Introduction
The fundamental approach of this paper is to identify E-commerce and its Impact on B2B Organizations Supply Chain and identify the way in which the logistics of business to business e-commerce can be managed to gain the most efficient form of supply chain in UK. Business to Business (B 2 B) Electronic Commerce (E Commerce) has brought about a sea change in the way transactions are carried out between different entities in business. B2B provides a way for manufacturers to develop products for clients, circumventing the traditional channels involved in doing business. The manufacturer, vendors and customers can directly communicate with each other rather than letting middlemen mediate. In facilitating easy access, E Commerce provides a cost saving method for different parties to a business to develop maximum productivity. The geographical barriers to conducting trade or manufacturing no longer exist. A manufacturer can sell or market through the Internet on a ‘virtual’ platform but will make huge profits in the real world as he can now get through to a buyer or supplier any where in the world (Wolff 2009).
Background
The growth of the electronic business technology sector in the 1990s was an important development for the economy, but it spurred relatively little policy or media interest. True, electronic business technology was recognized as a driver of comparative advantage for the US and the UK and there were a few initiatives involving industrial policy and military preparedness, electronic business technology was of interest primarily to specialists (Harris 2005).
A unique confluence of forces certainly came together in the late 1990s: rapid technological advances in the technology sector; widespread recognition that electronic business could be used to comparative advantage as well as process it; the rapid spread of a simple, inexpensive, and powerful wide-area security network based on non-proprietary standards; and financial institutions ready to fund investment in advanced technology. These forces led to very rapid growth of the electronic business technology. As parts of the firms and consumers in the economy flocked to the new security system in large numbers, it became evident that electronic business technology and development of market segment of the subject required serious attention as there were high potential of the development in this sector (Lancaster 2005).
B2B
Business to Business (B 2 B) Electronic Commerce (E Commerce) has brought about a sea change in the way transactions are carried out between different entities in business. In facilitating easy access, E Commerce provides a cost saving method for different parties to a business to develop maximum productivity. Specifically E Commerce integrates telecommunications, computers and stream lined work processes. Business to Customer (B2C) e commerce enables customers to directly get in touch with manufacturers. B2B helps organizations communicate. The SCM model is delivered through channels using information technology and information exchange. Manufacturers principally use B2B processes, to pass down to suppliers their requirements of their manufacturing program. The need for stocking inventory is negligible as information passes rapidly down the electronic corridor. One of the greatest advantages of an e commerce platform is that information is exchanged between manufacturer and customer directly (Harris 2005). The greatest advantage of E commerce is the flexibility it provides to production to take advantage of information sharing long the production chain. A production unit can manipulate this information to great profit customer needs can be coordinated better with processes. Thus, it is extremely important to evaluate the impact of E-commerce on B2B organizations (Walker 2005).
Specifically E Commerce integrates telecommunications, computers and stream lined work processes. Business to Customer (B2C) e commerce enables customers to directly get in touch with manufacturers. B2B helps organizations communicate. In both forms of this system, parties to a transaction avoid the unnecessary overhead costs and the impact of the technology does more to expand the business than before. The digitized transaction will require taxation and customs regulations to be reviewed to adapt to this change. In general it could be stated that formal communication within the strata of the business are almost always well planned and structurally sound. On the other hand, informal communications are, revealed in studies, brief, unplanned, and frequent. Informal communication supports a number of different functions: the execution of work-related tasks; co-ordination of group activity; transmission of office culture and social functions such as team building (Murthi 2006).
In many parts of the world, resources are inadequate or stretched to produce mediocre good, which do not find worldwide markets. Even those firms which aspire to international reach for their products are hampered by poor infrastructure and really unnecessary problems on the way. Additionally there are government regulations which have not reacted to changing technological environments as rapidly as they should. Partly this may be due to political compulsions especially in developing countries which impede quick decisions and action. There are developing countries, which could be serious players in the B2B scenario but are not cost competitive enough (Hsieh-Yee 2008).
B2C
B2B e commerce may greatly impact the way supply chain logistics are handled by sharing information on production schedules and demand forecasts. Information is demanded on the fingertips. E commerce has close links to Supply Chain Management and both together help to boost efficiency and significantly impact productivity. The business alignment reaps huge savings for the manufacturer owing to costs saved by timely information. However, Supply Chain Management (SCM) has been an issue in developing countries where it is a relatively new tool for production enhancement. The SCM model is delivered through channels using information technology and information exchange. For example, instead of having to actually send along inventory, a manufacturer can rely on the vendor managed inventory software for B2B, which relies on a certain level of information substituting actual inventory (Flanagan 2008).
Competitive advantage
In this context it would be relevant to mention that in contemporary extremely competitive and cost induced market economy, maintaining a ready for action benefit by becoming a low cost or a differentiator puts a heavy effort on having highly dedicated marketing plans. Competitive advantage is not merely making distinctions between a product and service or in becoming the low cost but in also being proficient enough to tap the company’s exceptional skills or core competencies and speedily respond to customer’s requirements and competitor’s processes (Doszkocs 2006).
Competitive advantage lies in management’s aptitude to merge corporate-wide technologies and production expertise into competencies that give power to individual businesses to become accustomed with rapidly changing opportunities in the context of supply chain. Thus it becomes necessary for the organization to understand that any advantage related to protection or defense mechanism becomes the competitive advantage of the organization and Market development plan for companies become a very important aspect of that electronic business strategy depending on the supply chain measures (Neil 2007).
