Full form of E-commerce is electronic commerce. In its simplest form, electronic commerce means that business transactions are being handled electronically.
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In a more elaborate definition of concept there is a game of one upmanship to see who can crate the quickest, highest quality and the most exiting venture of conduction business. It is expected that by the year 2010, business conducted through electronic commerce will exceed $45 billion. In fact major growth in electronic commerce is and will be in business to business electronic process.
There are many E-commerce sites which are the medium of communication to perform the business (Fabm art, Amualinda). These websites are called custom developed software. These sites of software are dived into three parts-storefront, the manager, and logistics. The storefront what is a visitor to the sites gets to see. Logistics deals with consolidating the individual orders, tracking delivery and so on. The manager mangers the whole package including MIS.
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Orders placed during the day get consolidated at one place-the logistics module of the software. This is currently processed two to three times a day. Orders get consolidated according to vendor or distributor from whom the material is picked up. Logistic operator who picks up the ordered items in bulk form the respective vendor’s godowns, also receives the order statement along with the packing list for individual orders. He then breaks the lot up and makes packages according to each individual order. blue dart picks up the packages each day at 8 p.m. for delivery.
There are for functions of E-commerce. These are:
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Communication
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Process Management
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Service Management
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Transaction Capabilities
The communication function is basically the delivery of information and or documents to facilitate business transaction. Email is an example. The process management includes process improvement functions, which covers the automation and improvement of business processes networking two computers together so that they could share and transfer data rather than have a person to take data from one machine to another. service management is the application of technology to improve the quality of service federal express website is an example of service management. It permits customers to track shipments and schedule pick-ups 24 hours a day world-wide without having to talk to a customer service representative.
There are three types of E-commerce. They are inter-organizational intra-organizational and retail. Inter-organization electronics commerce is between different business entities. It could be on the Ethernet or an extranet which just lets a selected few participate intra-organizational electronic commerce occurs within a business entity. The goal is to link the constituents together and increase the flow of information within the organization. Retail electronic commerce as the name implies, is directed at the consumer. It can be used for any business to consumer interaction.