Information Management and Electronic Commerce

1
Information Management andElectronic Commerce

• Manage What?
• Information? Data? Knowledge?
• E-commerce? E-business?

Strategic issues affecting all organisations
2
Information Management andElectronic Commerce

• Why? The Business Drivers (Paradigm Shift,
  Tapscott Caston)
• Productivity of Knowledge Workers
• Quality throughout the value chain
• Responsiveness - to ALL customers
• Globalisation conquering time and space
• Outsourcing and core competences
• Partnering competition through collaboration
• Social/environmental responsibility

Information driver or enabler?
3
Electronic Business

• The process of doing business using electronic
  networks to buy, sell, service customers and
  collaborate with business partners (whatis.com)
• The main categories of e-business
• Business-to-consumer (B2C)
• Business-to-business (B2B)
• Consumer-to-consumer (C2C)
• The role of the Internet - using the World Wide
  Web to provide a global electronic network

4
Information Management (IM) - the organisational
challenge

• Create an IT platform delivering data,
  information, knowledge and processing tools to
  wherever it is needed, whenever it is needed.
• Develop and execute business strategies which
  exploit this platform for maximum competitive
  advantage
• Creative thought
• Collaboration might be the best way of competing!

5
Information Systems (MIS) - the managerial
challenge

• Processing data into documents
• - for administrative efficiency
• Processing data into information
• - for effective management decision making
• Processing information into knowledge
• - for organisational creativity - maybe through
  e-business
• Traditional organisations tend to follow stages
  of development - and may suffer
• New organisations can skip stages - and may gain
  competitive advantage

6
Information Technology (IT)Resources for MIS
creation (and dont forget PEOPLE)
Communications
Computing
Data
Applications
7
What is the relationship between IM and
E-business?

• The sophistication of the current IT platform
  determines the present scope for e-business But
  not the POTENTIAL scope
• e-business strategy and information strategy are
  interdependent
• the information potential drives the e-business
  potential
• e-business competition drives the development of
  information systems
• Information and Knowledge Management skills are
  critical success factors in e-business

8
Creating the e-Business

• (1) Assess the background for e-Business
• Understand e-Business models and their potential
  for business transformation
• Assess the business environment of the
  organisation
• Political, Economic Socio/legal, Technical
• The IT infrastructure
• Analyse customer/supplier channel relationships
• Current potential
• Identify key industry trends , Critical Success
  Factors and other influential issues

9
Creating the e-Business

• Assess the contribution of IT, MIS and IM to the
  current business strategy
• Perform a SWOT analysis
• Identify the core competencies
• Analyse the current marketing strategy
• Analyse the current IT/IS infrastructure
• Internet/intranet/extranet/knowledge mgt
• Analyse the structure and processes of the
  organisation
• Analyse the supply chain of the organisation

10
Creating the e-Business

• (3) Create an e-Business marketing plan
• Position the organisation in the value chain
• Decide upon the value and scope of the customer
  offering
• Decide pricing and revenue sources
• Identify new resources and relationships required
• Identify investment and performance evaluation
  criteria
• Estimate expected business results

11
Creating the e-Business

• (4) Manage the implementation of the plan
• Create appropriate business processes and
  organisational structures
• Build and exploit an appropriate IT
  infrastructure
• Create and manage partnering, outsourcing and
  community relationships
• Cultivate an appropriate culture
• Manage the change
• Sustain the change in the longer term

12
IM and e-Business- important underlying
principles

• How IT enables Business Transformation
• Types of e-Business relationships (models)
• Knowledge, Information, Data and Systems
• The IT platform the provider of Knowledge and
  Information
• Tools and Processes for aligning Business, IS and
  IT strategies
• How to invest in and how to measure e-Business
  performance
• The nature of Business Process Re-engineering
• Organisational structures and relationships
• Cultural Human aspects of change
• Resource acquisition - partnering and outsourcing
  choice

13
Main sources of difficulty in understanding and
creating an e-business

• high degree of interdependency
• chicken egg syndromes
• dynamic situations
• disagreements between experts
• mix of skills experiences required
• major resource constraints