E-Business Automates
Elaborate e-commerce systems handle various processes of the transactions including enquiries, ordering and order tracking and payments. Traditionally these transactions were accomplished by human resources. But with the advent of electronic commerce systems, the computer systems have replaced the human resource.
E-Business Informates
Business processes automation also result into a different concept. The machines that translates electronic signal into action may also register data about that process thus generating new streams of information. Such information may include Model of the machine that accomplish a task, various time-stamps on which a certain process occurs and duration of a process. Such information may trickle down to lower levels and may even land in the wrong hands. With so much information in the wrong hands, the system becomes vulnerable to external attacks or manipulation.
For example, computer-based, numerically controlled machine tools or microprocessor-based sensing devices not only apply programmed instructions to equipment but also convert the current state of equipment, product, or process into data. Scanner devices in supermarkets automate the checkout process and simultaneously generate data that can be used for inventory control, warehousing, scheduling of deliveries, and market analysis. The same systems that make it possible to automate office transactions also create a vast overview of an organizations operations, with many levels of data coordinated and accessible for a variety of analytical efforts. (Zuboff, 1988 p. 9)
ICT has enriched work for many people instead of deskilling them or making them redundant
The primary concern that arose with emergence of computer systems at the work place was the imminent unemployment. It was to later be realized that unemployment was not to be blamed on automation. Laying off human resource whose tasks were executed by emergent systems was more of economical politics in organizations.
With the advent of business processes automation, there arose rewarding employment opportunities to those who would sustain the technology. Such professions as Internet security professionals arose. In addition, it opened the traditional boundaries set by geographical and social economic factors. Today, a small firm in Africa can buy equipments in Europe at the click of a button.
Poorly structured e-electronic commerce systems frustrate users. It also results to tedious and ineffective services. If for instance an online stores order now link is malfunctioning, it results to inconveniences to all the customers who use it. This results to bad company image and may lose clients.
Privacy Online
Online banking has gone a long way in easing access to your finances regardless of your geographical location. With billions of dollars and pounds changing hands over the internet, more and more cyber cash crimes are being reported.
Despite the challenges, large transfers of different currencies are exchanged over the internet day in day out.
People are scared of the safety of their transfers but they hope that their transactions wont be intercepted by malicious hackers. The banking industries, aware of the risk they have to face have in return invested in elaborate technological and security measures. Owing to the vulnerability of their transaction, they build secure private networks with high levels of security implementations.
While online banking scares are real, they are should not hinder online money transfers. In essence, they are as hard to occur and might require a genius to intercept the communication leading to eavesdropping.
In events of breaching of privacy leading to exposure of a clients details or loss of cash, the safeguards and penalties are not enough. A banking system that is vulnerable to cyber cash crimes results in customers having little confidence with the bank. In cases like these, banks come up with compensation schemes which are in no way effective in winning back the confidence of the customer. Much more should be done to enhance the security of banking transaction online. Cyber cash crime policies should be stringent and elaborate. Governments, which have the collective roles of creating enabling infrastructural environments should set standards and well outlined policies to govern the online banking transfers. Unfortunately, just but a few governments have put in place measures like these.
Virtual Organizations
Modern web based technologies have led to emergent concepts arising from inter-linking markets. As such online commerce leads to customers accessing markets that are far geographically separated from what they would physically access. A web based store reflects what is stocked in a store somewhere. A vendor just places an advert on an online page in the virtual organization. A client just need to access a web page and enquire, order and the rest is implemented in a shopping cart manner.
Virtual organization have there advantages and disadvantages. Many have come up and disappeared, often with clients orders- fully paid. This infidelity has led to increased caution when dealing with them. Users need more assurance that the service they are paying for will be delivered in the right and agreed form. With little legal constraints, accountability in a virtual organization transaction becomes an issue of concern.
Putting in place stringent rules and prequalifying approved virtual organizations would be a great leap to the fore for online buyers and sellers. Governments and policy makers should lay down appropriate policy that will govern the way the transactions are conducted on the virtual organizations. So doing there will be end to end assurance that transactions are safe and reliable. Setting stringent rules and standards as well as assurances that they can sustain and be accountable for their malpractices should be prioritized.
Unfortunately, in the present virtual organizations remain at your own risk business entities. With increased incidents of social engineering, it remains an activity so insecure and vulnerable. People from as far as Africa buy from e-bay based on trusting that everything will be fine. However they dont know who to complain to.
Usability of Web System
The implementation of technologies running over the internet has been a challenge to the world of developers. For a long time balancing between the fuss that is the technology running beneath and the aesthetic value that would make the system workable for a lay man whose eyes react to beauty easily has proven to be an uphill task. However, that has been addressed by emergence of scripting languages like java script, DHTML, PHP, ASP etc. Web based distributed system now implement aesthetic menus as friendly as the vista buttons and which add to the aesthetic appeal of a system.
