companies and economies, so I was curious to learn more about electronic business and E-commerce in order to increase the depth of my knowledge in this field which definitely could enhance my ability in making proper decisions in future as a manager in any organisation. How Them Changed: During the course I found the greater concepts of E-Commerce. The concepts of e-commerce in my mind were limited to sell, marketing and purchase. While Learning E-commerce in Digital economy module, these concepts changed and I found the more aspects of this knowledge in business. For instance, I was working on E-Supply chain, E-portal and security directly and

some other aspects of E--commerce indirectly, during this module. Some of these findings were: E-Supply chain Firms are increasingly embracing integrated Web-based or e-supply chains because it is believed that e-supply chain will enhance the efficiency and competitiveness. It should be considered that implementation of integrated supply chains requires sophisticated technical infrastructure, huge commitment from suppliers/partners, tremendous resources, a great deal of management time and energy and wide changes. Therefore, before embracing e-supply chains, firms need to understand different options for creating supply chains from among which they can pick the option they can successfully implement, keeping in view their resources and their ability to handle associated challenges. (www.sciencedirect.com/science). I did not have any clear idea about e-supply chain before this module; I thought that supply chain is just to provide resources and raw material for production continuously but never thought or experienced that supply chain is comes from the linked between partnering organisations. (Turban E, Electronic Commerce, 2004, P.308).

A supply chain involves activities that take place during the entire product life cycle, "from dirt to dust". A supply chain is the movement of money and information and the procedures that support the movement of product or a service. Moreover, the individuals and organisations involved are considered a part of supply chain. (Turban E, Electronic Commerce, 2004, P.308) "When a supply chain is managed electronically, usually with Web technologies, it is referred to as an e-supply chain". (Turban E, Electronic Commerce, 2004, P.308).

I found out that my information and knowledge about supply chain was not complete and I was wrong be cause I just consider about one aspect of esupply chain. I found more concepts and the component of e-supply chain and the benefits of E-supply chain from Electronic commerce book from turban. Figure 1 shows the components of E-supply chain.

Figure 1: components of E-supply chain 3

Downstream supply chain

Internal supply chain

Upstream supply chain

Source: (Turban E, Electronic Commerce, 2004, P.300)

COMPOSITION OF SUPPLY CHAIN: E-supply chain involves:

Upstream Supply Chain is dealing with suppliers and the major activity is procurement of materials. Internal Supply Chain is transforming the material received into a finished product within the organization. Production management, manufacturing and inventory are the major concerns of this part of supply chain. Downstream Supply Chain is dealing with consumers, delivery of the product. In downstream supply chain, attention is directed at distribution, warehousing, transportation, and after sale service. (Turban E, Electronic Commerce, 2004, P.301)

Benefits of E-supply chain: The benefits of each system in an organisation are highly related to the expectations of the senior managers from that system. According to Turban2004 e-supply chain not only contains the benefits of supply chain but also cover the benefits of e-commerce as well. Turban in his book represent list if major solutions provided by e-supply chain and technology: Remove or decrease the problem of logistic infrastructure that pure EC companies are facing with Order taking, easily can be done on the internet and could be fully automated. For instance, orders can generate and transmitted automatically to the suppliers. The result will be fast, more accurate and inexpensive order-taking process. Order fulfilment Electronic payments can make both the payment delivery and the order fulfilment cycle faster. Inventories can be minimized, by providing fast and accurate information for suppliers, as well as introducing a make-to-order production. Collaborative commerce among the members of e-supply chain can be done. Turban believes that this is one of the most important benefits of E-Commerce and will be discussed more in details. Reduce the mismatch of supply-demand base on collaborative commerce. Improve demand forecasting by collaboration with business partners. (Turban, Electronic Commerce, 2004, P.304) Collaborative commerce is one of the most important aspects of e-supply chain which I did not know anything about it or it benefits. Fortunately from the Electronic Commerce of Turban 2004 I found that, Collaborative commerce(c-commerce) refers to the use of digital technologies that enable companies to collaboratively plan, design, develop, manage, and research products, services and innovative EC applications.( Turban, Electronic Commerce, 2004, P.307).Collaboration can be done either within or between organisations. For instance, GM could save more than $70Million, just in design a car per year as well as decrease the duration of launching a new car from 4 years to 18 month by using the collaborative commerce. ( Electronic Commerce, 2004, P.299 & 307). Traditionally, Collaborative took place among supply chain members who were close together. EC and Web technologies can change the shape of supply chain and the number of members within it. Figure 2 represents the difference between traditional supply chain (Part A) and the collaborative network (part B), in which the partners can interact with each other at any

point in the network. See figure 2. (Turban E, Electronic Commerce, 2004, P.308) Figure 2:
Source: Turban E, King D, Lee J, Viehland D, Electronic Commerce a managerial perspective, 2004

