E-Business Opportunities for Organizations - Essay Example

?Ebusiness today has become very useful as it provides convenience to companies all over the world to see their product easily to s. s also find it convenient to buy their particular desired products by using internet. Marketing on internet is different to the traditional print media which everyone knows about. Using ebusiness not only reduces expenses, it also provides a platform for business entities to interact or target potential customers easily. In electronic markets, sellers and buyers can easily negotiate with each other, they can submit bids, agree or disagree on a particular order and finish the execution of the transaction on or off line. Benefits of Ebusiness to Organizations: Ebusiness expands the marketplace to not only national but also the international markets. It also decreases the cost of storing and retrieving paper-based information. This kind of business also reduces the time between the outlay of the capital and the receipt of products and services. Ebusiness also reduces the telecommunication costs as internet is relatively much cheaper than Value Added Networks. Organization to focus: The website on which we will focus in this report in Asus.com. Asus is one of the leading companies in the manufacture of notebooks, netbooks, motherboards, graphic cards, etc. Asus is regarded as the number one manufacture of mother boards in the world. They are believed to be blessed with one of the world’s best research and development team who believe in innovation of the product. Ebusiness Website: The ebusiness website of Asus is developed by one of the best people which mark the tradition of the company and people can understand it through a look at that website. However, its ebusiness operations can be improved in various other ways. How to improve? There are numerous ways by which web analytic systems can be improved, and if the company knows what it is supposed to do, the web analytic systems are very useful. A couple of measures include the bounce rates of the viewers, the entry and exit pages of the website, the scenario analysis, the first time buyers and the repeat buyers and many more are very important for an organization to measure and build upon. The only key metrics that can company can control directly, however, are average sale price, profit margin, overhead, conversion rate and the visitors of the website. The profit margin and the overhead cannot be easily reported in most of the key analytic system, but the average sale price, conversion rate and the number of visitors who visit the website can be measured by the good key analytic systems. Improving Customer Satisfaction through ebusiness: The customer satisfaction can be improved through ebusiness using a number of factors that encourage long term relationships. Customer Relationship: Improving customer relationships is a very important factor of customer satisfaction. When dealing with customers, empathy is very important. A couple of factors by which this can be done are by addressing the customer by his name, knowing what was the product he purchased recently and offering new product according to his taste and preferences which makes him feel that the business has thought about his needs and makes him feel important. Asus.com should develop various service-quality and relationship-building initiatives which are designed specifically to give customers a reason to buy products from its firm and do frequent business with them. The business strategy of Customer Relationship Management should be given more attention by asus.com in order to optimize profitability. Service and Support: Different studies reveal that customers purchasing through the web usually find poor customer service and this becomes the reason they refrain from purchasing a product online. One of the main reasons of this is that when customers buy using internet, they serve themselves, but they do not really want to receive and lesser service than what they receive in the real world. The requirements of ebusiness are higher expectations for support as customers expect a 24-hour email response. Customers even expect the organization to know what they did online even if they have just logged off. Asus.com can improve its customer satisfaction by improved planning and collaboration between the organization’s customers and suppliers. This ensures a more responsive supply chain. Asus.com can also improve its response to uncertainty as the systems today have the ability to take the customer order immediately and convert it into the manufacturing requirements. Value for Money: The consumers today have to choose from a large variety of products and brands, prices and the suppliers. However, they believe in buying their products from the organizations that provide the highest value for money as they perceive it. The actual value of the product they receive is compared to the value they had expected and this enhances their value of the product and their repurchasing behavior. As stated in the value chain concept, an organization should compare its costs and performance in each value creating activity and seek to find improvements wherever necessary. By shortening the value chain, an organization can make improvements and also reduce production costs. Asus.com should use the tools that already exist in order to improve the product development cycle, to manage the inventory and order to the payment process, as it will improve the customer service, which will further improve the customer satisfaction. This can enable the company to create a greater value for money as the customer may perceive it. Speed: The speed of the delivery of the service can potentially have a significant effect on ebusiness. The processes through ebusiness become independent from time, day and the geographical location. Asus.com should make use of the integrated systems as it provides the opportunities to reduce process time and also optimizes organizational decisions. It also reduces the internal and the external coordination time and lowers the transaction time in the market. The administrative steps can be cut down which makes the communications faster and saves time to the organization. The shared information of the firms and its departments leads to a tighter integration and much improved coordination. At certain times, when there are larger orders, the online integration systems are not able handling all orders which is a drawback. Consumer investors do not really like the content-based investments sites as they are usually to slow. This decreases the customer loyalty. Asus.com should also make use of Efulfillment products to eliminate the problems of late deliveries, billing errors, delayed refunds and a few others. This reduces the time from order to delivery. Security and Privacy: A major concern for customer satisfaction is the security and privacy of the site. If the appropriate