The Problem with the Existing Architecture:
The company has multiple standalone computing solutions and applications which it acquired through the purchase of provider companies. These systems are not fully integrated and are not compatible. They do not share data in real time making communication, access, and interoperability difficult. The current system does not provide a well designed and unified solution for customers. The different provider companies that XYZCorp has acquired currently have their own customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Currently, it is not possible to have interconnectivity and functionality between providers and external sources, causing customers to be unable to take advantage of and fully benefit from the range of services the company has to offer. Also, web technologies are not being used to their potential and backend applications are not integrated. A customer web portal, which can help to integrate services such as buying, selling, delivery, payment and overall customer support, is non-existent and a deterrent to overall consumer satisfaction and business growth.
What is a web portal?
In terms of defining exactly what a web portal is, it is important to understand its significance and role in business and technology. A portal can be thought of as a single, main gateway into an assortment of content. More specifically, a web portal is often the main starting point for an online user/web surfer. Web portals often consist of a collection of loosely integrated features with many resources and links to different services. They have become commonplace in today’s technology-driven lifestyle whereby web surfers utilize portals such as www.yahoo.com or www.msn.com. These websites are solid examples of web sites that have expanded to become a point of entry onto the information superhighway. These sites, just like many others that fall into the same category of “web portal,” provide a user with a number of features, content, and resources, such as links to information, news, and people as well as the ability to search the web. Businesses can benefit from this kind of technology by providing a web portal as the chief starting point for customer exploration and contact. Furthermore, a web portal is vital for a corporation that utilizes e-commerce. E-commerce refers to the retail, service, and business to business industries that make use of the web to facilitate the exchange of products and services between businesses, consumers, and manufacturers. A web portal can act as the starting point for a company that has introduced e-commerce into the way they do business.
The growth of online business has grown enormously over the years. Cliptomania is a family operated and owned small e-business that primarily sells clip on earrings (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin, & Perkins, 2012, p. 308). Cliptomania early developments were very modest, and as such the company experienced copious strategic dilemmas. An initial strategic dilemma that the company encountered when establishing and building their new e-business undertaking was to create a website for the business operations and essentially to have it fully operable. The owners, Jim and Candy elected to hire a vendor to host the website and additionally utilize the IT systems resources of the vendor to sustain their business. At the very beginning they exploited the offerings of the Yahoo Store. However, continuing down this avenue of using the services of the Yahoo Store inevitably became too costly. By using the services and business offerings of a vendor made it convenient and effortless for Jim and Candy to start their e-business store. Unfortunately the couple did not have much in the way of professional help, and so they had to create and put together the website by themselves. Additionally they also had to deal with establishing their online credibility as many customers preferred to call in their orders just to talk with a real person before being comfortable enough to place their orders via the webpage.
In these articles, Tarbell showed the readers how Rockefeller conducted these illegal methods through quotes and even interviews with Henry H. Rogers, the most powerful senior executive of Standard Oil. In this series, Tarbell wrote about how Rockefeller made secret agreements with the South Improvement Company (Ida Tarbell, 1857-1944: She Used Her Reporting Skills Against One of the Most Powerful Companies in the World) and how Rockefeller took someone else’s idea to make pipelines for the oil to travel through. Tarbell also wrote about how Rockefeller threatened the small oil producers to sell their businesses to them. Later Ida Tarbell managed to get anti-trust laws to eliminate monopolistic companies and let other smaller companies have a chance at
Many people see John D. Rockefeller as a great industrialist, which I can't argue with. But he was also a rather corrupt person. In order for him to build a monopoly the way he did, you have to squish some little guys in the process, but he didn't just squish some, he put several rival businesses out of business. Which is where the debate comes up about whether John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil company just one giant corrupt system or if John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil company was a major point in America's economic history.
At the same time, America was experiencing domestic problems. The corruption in the the United States economy had occurred due to robber barons using their power to manipulate the normal everyday worker. Robber Barons method of success involved for unskilled the worker to work for long monotonous hours. Examples of Robber Barons were John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Rockefeller practiced horizontal integration: this process consists of “a company [concentrating] on one aspect of the production process, such as raw materials, production, distribution, or sales.”, which helped Rockefeller monopolize oil with his Standard Oil Company. Rockefeller’s obtained a crude persona; he showed no mercy towards his competitors earning the nickname
The company has self organizing team and use groupware, emails and blogs to communicate with the customers.
