5 Rights of e-Procurement

Nowadays, lots of companies swith to use e-procurement in their business despite of using manual procurement. Many companies believe that e-procurement can increase profitablity and reduce costs. E-procurement is the business-to-business or business-to-consumer or Business-to-government purchase and sale of supplies and services through the Internet as well as other information and networking systems, such as Electronic Data Interchange and Enterprise Resource Planning.

Typically, e-procurement Web sites allow qualified and registered users to look for buyers or sellers of goods and services. Depending on the approach, buyers or sellers may specify costs or invite bids. Transactions can be initiated and completed. Ongoing purchases may qualify customers for volume discounts or special offers. E-procurement software may make it possible to automate some buying and selling. Companies participating expect to be able to control parts inventories more effectively, reduce purchasing agent overhead, and improve manufacturing cycles. E-procurement is expected to be integrated with the trend toward computerized supply chain management.

E-procurement is done with a software application that includes features for supplier management and complex auctions. The new generation of E-Procurement is now on-demand or a software-as-a-service.

According to Baily, there are five rights of e-Procurement that can reduce costs and increase profitability, which are:

1. At the right price.

By conducting an e-procurement, company are able to have an idea for a right price. Let says, PT Telkom conducting an e-procurement for IT products. By having this event, PT Telkom should be able to look around which price is suitable for their budget and big possibilities that PT Telkom able to get the specific products with a cheap price. Companies who join the e-procurement of PT Telkom are enthusiatic bidding to win the procurement. The lowest bidder will win the procurement. Of course, PT Telkom is benefiting from this. That's one of the point that prove e-procurement will reduce cost.

2. Delivered at the right time.

Another benefit from e-procurement is that PT telkom will have their good on time. Joining an e-procurement especially from a big companies will have a quite big impact for the winning supplier. Its like catching the "BIg Fish" so it is important for them to deliver the good at the right time.

3. Are of the right quality.

For PT Telkom, e-procurement is one way to ensure that the goods that they want to buy is in good quality. Joining an e-procurement from a big companies is a gold opportunity so for sure these supplier doesnt want to ruin the opportunity by selling a poor quality products. Besides that, PT Telkom have an opportunity to select the suppliers before deciding these supplier can join the e-procurement. By doing this, PT Telkom can make sure the goods that they will receive will in a good shape and quality.Having a good quality will reduce cost because these goods can be used for a long time.

4. Of the right quantity.

Sometimes when we order a certain products from our supplier, they make errors in the quantity. If this happen, each parties will blame each other. e-procurement will prevent this error to occur. By avoiding this types of error, company can reduce cost and also at the end increase profitability.

5. From the right source.

Conducting an e-procurement will enable company to make sure that the goods they're about to order come from the right source. Usually when come to purchasing, companies especially those big companies have a strict policies to buy goods only from a reliable sources. Sometimes, those big companies saying that they dont mind to pay a little bit higher than usual but they know where their product are coming from rather than getting a cheaper price but they dont know where it come from. This happen because big companies will have an auditing team that will checking and clarify all the purchasing documents including checking the background of the stores that we're buying those goods from.

For me, these five rights of e-procurement are proven to reduce cost and increase profitablity for a company. Also, by having an e-procurement, companies will have paperless documentation and also it will be good for the environment. Saving our earth rite? :)

Six Keys of Strategic Decision for www.inibuku.com

A Strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal, most often "winning." Strategy is differentiated from tactics or immediate actions with resources at hand by its nature of being extensively premeditated, and often practically rehearsed. Strategies are used to make the problem easier to understand and solve. The nature of the strategy adopted and implemented emerges from a combination of the structure of the organization (loosely coupled or tightly coupled), the type of resources available and the nature of the coupling it has with environment and the strategic objective being pursued.Strategy is adaptable by nature rather than rigid set of instructions.In the field of business administration it is possible mention to the "strategic consistency."

According to Arieu (2007), "there is strategic consistency when the actions of an organization are consistent with the expectations of management, and these in turn are with the market and the context."

In the e-business, there are 6 keys of strategic decisions that will be explained using http://www.inibuku.com/ as a case study.

