E-commerce can Reduce Cycle Time, Improve Employees’ Empowerment and Facilitate Customer Support

E-commerce help in reduce cycle time:

Cycle time is the sum of time between a customer making an order and obtaining the goods or the time business take to complete transactions from beginning to the end.E-commerce can reduce cycle time because it processes all documents electronically and error-free, minimizing processing time and the number of staff required. With E-commerce, customers are able to place order and receive goods in a rapid time by eliminating the business process and intermediaries. For example. we can book ticket through sms for TGV cinema.It reduce the time which we need to queqe up. And it also can book for a amount we wanted, because some of the reason we have to watch a movie with a group of friends. Beside this, E-commerce also reduces labour time in document and mail preparation, telephone calling, data entry, overtime and supervision. It also provides managers more accurate data and improves the analysis of pricing change in order to maximize product availability by recognition of demand trends well. The uses of extranet greatly reduce cycle time .

Improve employee empowerment
With E-commerce, it can improve employee empowerment. Because by using the e-commerce, the employees can use the custemer complaint through the company wedsite. to increase the cuztomer sactisfaction and it can lead to maintain the company impression and gain profit from that.By the way,it is sucessful to unlocking the potential of employee and enable them to make decision by their own.The employee can fell more freedom and flixible to their own jods.Furthermore, they can take as a reponsibility to their own field and it can motivated the employee to perform well. Some of the company communicate their employee through intranet.Because of it, The manager of each deparment can place order easily and give some authority to their employees.

Customer support
With e-commerce, they also can provide some customer services like Frequently Ask Question(FAQ) to support the customers' understanding.This can lead to improve their quality of service by analysis the customer comments, suggentions and complaints.The company can improve their servive instantaneously and effectively.Not only for this, with E-commerce, the customer can shopping through the company wedsite.it can let the customer place a order or can search the detail of the product.By the way, customer also can customize their own product. For example nike and jaguar, it can lead to increase of customer sactisfaction and customer need's orientated.

The example of an E-commerce failure and its causes

The example of an E-commerce failure is Kozmo.com.Kozmo.com was founded in 1997 by two young Wall Street professionals,Joseph Park and Yong Kang. Park had been an analyst in the corporate finance division of blue-chip investment bank Goldman Sachs & Co. while Kang was an assistant vice president at Societe Generale in the media and communications group.
The company began as a service that delivered videos by bicycle messenger to Manhattan customers who ordered them online. The company boasted “from the Internet to your door in under an hour” and its attractive rates helped rapidly draw thousands of customers .The company is often referred to as an example of the dot-com excess.The documentary film e-Dreams (2001) portray the fate of the company.
Kozmo.com's aura helped it raise more than $250 million, but the company was unable to generate enough revenue to cover costs. In 1999, it had $3.5 million in revenue, compared to $26.4 million in net losses. Basic problems with its business model included offering a costly home-delivery service for free, even on very small orders on which it was impossible to turn a profit. Last-ditch efforts to boost orders and stop the delivery losses by charging $1.99 for orders under $30 helped, but couldn't deliver the company.

Mounting losses led to Park’s ouster in 2000. The new leadership couldn’t turns things around or pull off the long-delayed IPO. In April 2001 the company ran out of money, shut down operations and laid off its employees.

An example of E-commerce success and its causes

"Google", a well known World Wide Web by almost every people. Google is an America Public Coorporation. Goolge had begun in year 1996 by Larry Page, and was soon joined by Sergey Brin,

while they was the Ph.D. Student at Stanford University in California.

Recently, Google has growth become more famous in e-commerce. It is not easy to success in e-commerce nows a day is more competitive and not easy to survive. Why Google can success in E-commerce? There must be causes behind this success.

Google has created services and tools for the general public and business environment alike; including Web applications, advertising networks and solutions for businesses. Most of Google's revenue (aproximiately 99%) is derived from advertising programs. Google AdWords is currently used by thousands of businesses worldwide to gain new customers in a cost-effective way.

However, why search advertising works? Search advertising has finally realized the marketing potential of the Internet. AdWords uses keywords to precisely target ad delivery to web users seeking information about a particular product or service. The program is based on cost- per-click (CPC) pricing,so advertisers only pay when an ad is clicked on.

