The Pharma Sector and Intellectual Property Rights: Pros and Cons
The Case for Patents The Pharma sector is often caught in the fight over whether the enforcement of IPR or Intellectual Property Rights should be followed or whether the sector exists for alleviating the health concerns of the poor and the needy thereby ensuring affordable drugs to the masses. Before we launch into the discussion […]
The Pros and Cons of Amazon’s and Walmart- Flipkart Long Game in Indian eCommerce
The Race to the Bottom and the Game of Attrition in the Indian eCommerce Sector Much like the broader Indian Economy, which at the moment is the fastest growing major economy in the world, the Indian eCommerce sector is on a roll. While initially, Flipkart and a few other eCommerce firms ruled the roost, the […]
Six Sigma and Quality Management
Six Sigma is a business management strategy which aims at improving the quality of processes by minimizing and eventually removing the errors and variations. The concept of Six Sigma was introduced by Motorola in 1986, but was popularized by Jack Welch who incorporated the strategy in his business processes at General Electric. The concept of […]
Business Processes Driving Organizations
Organizations world over have realized the need for re-structuring themselves and adapting business processes to be able to survive in the global scenario. This process of change management from an old hierarchical structure of Organization to a Business process oriented organization began two decades ago. What has aided the new design is the development of […]
The Sino American Trade War: Forced Technology Transfers
For the past few weeks, it seemed like America and China will finally be able to resolve their trade disputes. This is because Donald Trump and Xi Jinping were participating in a conference where a trade deal was supposed to be worked out. The markets were looking forward to some positive news. This was evidenced […]
All companies undertake series of activities in order to deliver a product to the customers. These series of activities like procurement of raw material, storage, production, distribution, etc. are referred as value chain activities. The function of value chain activities is to add value to product at every stage before it is delivered to the customers. There are two components, which make value chain - primary activities and secondary activities. The primary activities are directly associated with the manufacturing of products like supply management, plant operations, etc. The secondary activities are referred to as support functions such as finance, HR, information technology, etc.
In the era of advanced information and communication technology, many businesses have started operations on the internet as its medium. Through the internet, many commercial activities like buying, selling, auctioning is taking place. This online commercial activity is known as e-commerce. E-commerce value chain has series of activities like electronic fund transfer, internet marketing, distribution channel, supply chain etc.
Every activity within a physical value chain has an inherent information component. The amount of information that is present in activities determines, company’s orientation towards e-commerce. It has been observed that companies with high information presence will adopt e-commerce faster rather than companies with lower information presence.
For example, a computer manufacturer has high information presence, i.e. they can provide a great deal of product information through their website. Consumers also have flexibility to determine the product configuration using the website. Such computer manufacturers and companies with comparative business model are also likely to adopt e-commerce.
Activities which comprise of the value chain are undertaken by companies to produce and sell product and services. Some of the activities done within the value chain are understanding customer needs, designing products, procuring materials for production, production, storage of products, distribution of products, after sale services of products and customer care.
There are two ways to assess information presence. The first way is by looking at the industry, and second way is by looking at the product. In an industry with high information presence, it has been observed that:
For a product with high information presence following is observed:
Industry and product which satisfy above conditions are likely to adapt e-commerce.
Companies with high information presence were the first to look at e-commerce as an alternate way of conducting business. For example, software companies, much of there is business is done through the internet. Their website provides in-depth product information through e-brochure, video, client opinion, etc. Sales leads are generated online; purchase and fund transfer is done, and also after-sales service is done online.
These high information companies have made substantial investment in human resources and information/communication technology.
Companies which are moving towards e-commerce need to have business model developed to support online activities. The dotcom burst of 2000 has served hard example about companies doing e-commerce.
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Communication Systems and Groupware – Information System Concepts that Apply in All Functional Areas of Business
February 12, 2025