RFID is another new technology that comes from e-supply chain. Surprisingly I did not know about RFID and when I found that I understood that it is too difficult to compete with the giant companies who are investing and working in e-commerce and e-supply chain systems. According to Hugos and Thomas, RFID, Picking labels, Voice activated Technology, Universal Product codes and Global Trade Identification Numbers are some of new technology changes which hit e-supply chain in near future. For instance, some businesses believe that the future of product identification is in radio frequency identification (RFID).RFID is small computer chips that placed on products and transmits a massive volume of product information to a wireless reading device. RFID gives companies the capability of tracking a shipments exact whereabouts in the e-supply chain. (Hugos M, Thromas C, Supply Chain Management in the retail industry, 2006, P.210) The overwhelming message from the world's biggest retailers and RFID-fans to their suppliers is - don't wait to be told to use RFID, start your projects now. The only problem seems to be that suppliers are less than clued-up when it comes to the supply chain chips. (www.management.silicon.com). For instance Tesco would give its suppliers at least six months to adapt RFID and get on board, becauseWhat customers want to know when they shop at Tesco is that the items they want to buy are available and on the shelves," said Tesco IT director Colin Cobain . (www.management.silicon.com) E-portal was another aspect of e-commerce that I worked on. It opened a new window on the business world on my mind and brought enormous ideas about starting or implementing my business electronically in the future. E-portal is defined as a web site as an entry point to other websites. Moreover an e-portal is a single gateway through which to gain access to all the information, data, systems, and processes used by stakeholders of an organisation. (Building Portals, Intranets and corporate websites by J. Townsend) Stakeholders may include employees, customers, investors; business partners (suppliers, distributors, resellers, agents, franchisees and so on).

According to Arthur Tanhall some major benefits of e-portals are: IMPROVED LEVELS OF CUSTOMER INTERACTION IMPROVED CUSTOMER AND BUSINESS PARTNER LOYALTY IMPROVED EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATIONS AND PRODUCTIVITY

IMPROVE INFORMATION ACCESS FOR DECISION-MAKING (Portals, portals everywhere by Arthur Tanhall , www.idea-group.com) I started to know and focus on the websites which I visited since I had started this module because it was wondering for me to have and work on the web and through the portals which provide different facilities for customers and companies. I started to know how can I establish an e-portal and where should I refer to if I want to establish a business portal or what kind of soft ware should I know in order to have an e-portal. 8

I started to run a business based on portals and e-supply chain in the UK in according to what I learnt during to this module. I registered the T.K UK Company and tried to establish a portal for that. www.Tkcompany is the website of my company which is based on an e-portal and I still working on it with some of my friends. Some more new concepts that I found about the electronic commerce during the Digital Economy modules are: EDI: Electronic Data interchange; buying electronically E-commerce; buy and sell through the internet, business transaction or exchange information. E-business; is running the business electronically, marketing, finance, human resource, sale production and etc. E-marketing; using internet to find new customers or new market, websites, and customize your home page. E-procurement; using internet to provide new materials, electronic buying. E-strategy; strategies to manage technology (internet) or how to use it, what is the strategy of using these technologies? B2B: Business to Business; business interaction between companies electronically. C2B: Customer to Business: Customers could directly buy goods from companies through the internet. For instance, buy book from Amazon C2C: Customer to Customer; this is trying t to sell to other customers directly through the internet. B2E: Business to Employee; is the cooperation through internet and how organizations communicate with the employees. G2C: Government to citizens; which is the communication between government and citizens and doing the governmental works through the internet. For instance e-government which is so efficient and cost effective as well as saving time for both government and citizens. B2G: Business to Government; which is the relation between companies and government through the internet. For instance, the electronic taxation system for companies. Buying side e-commerce: Technologies involve buying goods. Sell side e-commerce: is a technology involved selling goods. (Tutor Slides on 03/10/2007, Digital Economy modules,2007)

