Amazon.co.uk Review
By necessity, much of the book is about the Net, though intranets and private trading networks such as EDI are covered. Open standards, including UML for business modelling, XML for data interchange, LDAP for directory services, VPN as a replacement for private networks and so on are defined and their uses explained. Though the Net is built on open standards, the authors also effectively demonstrate why e-businesses might choose proprietary standards to provide business specific features, for example, choosing Microsoft's PPTP protocol over the Net's SMTP for back end messaging in a closed environment.
It isn't all sweetness and light. Attention is given to securing your business from the risks involved in working online, all the way from protecting your data and business against accidents to protecting it against malicious individuals. There's even a section on the risks involved when companies with incompatible business systems mate.
E-Business Solutions is readable, lucid and authoritative--some poor subbing aside. "Business acumen rules, technology serves," write its authors, summing up their approach. This is a book for managers who want to familiarise themselves with the toolkit available to implement a business idea.--Steve Patient --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"...an excellent undergraduate textbook for introductory courses in electronic commerce...the authors deftly juggle in providing technical knowledge to both professional and general audience...I have to applaud their success in maintaining a balance..." (Telematics and Informatics, Vol.19, 2002)
"this is required reading from anyone who tries to keep up with all the developments in this fast moving world."
––Teleworker, March 2001
Review
Product Description
In addition to the established yet equally important features such as security, payment and trust, supply chain integration and customer to supplier trade it includes:
? mBusiness covering key issues such as roving and roaming access and the technologies GPRS, UMTS and WAP
? Help for readers to formulate their own eBusiness strategy by drawing out some general principles
? Virtual mobile network operators: data extensions to the mobile switch, home and visitor location
? Analysis and real world examples of mobile services
? The technical options, impact, integration, mechanics and implications of evolving eBusiness
Primarily aimed at planners, engineers, managers and developers in the IT, multimedia and on–line industries. Recommended reading for students in computer science electrical & electronic engineering, IT and telecommunications.
From the Back Cover
In addition to the established yet equally important features such as security, payment and trust, supply chain integration and customer to supplier trade it includes:
∗ mBusiness covering key issues such as roving and roaming access and the technologies GPRS, UMTS and WAP
∗ Help for the reader to formulate their own eBusiness strategy by drawing out some general principles
∗ Virtual mobile network operators: data extensions to the mobile switch, home and visitor location
∗ Analysis and real world examples of mobile services
∗ The technical options,impact, integration, mechanics and implications of evolving eBusiness
Primarily aimed at planners, engineers, managers and developers in the IT, multimedia and on–line industries. Recommended reading for students in computer science, electrical and electronic engineering, IT and telecommunications.
About the Author
STEVE WEST leads the development of BT′s eBusiness products, and has over 15 years experience in communications, software and information technology. He has worked on a variety of projects, including the management of BT′s work within the Open group and generation of corporate IT strategy. Steve co–authored one of the existing books in the Wiley/BT series, Media engineering, with Mark Norris.
Excerpted from EBusiness Essentials: Technology and Network Requirements for Mobile and Online Markets by Mark Norris, Steve West. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Chapter 3 - The Electronic Shop
"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it" Frank Zappa
The first encounter that most people have with eBusiness is the electronic shop, by which we mean the 'look and feel' of the screen in front of them. Like any other business, there are a number of features and qualities that a successful shop must have.
First, it must look good - if it doesn't engage the attention of the viewer, then custom will just pass on by. This is a start, but by no means the end. The next thing that has to happen is that the viewer needs to be seduced in some way. There needs to be something in the electronic shop-front that holds the attention or, better still, triggers a purchase. Finally, there has to be some very straightforward way of completing a transaction. After all, the best way to sell is to make it easy to buy.
In many ways, the electronic shop is no different from its high street cousin, so it should be quite feasible to translate all the tricks of the trade and best practice from the world of retailing onto a computer screen. But to do this, we need to think about the goods that are being sold and how they should be presented. That is what this chapter is all about. It introduces the concept of the catalogue, and explains the various types, how they are implemented and how they work.
An important point that emerges as the chapter unfolds is that different types of eBusiness call for different approaches. For instance, a buyer with a large supermarket chain with many suppliers is not interested in pretty pictures of fresh vegetables. They want to be able to compare costs and delivery schedules across their suppliers. On the other hand, online fashion retailers need to convince the buyer that they are getting something truly desirable.
There are several different ways of categorising the electronic shop:
According to the trading model (the one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to- many types described in the previous chapter) According to whether the market is buyer- or seller-driven (this is explained in detail later on in this chapter) according to scale (large or small) According to the kind of customer (retail or wholesale, for example)
We now describe a range of solutions for the presentation of goods that fit all of these. The practical step that needs to follow is the selection of the right solution for a specific eBusiness' size, customer base and market model.
3.1 CATALOGUES
A catalogue is the electronic equivalent of a shop's shelves, goods, departments, etc. It is the online representation of what is 'for sale' (or more correctly, what is available for trading). Some vendors use a catalogue to simulate a real shop (with 'departments' devoted to particular categories of goods and then 'shelves' containing the goods). Others structure their site more like a printed catalogue as supplied by mail order companies. However, in almost all cases, the trader will maintain some sort of catalogue application that is distinct from the details of the products themselves. In this section we look at these catalogue applications, how they work, the different types that are available and their strengths and weaknesses.
3.2 DIFFERENT SCALES OF CATALOGUE
Catalogues range in scale from a set of web pages and a simple script that allows orders to be taken through mid-range catalogue products that are characterised by a pre-defined structure of product categories and sub-categories, up to large scale corporate catalogues that are customisable and usually feature back-end integration with inventory, stock control and ordering systems. To a large extent, these different scales of catalogue reflect the kind of business that is being conducted online. Maintenance of the catalogue data (i.e. entry, formatting and quality of the data) is a job that demands the attention of a specialist. One well-known and very visible example of a high-end catalogue is Amazon.com, the online booksellers.
3.3 LOW-END DIY CATALOGUES
At the low-end of the scale, it is perfectly feasible to set up a simple retailing environment from a few HTML pages and an order form that generates an email message to the merchant. One step on from this is the putting together of a few scripts in Perl, Visual Basic, or some similar language to implement a simple 'shopping cart' model for buying items from the shop.
Such approaches are amply covered in existing books on HTML and Perl, and will not be dealt with in detail, here. However, it is worth noting the limitations of such approaches, of which the main ones are:
It is impractical to build a shop that contains large numbers of products because the pages that describe them must be constructed entirely by hand. The Maplin Electronics site, for example, would be totally inappropriate to this approach. Changes to products are complex to implement. In some product areas, models and prices are continually changing, and it is desirable to be able to automate the updating of the catalogue. As with any site that includes large amounts of HTML pages and/or scripts, the maintenance becomes a major overhead (West & Norris 1997) There is no simple way to integrate with other systems including, payments, logistics and stock-control. Ideally, for example, the customer should be able to see whether items are in stock before placing an order.
For all these limitations this approach is commonly used, as it can get an electronic shop up and running quite quickly.........
