Enterprise Technologies and the Value Chain - Research Paper Example

Opportunities to identify these benefits can be realized via examining the organization’s value chain. Enterprise Technology Mobile business refers to electronic business transactions enabled, in part, by mobile technology targeting both consumers and businesses (Hill & Jones, 2011). The mobile business includes mobile commerce activities that represent mobile technology-enabled transactions. Mobile technologies that support mobile businesses are grouped as networks and devices. Mobile devices can range from GPS and RFID chips to tablets and barcode scanners.

Mobile networks include RFID, Bluetooth, GPS and mobile telecommunication networks. These are utilized, by organizations, to offer customization and flexibility. Unlike e-commerce, M-business offers value via enabling users to be reachable anytime and be mobile. Therefore, value creation can occur via support to mobile users (employees) or mobile activities such as tracking supplies and raw materials. An industry trend that is growing is Fixed Mobile Convergence where centralized infrastructure and management support a mobile workforce that provides access to business applications from all locations and network connections (Hill & Jones, 2011). . The employees may want to interact with fellow employees and may be on the receiving end of interactions with both external and internal information systems.

An example of a business application useful here is the wireless notification system using SMS for critical updates. The wireless interactions possible are employee-to-employee, employee to the system, and employee to consumer (Meier & Stormer, 2011). The systems are run by organizations as either a front-end or back-end systems. An example of this is an employee using wireless business’ ERP system, with the potential mobile interactions being a system-to-system, system to the employee, and system to consumer.

The final component supported is the consumer, who may interact wirelessly with the organization. The potential interactions include consumer-to-consumer, consumer to the employee and consumer to system. The unique attributes of mobile technology offer support to the organization’s value chain by providing localization, personalization, and connectivity (Meier & Stormer, 2011). A mobile infrastructure enables employees to have full time connectivity anywhere and at any time, coupled with information and communication exchange.

A mobile device is assigned to one user, who can then personalize application and interface settings to increase device satisfaction and also effectiveness and efficiency of the system. Finally, mobile devices support localization, which is especially important as it allows reachability from the ability of the internet to reach an IP address to reaching the user or an item.