What is an e-business model? E-business model is defined as: An achitechture for product, service and information flows, including a description of the various business actors and their roles; and a description of the potential benefits for the various business actors, and description of the sources of revenue. Paul Timmers, (1999). In the most basic sense, a business model is the method of doing business by which a company can sustain itself- that is, generate revenue. It spells out how a company makes money by specifying where it is positioned in the value chain. Michael Rappa,(2000) A method of doing business by which a company can sustain itself, that is generate revenue. Efraim Turban (2006) A business model can be defined as the organisation of products, services and information flows and the sources of revenues and benefits for suppliers and customers. Colin Combe (2006)

E-business model is the adaptation of an organisation's business model to the internet framework for maximising value in the new economy. (Colin Combe,2006). E-management is defined as: E-management: e-Management draws from the convergence of Internet, IT, and business technologies. It is a way for organizations to do things, - to accomplish objectives in a planned, controlled, and measured fashion, consistent with their management style and aspirations. E-Management ties people and processes together, making them accessible to each other wherever and whenever needed. Knowhow is fused with action, planning with doing.

E-strategy: Strategy is about how a business is going to compete, what its goals should be, and what plans and policies will need to be implemented to accomplish these goals (Turban, 2006). Strategy can be defined as the future direction and actions of an organization, i.e. identification of its method of competing, definition of its goals, identification of its goals, setting of plans and policies that can lead in achieving the proposed goals. E-strategy (Chaffey, 2007). E-strategy shares much in common with the traditional strategy formulation. It is simply the formulation and execution of the way in which a new or exiting

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firm plans to run it is business electronically (Turban, 2006).Moreover estrategy is, the online strategy used to connect with the customers, partners and suppliers and the transformation of existing business processes to enhance shareholders value (E-Business strategy, Paul Philips).

Porter's basic model is extremely simple, yet exhaustive. It is based on five forces that influence the competitive advantage of a business within its industry and that consequently should be taken into account when developing corporate strategy. The threat of entry of new competitors (new entrants) to intensify competition and further impact on pricing and profitability. The threat of substitutes i.e. the threat of similar products to limit market freedom and reduce prices and thus profits. The bargaining power of buyers i.e. the power of customers to affect pricing and reduce margins. The bargaining power of suppliers i.e. the power of suppliers to influence the organisation's pricing. The degree of rivalry between existing competitors i.e. the level of existing competition which impacts on investment in marketing and research and thus erode profits

Model, Source: Coutler.M Strategic Management in action

Five Force Copyright 2005 by PEARSON

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I can say that the case studies which we had during the course were some practical experiences to enhance my knowledge about electronic business and e-commerce. For instance, the e-supply chain system of Raffles, the Singaporean hotels, was one of the most successful closed e-supply chain systems in this field. The other case study which impressed me was the case study about the security of E-commerce, the electronic crimes and the threats of these offences and crimes for any businesses which are working through the internet and electronically. I have plan to start another business electronically which is to establish and implement selling flowers through the internet especially in Iran which is my home country. There are lots of people around the world who wants to buy and send flowers to their families or friends through the internet or lots of people in Iran who wants to send flowers to their families or friends around the world. It is not possible at the moment because of some technological, knowledge and electronic payments deficits. It could be quite better if the course asked us to run and establish a business through the internet in groups in order to experience a real job and feel its real difficulties and barriers

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Reference: www.management.silicon.com www.sciencedirect.com www.informit.com Portals, portals everywhere by Arthur Tanhall (www.idea-group.com) Corporate Portal by Hind Benbya (www.sciencedirect.com) Building Portals, Intranets and corporate websites by J. Townsend Coulter M, Strategic Management in action, 2005, Pearson Prentice Hall Hugos M, Thromas C, Supply Chain Management in the retail industry, 2006, Wiley Turban E, King D, Lee J, Viehland D, Electronic Commerce a managerial perspective, 2004, International Edition, Pearson Prentice Hall Chaffey D, (2002, E-business and E-commerce management., Pearson Education Ltd. Combe C., (2006), Introduction to E-business, Butterworth-Heinemann Rappa M.,(2007),Business Models on the Web, available from http://digitalenterprise.org/models/models.html E-Strategy slides by students E-management slides by students

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