Key 1: E-Business channel priorities

http://www.inibuku.com/ using a combination of online transaction and customer service.As we know, customers can order books through the website and also contacted directly to their customer service.

Key 2:Organizational restructuring and capabilities

To be able running properly, every business have to achieve econnomic of scale. www.inibuku.com is using an integration approach where they really pay attention to their response time to customers as well as the distribution channel. The management really know that good response time to customer and perfect distribution will lead them to economic of scale and thus they will achieve their goal and will lead to good profit.

Key 3:Business, service and revenue models

In running their business, www.inibuku.com is positioned as intermediary because the products available in their website is not their own production. www.inibuku.com will receive a comission for each book that they're able to sell. The price offered in the website is fixed price, customers can not bargain to the management to reduce the price although the website did give the customers discount around 10 to 15% off.

Key4:Marketplace restructuring

Talking about marketplace restructuring, we'll be talking about sell-side and buy-side. As discussed before, www.inibuku.com is an online intermediary that sell a wide range of books variety. Transaction that happened in inibuku.com can be categorized as offline since the customers only can pay when the books are delivered to their address. For buy-side, www.inibuku.com took their books supply directly from their supplier like Gramedia.

Key5: Market and product development strategy

www.inibuku.com is using penetration strateggy where by using this strategy, the management can provide a value added to their goods and services. As per discussion before, www.inibuku.com is quite different with other online book website where customers don't have to pay untill the books are delivered safely to their address where others website do not have this method. Also customers can have a same book with the one in the Gramedia but with cheaper price. All of this service are the value added for www.inibuku.com.

Key6:Positioning and Differention strategies

Positioning for www.inibuku.com is quite clear, the website is dedicated for all book lovers no matter their ages, sex, or income..As long as they're love to read, for sure they will like www.inibuku.com and also im sure everybody love discount :)

The differentiation strategies is quite obvious where inibuku.com provides their customers with different services. Discount up to 15% and also cash on deliveries method become the differentiation strategies for www.inibuku.com that will make the management's position stronger in the market.

In conclusion,

Every companies will have a different strategic decisions depend on the vision, mission and goal of each company. The discussion above is one of the example of how the online retailler proceed with this six strategic decisions. These six strategic decisions are flexible to change and it should be changed when it can't accomadate the vision, mission and the goal of the company anymore.

"Website for Company?" needed or not..

When most people read or hear about making money online, they tend to think of the most traditinal method of selling products online through market place such as ebay dan amazon to name a few. Very few people go the route of creating and managing their very own e-commerce website. With the right product and right niche, this can be sure way t0 make million dollars from a few bucks.

If you have decided to take your business online, there are two things that you will need to take into consideration before launching the new site.First, we need to think about the privacy policy that will protect our company and provide customers with trust in our site. As we know, online business is based on trust and customers deserve to know what our plan to do with the data that we've collect. Second, we'll need to make sure that our online transactions are secure. SSL (secure socket layer) encryption protects ours customer's sensitive information, including credit card and personal infrmation during online transaction.

There are 2 big component for setting up online business which are Website and Management issue..Each of this component will consists of several issues..

There are 12 main reasons for companies to establish a website:
1. Technology To Compete - autoresponders, accept online payments,deliver products over the internet.
2. Niche markets abound
3. Lifting the profile - small business can have the appearance&credibility of a large corporation
4. Low Cost
5. Open 24/7
6. Reaching A Global Audience
7. Customer Feedback MadeEasy
8. Frequently Asked Questions
9. Test Marketing New Products
10. Use of Time Sensitive Promotions
11. Interactivity-Automatic product updates, web site content&image changing, live video & streaming.
12. Serving The Local Area-a quick &easy way to access info about products& services from home

To be able to establish a website, there a basic requirements that need to be fulfilled by management:

1. Domain name & Hosting

Creating a domain is very crucial, as the domain name have to be easily remember and have to be a reflection of the company itself. This will have an effect for people to easily remember the our website name. Hosting will be another part that also essential because without hosting, the website wont be able to online.

2. Collecting data for design and start to build the website

The company have to collect all material that will be put into the website such as text, picture/photos, or sound..For text, we need to convert it into HTML while for picture/photos, we have to convert it into JPEG or GIF to be able to readable for internet explorer users.

