[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations
[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations
[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations
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e-Business Strategies <strong>for</strong> Virtual Organizations<br />
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company online shopfront has yielded significant benefits and<br />
increased sales and its share of the computer equipment retail<br />
market. In its first year of going online the company made AU$1<br />
million in e-<strong>business</strong> and another AU$3 million in its second<br />
year. HT currently employs about 80 staff all of whom are<br />
actively involved in the use of the online infrastructure. The<br />
online site was designed, built and managed by an in-house<br />
team. The company considers its website to be a great success:<br />
‘Our Web-presence has been so successful <strong>for</strong> us that we believe<br />
almost any <strong>business</strong> would benefit from a well presented Website.’<br />
The website is designed around the QUIDS (Quotations Inventory,<br />
Distribution, and Sales) database. The QUIDS database was<br />
written in Microsoft FoxPro and contains over 30,000 products<br />
and 6000 customer entities. It enables tracking all aspects of HT<br />
<strong>business</strong> including sales, serial numbers and bills of material<br />
and profitability. The interesting feature of HT’s online system is<br />
that the QUIDS database is common to all its key stakeholders.<br />
Suppliers and customers see the same in<strong>for</strong>mation (pricing,<br />
stock availability, images and text) as seen by HT staff. For<br />
example, Tech Pacific, the company’s main supplier, shares its<br />
stock availability and pricing with QUIDS each day via the<br />
Internet. Customers also interact with the database’s inventory<br />
in the same way as employees make queries to the system. Web<br />
pages are generated upon request by assembling data elements<br />
associated with each product (e.g. images, texts, downloadable<br />
drivers and site links).<br />
Using the integrated environment of the website, HT’s employees<br />
can manage electronic transfer of stock and ordering<br />
in<strong>for</strong>mation from all key stakeholders of the company (i.e.<br />
manufacturers, distributors, resellers, and end users). The<br />
facility also enable clients to scan product in<strong>for</strong>mation, make<br />
orders, as well as track the process of delivery. Bank cheques,<br />
telegraphic transfer, and major credit cards can be used to make<br />
payment. Another interesting feature of the website is the ‘live<br />
show room’ which provides real-time snapshots of HT’s<br />
physical showroom – www.ht.com.au<br />
6.8.4 Scotland’s Craft Brewers<br />
Co-operative (SCB Co-op)<br />
SCB Co-op is an online SME made up of six Scottish SMEs and<br />
a bottling plant. The co-op was <strong>for</strong>med to deliver global sales<br />
and marketing functions <strong>for</strong> the participant enterprises that