CCT 355: E-Business Technologies

1. CCT 355: E-Business Technologies Lecture 3: Business Models and Relationships

2. Administrivia • Competititve Intelligence Assignment - questions? Progress? • Article Analysis wiki assignment - first round today, sign up for future

3. Understanding E-Business = Understanding Business • The “right” technology in the wrong operational context will probably cause more trouble than anything • “Right” technological implementations are ill-structured - but not unresolvable problems • Understanding business structure and relationships is essential to get even close to “right”

4. Business Model Components • Architecture • Participants in Marketplace • Benefits/Value • Revenue models

5. Items of Consideration • Value proposition • Revenue Models • Market Opportunity • Competitive Environment & Advantage • Market Strategy • Organizational Development • IT - increasingly a factor in all these

6. Internet-related models • Internet-Enabled • Value Networks • E-Business models • Market Participation • Cyberintermediaries

7. Internet-Enabled • From simple to complex in functional integration and innovation • Basic e-commerce is simple in both (and not all that interesting any more - turnkey systems available for free or near so) • Virtual auctions, value integration, collaboration slightly more complex (although these are easy now too)

8. Value Networks • Networked collections of firms and entities, tied together by Internet technologies • Integrates suppliers, outsourced agents, customers - anyone with a stake • Web brokers interface collective agents (and are themselves networked?) • Open vs. closed system to enable negative entropy and autopoesis (or, more simply, renewed energy for self-organization)

9. Value Chain Integration • Tight symbiotic relations among all steps in process (again, whether internal/external, central/peripheral to core process) • E.g., Wal-Mart’s EDI system for suppliers - pressure on all steps to conform and lower prices, can lead to radical overhaul quickly (e.g., home flourescents)

10. Market Participation and Intermediaries • In theory, Internet removes many intermediaries between producers/consumers • In practice, we still use many (examples?) • Portals and Cybermediaries play a role in reintroducing intermediation, but in a effective and powerful way

11. E-Business Network Models • Tele-work • Virtual Organization • Process Outsourcing • Collaborative Product Development • Value-chain integration

12. Telework and Virtual Organization • Remote work is a reality facilitated by networked communicaiton/information systems • Virtual organizations also the norm, even in traditional orgs - ad hoc teams organize to tackle new and often serious issues, all tied in matrix organization

13. Process Outsourcing • Interaction and adhocracy - no need to have a full complement of people in-house • Overflow, tangential processed outsourced (e.g., HR services companies) • Even core processes can be (often overflow manufacturing - but even basics (e.g., Nike)

14. Collaborative Product Dev. • Integration of all business units (and all external partners) • Voices of internal/external, central and peripheral included (in the right mix ideally) • E.g., Ford and links to emergent technology providers, or open source development

15. Value Chain Relationships • Primary vs. Secondary activities - primary mostly SCM • Is marketing/service really primary? Sounds odd - CRM important, but core? Often outsourced • Enterprise strategy and operations (overall ERP) is secondary • All processes that impact bottom line

16. Factors of Value Processes • Processes exist in larger environment - a range of strong/weak interdependencies • Processes triggered by inputs, provide outputs - • Processes are wide and varied, but each one should be specialized on what it does (process disambiguation) • Processes can have backlog - bottleneck processes are usually the most evident (good processes aren’t)

17. IT Process Questions • Is IT enabling a core process (e.g., manufacturing) or is the core process itself (e.g., law, education, etc.) • Degree of repetition (e.g., form processing should be relatively automatic - contingencies more labour intensive) • Degree of anticipation (e.g., is process trigger random or scheduled?)

18. Process Improvements via IT • Transactional • Geographical • Automation • Analytical • Information/knowledge management • Sequence changes and tracking

19. Mediation and Collaboration • Degree of mediation - extent to which one person/entity/process is central node • Degree of collaboration - extent to which nodes are required to share information • Network properties and consequences - centrality, sturctural holes, cliques

20. Internet and Market Factors • Can make markets more dynamic and transparent (on price, availability, supply and product) • Influence factors required to change, as well as facilitate inter- and intra-organizational processes

21. Next week • Chs. 5, 10 in book • Second round of presentation • Competitive Intelligence proposals due