3.Promotion

Creating a sophiscated website with a wonderful design will be useless if its not supported by a promotion. There are several ways that can be done to do promotion such as through banner, buzz marketing, media promotion(magazine, newspaper, TV, radio,etc), brochure,etc.

4. Result Analysis

As time goes by, companies need to review wheather the website have contribute a value added to the company or not..It will be such as a waste, if the establishment of website does not contribute a value added for company..

After deciding the technical, company needs to deal with the management issues such as:

1. Architecture of the website

Defining the purposes of our website is vital to avoid "mission creep" and thus keep costs under control. The following are typical objectives for a website:

• Brochure - showing what you do:goods and services
• Commerce - selling whay you do
• keeping the customer happy, encouraging return visits
• Decision support - helping the prospect customers decide what to buy
• Product support - increasing effectiveness&reduce cost of warehouse&services
• Extranet - ring fenced area for agents, partners,etc to transact business or run virtual office
• Intranet - remote working on centrally held files or updating timesheets of staff working away
• Reference - provision of usually non commercial data like technical specification, statistics

2. Budget

The budget has to cover at least :

• Planning-setting out requirements and perhaps a specifications
• Design or visuals-sample pages to show the sytle maybe leading to changes in livery for web use
• Implementation-including databases, support software, integrating with existing system
• Testing-both functional &cross platform compatibility ex: PC,MAC, Internet Explorer
• Launch-deployment of component parts,website configuration, marketing, search engine
• Operational Costs- hosting,marketing,CRM,secure certificate
• Website content management-in house, out of house

Frequently thought is only given to the design element, but most serious website also require databases and perhaps integration with an existing sales order processing system. Some calculation has to be done on the likely ROI for commercial website to keep the expenditure appropriate.However there are minimum costs below which we can't expect a reasonable results. As ever, its balance.

3. E-commerce

There are specific issues with commerce that can cause problems. Some of the issues are:

• Shopping systems-product management, price list,basket,special offers
• Payment handling-credit card,cheque,credit transfer
• Credit card transaction
• Secure certificates
• Drop shipping-shipping directly from wholeseller
• Integration with your existing sales order processing system
• Serial number management(for software sales)
• Term & conditions,copyright,privacy policies andsecuring personal information

4. Legal

Legislation is starting to catch up with internet trading and it depends on each countries

5. Design

Website design has a lot of constraints, notably the shape, size,resolution and color capabilities of the viewing system. The following lists indicates most of the major design considerations:

• Target Market- what viewing facilities are they likely to have
• Base Layout- is there an existing corporate livery to follow
• Content- how ften does it changed?How it will be managed?
• Database- do you have corporate data or database support to remember visitor detail
• Multimedia- is it apropriate?
• Accesbility- what's appropriate to your market and legal oblugations
• Interactivity- this will require database to remember the visitor details
• Search/drill down facilities
• Security
• Newsletter
• Forum

6. Marketing

There are several consideration to able to attract customers log in to our website, such as:

• website traffics
• keywords/meta tags
• offline promotion
• company livery should incorporate the website and email address

7. Operational website

Once a website is up and running, there will be costs involved in promoting and maintaining it. Out of date websites are a turn off for visitors and therefore counterproductive. Keeping the content fresh may turn into something into magazine production where there is a need for continous input. This requires the content management to be someone's responsibility on a weekly, monthly, Quarterly basis as appropriate. Self managed website frequently suffer from poor copywriting,spelling and grammar thus leading to lower credibility and business confidence.

In conclusion,

a website is just one of the tools for companies to support the business to keep running. Also to make more competitive for company in the industry..Establishing a website is not a guarantee for a company to be success.. what the management need to do is to keep focus of vision, mission also the goal of the company..Using a website is just one of so many ways to keep our company differentiate in order to attract customers..By doing the stages mentioned above, all companies can go online..no matter the size of the company, small or big company can go online..

