E-Customer Relationship Management and Supply Chain Management 1.2

Q2: Write short notes on types of business on Internet.

There are 4 types of businesses that can be carried out over the Internet. They are:

B2B: Business-to-Business Transactions that take place online. For example “dell.com”. This company sells computers to several other enterprises via the Internet thus eliminating the middleman and reducing costs by a great deal.

B2C: Business to Consumer transactions that enable companies to get in touch with, service and makes sales to their customers via the World Wide Web. For example “rediff.com” which sells everything right from music to books on the net.

C2B: Consumer to Business transactions where in the consumer specifies their requirements and the business tries to meet them. Thus the consumer gets the best bargain and businesses face fair competition. Ex “priceline.com”

C2C: Customer to Customer transactions where in customer trade within themselves through auctions. Ex “Ebay.com”

With the changing times in the age of net, e-business cannot be just restricted towards being merely a B2B and B2C but with time it has also grown and is clearly even developing C2C and C2B. Ex Ebay.com and priceline.com used by various airlines like delta.com. The prices of tickets are no longer fixed but depend upon the place, time of booking, destination etc. and not necessary that the price paid by the passenger boarding the flight will be the same as the rest of the passengers. Infact, Now it is the customer who makes the offer and the organization has to make the counter offer.

Q3: Explain the significance of E-Business?

Engaging in E-business means meeting the below stated demands and harnessing the power of a host of benefits:

• Achieve Market Leadership: Stay ahead of your competition through a program of planning, investment and implementation geared to the information economy. Enhance your brand reputation and provide superior return on investment (ROI).
• Build Customer Loyalty: Use information more effectively to retain your most valuable customer. Anticipate their needs and tailor products and services to suit them, while protecting your business from competitive threats.
• Create New Products and Services: Produce new sources of value with improved time-t-market and product development capabilities. Satisfy your customers through mass customization and responsive pricing.
• Enhance Human Capital: Anticipate and capitalize on organizational changes. Maximize employee contribution and effectiveness, integrate new ways of doing business with old and exploit new sources of information and knowledge
• Harness Technology: Ensure that your technology choices will allow you to execute your e-business plan. Leverage existing investments and make the most of new ones.
• Optimize Business Processes: Bring product to market more quickly, reduce the cost of the sale, create integrated customer/supplier relationships, reduce transactional and overhead costs and improve customer responsiveness and service.
• Reach New Markets: Grow revenues and market share by extending the supply chain and promoting tailored products and services through new delivery channels. Manage growth and control downside risk through market diversification.

The pressure to keep pace with this rapid change can be intimidating, but everyone in business today knows that we must embrace these new technologies – whether to reach out to customer, communicate with partners, connect with back-end data-systems or conduct transactions – because E-Business is Business

4.Short Notes:

a. Just in Time(JIT)

JIT as a philosophy of operations management: It encompasses all aspects of a firm's productive activities -- human resources, vendor relations, technology and material management, etc.

JIT as a production-control method: It includes JIT purchasing, delivery, and inventory management, etc.

The benefits of JIT (e.g., as evidenced in Japanese automobile industry) include:

• Better quality products.
• Higher inventory turnover.
• Higher productivity.
• Lower production costs.

Three fundamental concepts to JIT production system:

• Elimination of waste: Production of only the minimum necessary units in the smallest possible quantities (lot sizes) at the latest possible time.
• Employee Participation.
• Integrated systems.

	Lean Flexible System (Just-in-Time System)
Production System	Customers' orders pull the products through the factory
Production Lot Size	Small batches are made with reduced setup time
Process Design	Concurrent engineering design is applied
Inventory Turnover	High turnover with minimum inventory level
Suppliers	Fewer number and they are helped, informed, and kept close
Employees	Multi-skilled, flexible and work well in teams
Decision-making	Empowerment of workers enables quick response
Quality	Everyone's responsibility
System Improvement	Emphasis is on small but continuous improvements

b) Supply Chain Management.

The coverage of the most of the most sophisticated enterprise planning system today is the same elegantly simple mathematical model introduced in the first MRP system. This model of “what do I need, what do I have, what do I need to get and when” is the back -bone of the integrated supply chain. Requirements are taken from the customer or internally developed forecasts. These requirements are compared to what is on hand. Finally calculation of what is needed is completed including an offset of the estimated lead time to determine when that time is required from the supplier. This process of “what is needed , what is available, what is required and when” is accomplished by each link of the supply chain. New advances in technology allow these calculations to be completed very quickly and instantly communicated electronically all along the supply chain. Care must be taken that technology does not totally replace an effective demand management process. Without intelligent demand management, the risk of excess inventory is still very real. In addition, another barrier to full automation of requirements communication is not technological constraint but rather the confidence that the calculated requirements are accurate. This accuracy is not dependent on the mathematical computations of the computer. The accuracy is dependent on the quality of the data input into the system. This is an issue that cannot be addressed simply by the purchase of a new computer program. This phenomenon has been plaguing software implementations since the invention of the computer.