Google advertising can feed into your sales cycle in innumerable ways, enabling to achieve a wide range of objectives for both consumer and business-to-business marketing. A high-level list might include:
- Selling products and services online
- Generating targeted leads
- Testing marketing messages
- Increasing online registrations
- Driving downloads
- Distributing publications
- Promoting special events
- Educating buyers
- Gathering market data
- Building an email database

Why do people choose Google instead of some other search tool? Because Google delivers the information people want, quickly and accurately. With the industry's most advanced search technology, Google is the fastest and easiest way to locate relevant information on the Internet. Google's search index contains billions of web documents, and gets bigger and better all the time.

As a conclusion, in my opinion, why Google can success in E-commerce is because the name of Google is famous to every internet user. So, it consists very high potential market to promote the services and products because there are many viewer will view and use Google. As a result, Google can earn the advertisment fees because of the trusted name of "Google" and yet Google provide a good advertising plan and strategy to their customer. Therefore, Google success is a very good example of E-commerce success.

The History of E-commerce

History of E-commerce started from the invention of the very old concept of "sell and buy”, electricity, cables, computers, modems, and the Internet.

When the Internet was opened to commercial use, E-commerce became possible in 1991.

In the late 1970s the ability to use these technologies appeared and allowed business companies and organizations to send commercial documentation electronically.

It took about four years to develop the security protocols and DSL which allowed rapid access and a persistent connection to the Internet although the Internet began to advance in popularity among the general public in 1994.

In 2000 a great number of business companies in the United States and Western Europe represented their services in the World Wide Web.
The “brick and mortar” retailers recognized the advantages of electronic commerce and began to add such capabilities to their web sites since the dot-com collapse in 2000 led to unfortunate results and many of E-commerce companies disappeared.

The end of 2001, the largest form of E-commerce, had around $700 billion Business-to-Business (B2B) model in transactions.

End of 2007, E-commerce sales continued to grow and E-commerce sales accounted for 3.4 percent of total sales.

About myself

My name is Ng Inn Hong, or can call me Ivan as well, i'm the guy who in the picture.I’m from Taiping which is a “raining town” because it almost raining through the year, about my hobbies is to exercise and play pc game, and collect model car, jogging and play basketball is the best exercise for me. Because these exercise can release my stress and the best is to keep my body as well. Because I have been fat a lot since came to UTAR. But no matter how I try and try. The weight doesn’t decrease, very sad. By the way, I’m the person who likes to meet friends and will play some fool things in front of them. In the college, I have a group of member which I never have before. Because in the past I stay in KTAR, my group assignment member wont not work hard and concerned about the assignment. But, they are. During leisure time, we will go to travel around. For the top 5 website I visit the most is http://www.xunlei.com/ , http://www.topgear.com/ , http://www.baidu.com/ , http://www.hotmail.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/ .

For the http://www.xunlei.com/ I can download the latest movie, drama and some other show that I can not miss. And I can download which bring some memorable time to me .in this website, i can look for the funny show which can cheer up my life when i was down.

For me, I’m the person who like car very much. So I’ll go to http://www.topgear.com/ to search the latest information for car which will expand my knowledge to cars, for example the new technology for the car engine which are invented to save the fuel and efficiency and to keep our environment clean.

With the http://www.baidu.com/ this website can let me download the latest music or which I have been miss. Because listening to the music can let me to relax and refresh my mind. And I can download my favorite artists songs.

the hotmail mail box can allow me to check my mail which my friend to me, and keep contact with my friends with around the world.

For the youtube, I can watch some show or video clips which are funny and fantasticality. so for the last. i would like to say. internet make us life become easy.

self-introduction

My name is Emilia Ting Jue Yu. I am the female beside the guy inside the picture on the left hand site. I am a student in UTAR study in sungai long.

I come from Bintulu, Sarawak which is quite far from where I study now. My family members include my father, mother, brother, sister and I. My hobbies are sleeping and reading. I can sleep almost 14 hours per day. That is the reason why my friends always call me pig. (luckily my body not like a pig). Beside sleeping, i like to read novel, especially romance novel. This is the reason why cause my like to dream. Some people will think that dreaming is not realistic, but i believe that with a dream i will work more harder to achive it as it is my target in my future.