Rockefeller was just at the start of his infamous oil monopoly. At the age of 23 Rockefeller teamed up with an inventor named Samuel Adams to find a cheap way to purify crude oil (McGill). Together the two of them produced kerosene, a cheaper fuel used to light lanterns, homes, and businesses. This man meant business, and it was only the beginning. In 1870 Rockefeller organized the Standard Oil Company, and in only eight years he obtained ownership of 90 percent of the nation’s oil refineries. In 1882 the Standard Oil Trust was created. “The first of its kind in the United States, the trust was devised so shareholders of various companies would hand over their shares to a board of trustees, receiving certificates of trust in place of the shares. Many powerful companies in the United States followed Rockefeller's example and established trusts” (McGill). However, in 1890 congress passed the Shermin Anti-Trust Act and the Standard Oil Trust was abolished. Oddly enough, it was in his days of retirement that Rockefeller became a billionaire; this was due to the increased need of oil in motor vehicles and the dividends from his many small
Rockefeller noticed profitable potential in oil. Cleveland was an ideal place for oil industries due the availability of transportation like railroads. The problem was that it was too risky, so he went and researched what was the most efficient way to harvest oil and refine it for Kerosene. In 1863 he invested $4000 into his first refinery. the problem came when several cases appeared where families were killed in sudden combustions with kerosene fueled lamps. In these times Kerosene was in high demand, and several small businesses were transporting this highly dangerous liquid. He went back to research ways to calm down public fear, and successfully refined kerosene in the safest and most efficient way. This was the clear distinction between him and his competitors. He then went to introduce his products and ideas to a group of
To build this new CRM system, they had to merge 20 different databases into one multiterabyte repository with 50 million unique customer records, and used enterprise application integration tools, messaging middleware, rules engines and Java application server technology to integrate applications and transport data between various applications and the database
In summary, “Internet activities are not most significant in competition, such as informing customers, processing transactions, and procuring inputs”. (Porter, 2001) significant corporate assets--skilled employees, proprietary product, and efficient logistical systems – these factors are the most important to keep competitive advantages. In fact, it is foreseeable that the Internet's evolution will come up in the future involve a shift “in thinking from e-business to business, from e-strategy to strategy”. (Porter, 2001)Only by integrating the Internet into overall strategy will this powerful new technology become an equally powerful force for competitive advantage.
The future of economic competitiveness for most enterprises relies on entrance and active participation in the e-commerce market. An essential problem with e-commerce is that the controls and organization are different for each site. There is no standard way of building t...
1) Web 2.0 is a collection of technologies that enable us to create and provide services to end users in innovative ways. It's not only about the technologies that are used, but about the new ways that it enables large numbers of people to come together to collaborate, share, and build. The term Web 2.0 was invented by Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media. According to Tim O'Reilly: http://radar.oreilly.com/2006/12/web-20-compact-definition-tryi.html, 2006. “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”
Huang G.Q. & Zhao J.B. 2006. Do It Yourself (DIY) portalets for developing e-business solutions for small and medium enterprises
Companies are beginning to move their CRM application out of data centers and onto the cloud making CRM less expensive and easier to expand. (Shein, 2009) Technology advances are also allowing companies to begin to take better advantage of big data, combing internal data with social media and mobile to deliver more business value. (Goodwin, 2013) In the future, more devices will be connected to the Internet. Cars, buildings, bodies and many other things will be connected through sensors and it is expected that this increase in information will continue to drive the changes in CRM and how it is used to support sales, marketing and customer service. (Sartain,
The development and design of a basic web page can be a fun yet tricky task. Whether it’s a large commercial web page for business purposes, or a small personal web page about your hobby or family; the process of development is the same. The three major steps leading to the development and design of a basic web page include: information gathering, site layout and design, and HTML (hyper text markup language) conversion.
(Ehret, 2004) Their business model focused on economies of scope, as opposed to economies of scale. Industrial firms realised they needed to manage buyer-seller relationships in order to manage cross-functional and cross-organisational processes that would allow them to become more flexible. Today’s CRM systems are vast, multi-functional systems that allow firms to manage multiple elements of relationships with their customers. Xu et al.