level of security is reached, the satisfaction is not improved by further improvements. A serious dissatisfaction is reached when security is ever breached. Asus.com should make sure that security is tight. They should use the Secure Electronic Transaction protocol to ensure maximum safety and avoid using Secure Socket Layer protocol as it is unsafe and more attractive to hackers. Reliability: The reliability of the product should be maintained as to the customers, the product should be able to deliver its intended function over the specified life of the product under normal operating and environmental conditions. Asus.com should keep in mind that as most consumers are usually reluctant to purchase digital goods and services online as they do not believe they have enough information to be sure enough about their purchase. The reliability of the product makes sure that the customers will buy it and will be satisfied. Availability: The availability of the product takes into account that the customer can buy it whenever he wants to. The introduction of ebusiness has made the process independent of the time of the day. Asus.com should make sure that the product is available 24/7 and the geographical differences of the orders play a negligible role. Information Access: The access to the information helps the customers make better decisions about the product to be purchased. The transactions are assisted through the network of retailers who are committed to ensuring quality service by delivering the product and ensure savings. Asus.com should use a tracking program which can further enhance the customer’s experience by offering the access to shipment information on demand along with the updates of the time estimated of the arrival of the product and the last shipment location reported. Suppliers can also be dealt like customers by giving them the access to information to make it of more advantage. This ensures tighter inventory management and the easy and quick access to shipping location and arrival time is very important to the customers who possess just-in-time practices. Predictability: The predictability of the product and the services are very important in achieving customer satisfaction. When customers expect the delivery of the product on a particular date, and if they receive it later or maybe earlier than they expected, they are dissatisfied. When the price of the product and the performance are consistent, the expectations of the customers have an absorption effect on satisfaction. On the other hand, if the price of the product and the performance are inconsistent, the expectations of the customers have no effect on the satisfaction. One way by which asus.com can improve the predictability of the customers is by allowing the customers access to the processes information so that they can track the delivery of the product. Another impact that asus.com can have on is the price predictability. The pricing parameters can be offered which are based on the number of exchanged transactions or the value of those transactions. Asus.com can provide the customers with a predictable price for the products they have ordered by structuring the fees on flat basis. This is another way how asus.com can improve customer satisfaction. Quality of the product: The quality of the product can be explained as the designing, implementation and continuously adapting to the systematic activities in order to provide efficient value added outcomes what have a direct link to a wide range of customers. Asus.com should use technologies that can support the design, the production and the customer support services in order to provide the product which is more accurate. To control the multiple business process in a better way than the separate decentralized systems do, an integrated system should be used, thus providing a higher quality product. A particular set of standards for quality planning and control of the product can be developed along with the product which is developed. These defined standard tests can then be used in the implementation using the Information Technology by setting up the control variables. These variables can be tested more accurately by using the Information Technology to further enhance the work. Asus.com should also make sure that they do not over-estimate the customer’s computer ability, as many other ebusiness applications do. It is very important when designing a site that the organization takes into account the information the customers will have to send or will need in order to complete their particular transaction. However, the quality of the service being delivered can increase as the customers tend to seek the opportunity to learn more about how to use a particular service apart from the service they are interested in initially when making the order for the product. Completely integrated and Easy-to-use: Asus.com should use the streamlined data management to provide an online solution which is completely integrated with its applications. The product information reflects the organization’s business rules for customer specific credit, the pricing and discounting and much more. The access to the website should be determined by the security rules for the information privileges for the customers. Since they website of asus.com has already been deployed, the use of it should be made easy. Since there are customers from all over the world, it should be in more languages then what it currently is in. This will increase the number of visitors on the website from all over the world daily. Key Capabilities to be adapted: The seamless and the full integrated data management of the website should be easily established and maintained. The information access and the visibility to the customers should be based on the defined security by asus.com and privileges granted to the customers. Without the need of coding with complexity, the online solutions should be quickly deployed. The online orders aligned with the customer specific contract terms and credit should be considered along with margin management rules in order to maximize the profits. The sales productivity through the website should be improved by making sure that the product is provided anywhere at any time. There should be all time access to the placement of orders, checking and comparing the prices, verifying the inventory and the availability of the product along with its allocation and also viewing the order status. The strain on the limited service personnel should be removed by empowering the customers for placing the online orders, viewing the availability of the real-time inventory, looking up at the status of the order, the query invoices and the account balance. The business-to-business and business-to-consumer selling options should be utilized with flexibility in order to increase the revenues with the customers that already exist with asus.com along with the potential customers that