But keep in mind that establishing a website is NOT a GUARANTEE for company to success..

so people, i guess u're ready to go online :)

References:

• http://www.comauth.co.nz/the-seo-guys-blog/website-business-risk-management.html
• http://www.small-business-consultants.net/Downloads/web_marketing/Start%20E-Business.pdf
• http://www.eworkingwomen.com/experts/starting.html
• http://www.caz.ltd.uk/bd/wi.asp

Books Lover

Right now, you dont have to rush to go to book store to buy books,you just need to click to one of those online book stores like http://www.gramediaonline.com/, http://www.amazon.com/, http://www.barnes&noble.com/..

These online book stores can provide us with varieties of books..But these online book stores have one similiarity, which is we have to pay before they can deliver the books to us..

There's nothing wrong with that though, but sometimes we feel insecure to use credit card to do our payment..There are various reasons that will back up our fear of using credit card online but maybe the main reason is Fraud..

As we knoy lot's of stories about credit card fraud, and that will make us even more afraid to do online transaction..

It will be great that we can buy books online but we dont have to pay first, rite? :)

YES, we can do that...There is one unique online book stores that do not require us to pay first, which is http://www.inibuku.com/. This website is B2B to B2C types of e-commerce..It sell directly to customers..

All we have to do is just go to this website and just pick the books that we want.. The website provide us with the photo and the description of the books..

The good news is they give us discount around 10 to 15%..

After we done, we can review our shopping item through the shopping cart and we just wait for the confirmation from inibuku.com.. They will let us know wheather our items are ready to be delivered or not..They have a very good response time which is good because we as the customers dont like to wait..

Customer is number 1 and when customer feel satisfy with our product and service, they will come back to us..So that why service, in this matter response time is very crucial in order to achieve customer satisfaction..

There are several issues that inibuku.com need to resolve, such as no customers database and marketing assistance..

It will be great, if inibuku.com have a customer database so once we log in, we dont have to re type all the personal data..it will more convinient for us as a customer.. Also, inibuku.com need to provide their customer will marketing staff assistance..Right now, they dont have this feature..Although, inibuku.com quite simple but still there're possibilities of difficulties that might arise when customer log in and do the transaction..

Speaking of threats, inibuku.com facing lots of competitor in running their business, says gramediaonline.com..But inibuku have a strength compared to gramedia, like customer only need to pay when the books are delivered to their address and there is no minimum order applied...

To me, http://www.inibuku.com/ is quite satisfying..In order to keep the business running well, inibuku.com need to keep their strength and improve it while trying to overcome the weaknesses..

Overall, http://www.inibuku.com/ is highly recommended for book lovers...

u guys should try it :) Nothing to lose, rite?

blabbing

Been starring at the screen for half an hour, try to do the assignment but no luck :(

usually when it comes to blabbing or my frens used to call as ngemeng skill, it wont be hard for me..what make it hard is blabbing about e-commerce..

arghhh..how im suppose to blab when i dont understand what its all about..

im stuck..

its so lame, stuck in front of my laptop at saturday nite trying to do assignment..

maybe i'll get an inspiration while im doing midnite shopping?:) There's midnite shopping at Grand Indo started from yesterday, its up to 70%...

good idea :) well, what i need rite now is shopping buddies..and i know who i should call rite now..hehehe

off to shop :)

Newbie

Staring at the clock and wondering when will the class end..still hoping that yesterday's class will end quick..nothing's wrong the class though, just only its been a long day..

Me sitting there, at the last row trying to gather all my "soul" and trying to survive untill the end of the class while listening to the lecturer aka "Ferry Salim"(that's what one of my classmate said and yes they're really look alikes) blabing about the technology term and gadget..

honestly, maybe its only 30% of what he said that i really understand..when come to the IT and its magic world, me is so dumb..

starring at sylabuss about the grading policy and wondering could i get an A for this subject when "Mr Ferry Salim" told us to make blog of our own to submit our assignment..

CRAP..

its neva been easy for me to learn all of what i called as "sophiscated thing" in internet..

well, i guess i have no choiches..i have to make the blog for the sake of e-business subject...

here i am, spending almost 2 hours to make this blog and finally i made it :) Hope that i could get an A for this subject..Amen

hey, nothing's wrong with hoping, rite? :)