Companies involved in e-commerce depend on various internet-based technologies and e-commerce applications and services to accomplish marketing, discovery, transaction process, and product and customer service processes. The scope of e-commerce is so vast that it can include interactive marketing, ordering, payment, and customer support processes at e-commerce catalog and auction sites on the World Wide Web. It also includes e-business processes such as extranet access of inventory databases by customers and suppliers, intranet access of customer relationship management systems by sales and customer service reps, and customer collaboration in product development via email and internet newsgroups.
I would specifically focus on three basic categories of electronic commerce applications: business to consumer, business to business, and consumer to consumer.
- B2C e-commerce. In this realm, my business will aim at developing attractive electronic marketplaces to sell products and services to consumers. In particular, I would like a virtual storefront with interactive order processing, secure electronic payment systems, and online customer support.
- B2B: This involves both electronic business marketplaces and direct market links between businesses. My company will offer secure internet or extranet e-commerce catalog websites for business customers and suppliers. Also, the company will have an eCommerce portal to provide auction and exchange marketplaces for businesses.
- C2C: In this context, my company will participate in or sponsor consumer or business auctions. This can be done through personal electronic advertising of products or services, consumer e-commerce portals, or personal websites.
There are nine technological processes the company will focus on: access, control, and security; profiling and personalizing; search management; content management: workflow management; event notification; collaboration and trading; web payment processes and secure electronic payment processes.
The company will use software to authenticate users, authorize access and enforce security features. This can be done through user names and passwords, encryption keys, and digital certificates or signatures. Firewalls are needed to protect the site against hacker attacks, theft of passwords or credit card numbers, and system failures. User profiles will be developed using profiling tools such as user registration, cookie files, website behavior tracking software, and user feedback. The software package will include a website search engine component that can be easily purchased from companies like Google or Requisite Technology.
The company needs to have content management software to generate and manage catalog content and work with profiling tools to personalize the content of web pages seen by individual users. The workflow management software will express predefined sets of business rules, roles of stakeholders, authorization requirements, routing alternatives, databases used, and sequence of tasks required for each e-commerce process. This will ensure proper transactions, decisions, and work activities are performed. The company will be event-driven and will have even notification software to notify all involved stakeholders of important transaction events through email, newsgroup, pager, or fax. Internet-based trading services such as online exchange and auction platforms are very important.
These provide support for matchmaking, negotiation, and mediation processes among business buyers and sellers. Regarding the financial department, the website will enable payment through credit cards, bank accounts, online buying, e-Bill payment, and electronic cash. Electronic funds transfer may be affected through web-based methods such as PayPal and Billpoint. Automatic bill payment is enabled through CheckFree and PayTrust. There is a need for software to safeguard sensitive information regarding credit cards.