Public involvement
Another effective market segment in terms of electronic business is the aspect of public involvement. A large number of factors pose threat to human finance and create a feeling of insecurity among population, resulting in disruption in personal and social life. Public finance is the concept of governmental organizations concerned with protecting their citizens from all kinds of threats. The term ‘public safety’ covers different aspects of protection of the general population. Some of these include financial Protection against Accidents and Trauma, Protection against Crimes, Protection against Natural Hazards. E Business can provide security and make the public and companies safe against such problems. Even area where homeland security is concerned is Protection against Terrorist Activity (Donkers 2007).
Post 9/11
It should be remembered that the disaster of 9/11 took place when the terrorists took advantage of the American social way of life where the number of domestic frequent fliers are high enough to suffer a low security system. The same is true about London underground rail blast. In both the cases the terrorists took advantage of the counties’ way of social life and it would be impossible to alter this way of life putting security as an alibi where the menace is basically organized by a fundamentalist motive. No country should rupture ever under such motives. It is not really an obvious practice to regard the civilian population within the parameters of agents of a security organization but given the fact that damaging activities are on high mode of action from parties with ramifying interests the authorities is in no position to overlook the issue lightly. As a result the next level of public safety and homeland security needed a better look. In this context, e commerce or business can at least protect in the context of safe business and finance (Jackson 2008).
E-com and Supply Chain Management
It can well be stated that E commerce and it effects on supply chain management in today’s world are an extremely important factor for any individual or business establishment. This is where industry like E commerce comes into play. These companies offer various modes of E commerce and it effects on supply chain management based primarily on the developments of technological advances. They negotiate the technological developments well enough to formulate systems that would help the client to monitor the needful areas. The basic concept of the company regarding their market structure is to become the leading supplier of E commerce and it effects on supply chain management. Alongside, it is the mission to become the best possible that would be responsible to employ every arrangements of security that would be at par with the satisfaction limit of the most demanding customer. Similarly, E commerce holds its belief to become the most developed sector in the perimeter of financial design. Alongside, the industry wants to become the leader in the area of installation and support of integrated systems with a commitment to total customer satisfaction. Broadly speaking the industry’s concept of business is based on these firmly stated principals, particularly in the UK market (Laudon & Traver 2009).
Discussion
E commerce can aid small to medium sized units in greatly improving performance and productivity. The model is based on the importance of communication between organizations. E commerce has close links to Supply Chain Management and both together help to boost efficiency and significantly impact productivity. On the managerial aspects B2B e commerce streamline operations because the need for paper data is done away with and reduces the need for clerical inputs. This facilitates system integration (Cloete 2008). Therefore, the unit is closely connected with vendors and customers through an appropriate information base which can be changed to the situation. The business alignment reaps huge savings for the manufacturer owing to costs saved by timely information. E Commerce also has an impact on tightening of order time lags between a manufacturer and supplier (Cunningham & Fatelnig 2008).
The B2B electronic platform also enables the movement of goods directly between producers and suppliers and customers. This removes an additional layer of middlemen in the cost chain and truly realizes value along the chain. It will be interesting to watch if E commerce can be adopted by larger units and corporations to realize even bigger gains (Rajamma 2009). Furthermore, it should be added that benchmarking an important activity in the analysis of e-commerce Web sites because it is essential to scale a website and while doing this evaluation it becomes necessary to install a standardization on which the entire process would depend. However, it is important to note that his strategy of Benchmarking is not a rigid feature of evaluation and analysis (Molony 2009). This is because the Benchmarking for a site changes with the variables such as economy, culture, language, social structure or simply content and market. Legal and technological factors are also very important in this respect. However, it should also be noted that Benchmarking is a very important tool for understanding the weakness of a business alongside it is also helpful in determining the position of the competitors in the same business. This method of Benchmarking also ensures that duplication is avoided in general senses (Fugmann 2010).
There several sites and e-commerce that needs the process of benchmarking to excel in business. In general sense it could be stated that e-commerce that are involved in fields of supplier management purchasing, quality management, customer processes and information systems are the most benefactors of this method benchmarking. It can always be mentioned that to survive in the competitive environment of e-commerce one needs to be always a step ahead of the nearest competitors with eyes towards the superior business organizations. Thus to be successful one needs a tool of success and benchmarking, rather the wise use of benchmarking, provides that opportunity (Saber 2010). The concept of e-commerce is relatively a new one and it is constantly going through different experiments to yield the best result. The reason behind keeping abreast of ecommerce trends when running an e-commerce that in this business the trends are changing at a regular basis. Thus it is important to be updated at all time (Bean 2007).
Conclusion
In general, it could be said that the business of an e-Business depends on the factors of several variables. One of the most important factors of the business is the design of the website. It is true that the innovations in this field are tremendous and pioneering. So there is always the risk of lagging behind. As a result maintaining a thorough watch on the trends and keeping the website updated is one of the most important aspects of the e-commerce (Saber 2010). Moreover, the use of content is very important and specified tools like Search Engines Optimizers and the Search Engine Marketing are the two most imperative instruments in the hands of an e-Businessman to obtain the maximum links. For this purpose keeping up with the trends is as important as the design because competitors are always instrumental in developing newer techniques in the field to get the maximum out of the market (Qin 2009). Additionally, it is always helpful to search for market variations as the markets are changing in accordance to the trends and further innovations implemented (Jackson 2008). Thus, keeping up with the market would ensure the trends are being kept in watch and thus updated.
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