What are 7 requirements before you can transform your business into a e-Business?
- Identify and measure business objectives
- Ensure organizational/operational flexibility
- Re-think entire company supply chain
- Transform the company into a process-centric one
- Understand security requirements
- Align business organizations with a flexible IT architecture
- Establish ubiquity within standards
What are 6 advantages of e-Business?
- Improved operational efficiency and productivity
- Reduction in operating cost and costs of goods and services
- Improved competitive position
- Penetration into new markets through new channels
- Harmonization and standardization of processes
- Improved relationships with suppliers and improved customer service.
What are 5 inhibitors for e-Business
- Management/Strategy issues
(not well-defined for e-Business, too many changes required to start) - Cost/Financing
start up cost - Insufficient security and trust
- Legal issues
- Technology concerns
(limited interoperability of current apps and systems)
What are 5 types of primary activities?
- Inbound logistics
receiving/storing/disseminating inputs for the production process - Operations
all processes related to transforming inputs into outputs - Outbound logistics
All activities concerned with the distribution of the products/services to customers - Marketing/sales
- Service
Includes repairs, maintenance, follow ups etc.
What is a workflow?
The sequence of processing steps during which information and physical objects are passed from one processing step to the other. It links together technologies and tools able to automatically route events and tasks with programs or users.
What are 4 types of secondary activities?
- Firm infrastructure
Administration, general management for planing and control - Human Resource Management
- Product/Technology Development
All activities related to product/process development - Procurement
What further 3 types of relationships are there in e-business?
- Operational level
No sharing of information, just orders placed –> another business can fulfill your current need. - Tactical level
Same as operational, but for recurrent demands. So it is for a specific period of time/amounts for which agreements are made. - Strategic level (AKA Value Added Partnerships)
Acting collaboratively to co-develop something
So, depending on the way companies interact (based on the levels of relationship) - what three TEMPORAL relationships are there between companies?
- Buy & sell on a ‘spot’-market.
- Longer-term relationship, when there is a regular need.
- Partnership, in which trading partners work together for the longer term and might pursue a joint competitive strategy.
What are the 7 characteristics of business processes?
learn by heart
- Processes exist within an environment
(both internal as external business environment) - Every process has a customer & is initiated by a customer
(can also be an internal customer) - Every business process implies processing
(A series of processing steps is involved) - Communication is an important part of any process
(both within the process as within the environment) - They have inventories or queues
(steps where there is waiting for processing) - They have decision points.
(decisions about routing and allocation of capacity) - Every process delivers a product.
What are the 6 main characteristics of networked organizations?
- The links between participants are based on various types of exchange.
- Networks have a distinct boundary with their environments
- Participants pursue a common goal
- There is business collaboration|(insourcing, outsourcing, rightsourcing)
- All participants have their own diverse, specific goals as well
- Relations are characterized by mutual investments, or inter dependencies (not only simple transactions)
What is an integrated supply chain?
Multiple firms within a shared market segment who collaboratively plan, implement and monitor the flow of goods, services and information
What are the 4 features/characteristics of an integrated supply chain?
(learn by heart)
- Processes are inter-organizational, but not controlled by a single organization
- Production processes are flexible with different parties involved at different times
- Parties involved in producing a single product are often geographically dispersed;
- Coordination depends on IT infrastructure and telecommunication networks
What are the 4 main benefits of integrated supply chains?
- Reduced inventories
- Cost savings
- Improved value of goods & services you can deliver
- Tighter links with business partners
What are the 4 layers of the technical infrastructure of e-Businesses top to bottom?
- Collaborative Technologies
Workflow or EDI - Web-based Technologies and Applications
Web applications used in multi-tier system
Static vs. dynamic sources - Basic Infrastructure
Two-tier, three-tier or multi-tier client/server (the infrastructure of it) - Networking facilities
- The higher, the closer to the business
- The lower, the closer to IT.
What are the 5 basic features of the client/server model?
TIERS
- Clients and servers are functional modules with well-defined interfaces.
- The relationship between client/server is established between two functional modules.
- Information exchange between clients and servers are strictly through messages.
- Message exchange is typically interactive
- Clients and servers may run on separate dedicated machines, connected through a network
What are the 2 advantages of the three-tier system?
- It enables developers to isolate the processing tier - they can further develop it, without having to change the database or the client
- It can decouple the business logic from the presentation function AND from the database function
What does workflow technology enable?
It enables developers to describe full intra- or inter-organisational business processes with dependencies, sequencing selection and iteration. It enables the workflow developers to describe the complex rules for processing in a business process & allows people to be deployed more productively within an organisation.
What are 4 problems associated with EDI?
- Fixed transaction sets
- Resilience to change
- Reliance on proprietary (owned by a single organization) communication networks
- Encapsulation of business rules in transaction sets
What are the 4 characteristics of Enterprise Application Integration?
- Focus: achieving intra-enterprise integration and driving operational efficiency.
- Provides infrastructure to reuse, rapidly connect, interface AND unify information between internal applications.
- Represents both products and processes of integration of applications with data files and databases
- Non-intrusive –> apps don’t change or the changes required are insignificant.
What is meant by loose coupling?
When an application does not need to know the intimate details of how to reach and interface with other applications. They can just send and receive messages - only concern per application is that it can send a message to the messaging system.
-> Means there is a messaging backbone (intermediate) between systems.
What is the messaging concept used for asynchronous messaging?
- The publish/subscribe Interaction Model.
- Applications communicate by exchanging messages, but senders do not specify the recipients - they just publish a topic of interest that is put on the message server within the message backbone
- All the systems are linked to a shared bus, the MOM.
- The publisher produces messages on a subject or topic, which are sent and stored in the MOM.
- Subscribers can subscribe on specific subjects or topics. The MOM then sends the relevant messages.
- Each system has an adapter that is connected to the MOM through which it sends or receives the messages
What are three typical EAI topologies?
- Point-to-point
- Publish/Subscribe
- Hub and Spoke
What is the business process integration layer?
Builds on EAI. It aims to automate business processes that need data and business logic from a range of different applications.
Automation is done through process-oriented workflows.
Ensures that business processes are executed in the defined order using the required data.
What types of cultural conflicts (categories) can exist in your data?
- Intra-Organization
- Cross-Organization
- Cross-National
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Lecture 1A - Intro12
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Lecture 2 - The World of e-Business20
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Lecture 3 - e-Business Relationships27
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Lecture 4 - e-Business Networks21
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Computer Network Concepts2
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Lecture 5 - e-Business Technological Infrastructure22
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Lecture 6 - Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)28
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Lecture 7 - e-Business Integration19
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Definitions5
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Extra34
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Details2