The website i always visit include http://www.xunlei.com/, http://www.yahoo.com/, http://www.friendster.com/w.friendster.com/, http://www.google.com/, http://www.utar.edu.my/and http://wble.utar.edu.my/

The website i visit most is xunlei. This website is mainly for downloading movie and drama. The latest movie and drama including Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, UK, USA, China, Thailand and others will be posted. This website also include some world news and entertainment news recently.

The second website that i most visit is . I used to look for the photo of my friends and reading their forward message. Some of the forward message which is funny or news, i will forward to my other friends too. So we can share information and fun together. By looking for their photoes, I can know how are they recently althought we can't meet always. This is also one way to keep in touch among my friends.

Next will be follow by yahoo.com. I use to use yahoo to check mail and search some information need especially when doing my assignment.

Follow by the UTAR website and the wble. Sometimes i will visit to wble to see whether any anoucement has been posted. Beside that, i will visit UTAR website especially when before and after the exam to check the exam timetable and the result after the examination.

Lastly i will only visit google for finding information when doing my assingnment.

That's all about me. Thanks.

Siok Yean

My name is Siok Yean, is a full time student in University Tunku Abdul Rahman. Bachelor in Commerce (HONS) Accounting is what I’m studying currently. Due to the long distance between my hometown and my university, I have no choice but to move out from my hometown. I managed to rent a small room and start staying with my friends. This is my very first time stay with others except from my family members. I started to learn on how to live together with my housemates as well as get along with them. Besides that, I also started to learn to manage every tiny thing on my own. I have to admit that it is not an easy matter for me but I know, these are the difficulties that I need to face and after I gone through all these things, I will be more independent than before.

Everything has pro and con. Since I moved out from my hometown, I have more freedom compare to last times. I start meeting more people, making more friends around, seeing so much of new things that never could I imagine and most importantly, it enrich my life experiences. This is the first time in life staying in an apartment and I enjoy the times while I am here especially the moment I spent at the swimming pool. Without my own noticing, I develop my swimming hobby. What is more, I will spend an hour every night to go online for some of my internet activities.The websites that I definitely will visit every night are www.hotmail.com, www.friendster.com, www.yahoo.com, wble.utar.edu.com and www.mugglenet.com.

I always check my mailbox at www.hotmail.com to find out is there any mail from my friends. Since secondary school time I have this good friend will email me every now and then to tell me things that happening around her. It is always a happy moment when we share out our news together. Further more, with this email address that I registered under hotmail account, I can use it as my messenger email address and start chit chatting with my friends through MSN messenger. This MSN messenger become very useful whenever I need to have some assignment discussion with my group members.

http://www.friedster.com/ always is a website that I must visit every night. I can upload and share my latest photos here and check out my friends’ latest photos. It is an easy and convenient way for me to keep in touch with all my old friends as well as meet new friends.

Being aware of the latest news always keep us well inform about what is happening all around the world. Unfortunately, I am lazy when come to reading the news paper everyday, to solve this problem I make use of my online time and go to the Yahoo website and find out the latest news. Most importantly, I can save my daily newspaper cost.

My university provides this WBLE website as an exchange centre for the students, lecturers and tutors to communicate with each other. By using WBLE, lecturers and tutors can announce latest university stuff through WBLE and students can leave message to the lecturers and tutors. Since then, WBLE become one of the often websites that I will always visit.

Lastly, not forgetting to mention my favourite website, www.mugglenet.com. It is a Harry Potter website. This website will provide the latest news of the author of Harry Potter story book, latest news on how the filming of Harry Potter movie is going on and also the latest news of the actors and actress of the Harry Potter movie. Harry Potter website also provides some games, whenever I fell bored, I will spend my leisure time on these Harry Potter games. As I love to read Harry Potter story book very much, visiting this website is a must for me.

Nowadays, in a develop country, internet not only provide services for the corporate world to run its businesses but also provide services for individuals in their daily life.