can be targeted by the organization through the website. The leverage through the credit card transaction should be interfaced in order to capture real-time sales of the company along with the revenues. The costs of the online orders should be covered automatically by applying freight and all other additional charges based on the rules set up by asus.com. Use Meta Tags to improve Search Engine Result Rankings: Using Meta Tags enables the owners of the site to manage to a certain extent the way their websites are described and displayed by the search engines like Google and Yahoo. The text in the title tag of the website is very crucial on the page factors. The description tag is also important as the search engine crawlers assign the ranking of the site according to these few factors. User Feedback: The tradition of encouraging and using the user involvement in the design and development of the ebusiness site to a greater extent should be considered. Based on the feedback of the customers, improvements should be made on the website as it is according to the preferences of the customers and what they like. Of all the customers that provide the feedback, the information that is most common by most of the customers should be considered and the implementation should be given the first priority. Apart, the website should also provide a separate link to the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) in which all the answers of the most asked questions are provided. If the customers who seek to ask any question finds his answers on the FAQ page, he will not send his query to the operators of the website as this query might be resolved by viewing the page. Furthermore, if the customer still has any query, he should feel free to ask the question and satisfactory answers should be provided. This will further enhance the customer satisfaction for asus.com. Use Testimonials, Endorsements and Reviews: If asus.com can manage to get endorsements from a leading personality in the computer industry or from another leading company one its website, then due to the number of visitors of the website, the sales will increase dramatically. Using attractive colors: The colors of the website are very dull and most of it is white. To attract the customer, effective colors should be used with more animations as it increases the interest of the visitor on the website. Minimize the Number of Steps: The customers of asus.com should find the buying process on the website as quick and easy as possible. Unlike almost all other sites, asus.com should avoid information from the customers that is not needed. Information as far as knowing the customer and making segmentations is good for marketing purposes but asking unnecessary details of the customers will increase the time while buying the product and the fundamental rule of ebusiness of reducing the time of buying process will be affected. Using animated images of the products: Asus.com should make sure that the animated pictures that already exist on its site should be improved in order to make the customer feel like he has touched the product. The product should be a three dimensional image which can rotate to the angle of 360 degrees for the customers to make better judgment of the product. Using Case-Studies: These are the studies in more detail to the success a customer has had with asus.com and his experience with the business. It will give in detail the complete experience of the customer with asus.com, right from the start of the relationship with the customer to the current dealings. Through this, more trust and more credibility is built and usually case studies are much more powerful than the testimonials as they are more suited to the more complex products and the solutions. Offering a Live Text Chat Service: The offer of live help at any step during the process of purchasing any product will help the visitor buy more conveniently from asus.com. The live conversations with the users should be started at any step of the browsing process, especially when they seem to spend too much time on a particular step or even on any particular product page. If there are prominent links for the visitor of asus.com to start a web chat at any time, it will have a tremendous effect on the increase of sales of the company. Ads on other popular web pages: Asus.com should encourage the use of their ads or an ad link to asus.com on websites that are frequently visited by the customers. Also, the pop-up screens or the animated flash screens on other web pages that link to asus.com should be used. This is because the animated flash screen usually gains the attention of the customers and they might be encouraged to visit asus.com due to the same reason. Valuing Frequently Purchasing Customers: The customers who purchase the product frequently from asus.com should be given high value and preference and should be treated accordingly. They should be given considerable discounts when they buy a product. Along with the product they should be given gifts from the company to make them feel more delighted and be loyal to asus.com for the long term. This will help asus.com to retain its customers. References Marks in History, ASUS Motherboards, viewed 14 April, 2011. (http://www.asus.com/About_ASUS/Marks_in_History_ASUS_Motherboards/) How measuring key performance indicators can improve E-Commerce Strategy, Steve Jackson, viewed 14 April, 2011. (http://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/kpi3.htm) How can Ebusiness improve Customer Satisfaction, Drs Tamir Dotan, viewed 14 April, 2011. (http://www.tamirdotan.com/e-business%20Article.html) Apprise Ebusiness Solutions, viewed 14 April, 2011. (http://www.apprise.com/products/eBusiness/) Using Meta Tags to Improve Search Engine Result Rankings, viewed 14 April, 2011. (http://www.free-ebusinesshelp.com/website-development/use-meta-tags-for-search-engine-optimization.html) Using Feedback helps improve Ebusiness Services, June 2010, viewed 14 April, 2011. (http://oami.europa.eu/ows/rw/pages/OHIM/OHIMPublications/newsletter/1006/EBUSINESS/ebis1.en.do) 9 Effective Ways to Improve your Website Credibility, viewed 14 April, 2011. (http://www.free-home-based-business-info.com/ways-to-improve-your-website.html) Essential Tips to Improve Ecommerce Shopping Cart Abandonment, Leonel Hilario, 31 March, 2010, viewed 14 April, 2011. (http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/tips-improve-e-commerce-shopping-cart-abandonment/) How to Improve your Website Conversion Rate, David Kelly, 1 April, 2008, viewed 14 April, 2011. (http://www.zeald.com/Blog/x_post/how-to-improve-your-website-conversion-rate.html) 7 Ways to Improve Ecommerce sites and sell like its Black Friday Everyday, Rich Page, 26 November, 2008, viewed 14 April, 2011. (http://rich-page.com/website-optimization/7-ways-to-improve-ecommerce-sites-and-sell-like-its-black-friday-everyday-without-reducing-your-prices/) Read More