A poorly designed website with many navigations will take too much of a prospective customers time. They will spend too much time looking for an item as opposed to the time they might be having. If a website has many malfunctioning and error prone links, they repel the user. If a web page keeps on submitting a page in error the customer might lose patience and seek an alternative source.
Adapting user friendly design strategies in earlier stages of system analysis and design would help address the problems arising from poor planning and design implementation. Some web based systems have a high latency arising from poorly optimized data base tables. Ensuring that the design strategy address optimization to the database tables is important.
M-Commerce
Mobile commerce describes the phenomenon of obtaining business services ion mobile devices. Including mobile phones, PDAs, blackberry etc. Wikipedia describes it in the following terms Mobile Commerce is any transaction, involving the transfer of ownership or rights to use goods and services, which is initiated andor completed by using mobile access to computer-mediated networks with the help of an electronic device
Due to the ubiquitous nature of mobile services, m-commerce is gaining popularity. Streamlining and putting the necessary regulations in place is necessary in the industry. With increased access to mobile devices a move to regulate the industry by putting in place proper regulatory step would make the technology trustworthy and reliable.
M-commerce has been successful in poorer countries due to the following
mobile devices are relatively cheaper than computers which are used in developed countries
the GSM and CDMA technologies are relatively pronounced even poor economies
they are relatively easier to use as opposed to distributed web based systems
banks and financial institutions have stringent banking requirements and regulations
The future of m-commerce is brighter in this age due to the fact that mobile technology is rapidly growing.
Other reasons for its growth include the fact that mobile devices are mobile than any other equipment in market today and have functional ability rivaling the microprocessor.
M-banking is in no way a threat to mainstream banking. Banks that seize the opportunity and partner with m-banking services providers will benefit from easier utility services e.g. cash transfers between accounts, deposits, withdrawals and others like standing orders payments. M-banking is strongly complementing standard banking which is rather inconvenient or demanding especially in the third world.
E-Business Development
Unlike in traditional business that was based on a buyer and a seller meeting in the market and exchanging goods and services with cash, e-business emphasizes on a buyer and a seller, wherever they maybe exchanging services or commodities over electronic medium e.g. the internet. However, the systems of business are quite different when it comes to the e-business. A computer hardware company in United States can have its assembling industry in Malaysia and its headquarters in New York. Sales department maybe located in the US while production is done in the Far East. This is because, e-business has become ubiquitous unlike the traditional business where the buyer has to meet the seller at the market place.
Therefore stronger emphases need to be applied in the ensuring that quality assurance, shipping and secure payment methods are in place to make the trade a success.
Unlike in the traditional business processes where the buyer and the seller settles the deal at the market place, in e-commerce the process is quite different because the buyers sees the product only after it has been shipped overseas. This requires that the requirements cited above be met.
Online Communities
Online communities have been a great success in the recent past. Many successful companies in the world have resulted to creating online communities as a marketing tool across the globe. Users register in forums such as training and support and in return the companies market their products. E-bay and Amazon enjoy relative popularity the world over for the services they offer virtual markets. They make it possible for people from different corners of the globe to interact in various business processes like ordering, paying and shipping. All these processes are comparable to the real markets and often at a fraction of their cost.
Unlike the ordinary communities in our lives, online communities comprise of people who hardly know one another. They may have or never have met but they all belong to that community. Online communities are not demarcated by borders political or otherwise. To live in an online community, one does not have to have formal documents like national identity cards etc. and most of all, online communities comprise of people of similar interest.
In the context of online communities, we broadly describe them as a group of telecommuters who have a certain interest in common and share the same infrastructure over the internet to meet their needs. It has greatly changed our perception of the community in that communities no longer describe physical residents who share a neighbourhood.
Government Promotion of E-business
E-business caught the world unawares, or so I suppose. Mostly so because, very few policy makers had an idea what was going on in the internet world and for a long time, they thought of the internet as a place where computer geeks come to exchange wits and invade computer systems. For a moment, internet was for office solutions e-mails and file sharing. Revolutionary e-commerce shyly became a reality in the 90 and vibrantly burst into scenes in the early 2000s.
E-commerce is facing challenges of plausibility in that it lacks clear cut regulations governing its processes despite being ubiquitous. Thus, it suffers from lack of credibility of end to end delivery of the process. Governments have been involved in formulation of strategies and policies due to their natural control over cyber space through statutory bodies like the Communication control commissions. Their input is necessary for legislation purposes. A policy affecting national economies is better addresses by the governments.
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