[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations

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Creating virtual cultures for global online communities make SAP.com a truly customer-led site, and your comments are a critical part of our ongoing efforts to reach this goal. Another vendor, NetSage, has developed customer relationship software agents, called ‘sages’, that integrate media with business and social rules. The software agents know when to intervene, what to say, and which product or recommendation is appropriate for a particular customer on the basis of what the customer has already done and the context of that customer’s actions. The ‘sages’ are claimed to be socially intelligent and able to interact with particular customers throughout the entire spectrum of the customer relationship. NetSage state that the design of their software agents is based upon the psychological studies of Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass who have demonstrated convincingly, in their book The Media Equation, that interactions with computers, television and new technologies are identical to real social relationships and to the navigation of real physical spaces. However, it is possible for a business to create a virtual community without having to use extremely sophisticated extended ERP software or intelligent social agents. This is demonstrated by the following case. 11.8 Community building: the ActionAce.com case ActionAce.com is an online retailer that retails pop-culture (e.g. Batman, Star Trek, DragonBall etc.) products, including toys, action figures, video games, movies and music. In addition to toy sales, ActionAce’s website provides toy-related content. It has an online magazine called ActionZine which provides reviews of movies, toys and games as well as polls, trading posts and auction message boards. The online toy retailer grew out of the idea of Casey Lau and John Wong, the managers of a Hong Kong web design company, to build a website for selling action figures and comic books. Wong and Lau started the company, then called ComicPlanet.com, with just three employees in January 1997. In mid-1998, David Haines, now ActionAce.com’s chief executive officer, joined the company, brought in some venture capital, and renamed the company ActionAce.com. (Lombardo 1998). By mid-1999 ActionAce had a total of 24 employees in Hong Kong and the US. Although it takes orders from around the 239
e-Business Strategies for Virtual Organizations 240 world most of ActionAce’s customers are from the US. This is one of the reasons it opened its distribution centre in the US in September 1998. Most of ActionAce’s products are now shipped from the US. The Hong Kong office is ActionAce’s headquarters and is mainly responsible for strategic planning, administration and sourcing. The office in Richmond, California, is responsible for creative design as well as distribution (Hong Kong Trade Development Centre 1999). Another major reason for incorporating in the US was to gain access to a suitable financial services infrastructure. In 1998/9 no local bank could provide ActionAce with suitable electronic transaction settlement service (Economist 1999). According to Claire MacDonald of Asiaweek Asia still lacks basic systems allowing consumers to purchase and easily pay for goods and services electronically, whereas in the US, transaction settlement is handled through a clearinghouse network connected to nearly every financial institution in the country. Although E-tailers could get online transaction-processing services, they were very expensive, because of the perception that the Internet business is rife with ‘charge-backs’, credit purchases where the buyer refuses to pay. Card-processing services charged up to 15% per transaction, roughly three times the typical fees paid by brickand-mortar stores for settlement. According to David Haines, managing director of ActionAce, the lack of credit facilities ‘is the biggest thing holding back e-commerce in Asia’. ActionAce currently keeps inventory on about one-third of the items it carries, which are the more popular ones. Its information system monitors the inventory and will issue notice for reordering in respect of items that fall below a preset inventory level. If the supplier concerned has established an EDI link with ActionAce, the order will be issued electronically. For the remaining two-thirds of the items, ActionAce relies on the inventory kept by its suppliers. By electronically linking its website with the suppliers’ inventory system ActionAce is able to sell on the basis of what its suppliers have in stock. When ActionAce receives an order, it immediately passes the order to its suppliers who are required to deliver the products to ActionAce by the next day. ActionAce then ship the goods to the customers. When ActionAce launched its website in June 1998 the site carried around 300 product items and had about 15 000 visitors in its first month. By August 1999, the site carried more than
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e-Business Strategies for Virtual O
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e-Business Strategies for Virtual O
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Contents Computer Weekly Profession
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Contents 6 Globalization and e-busi
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Contents 11.6 The increasing power
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Computer Weekly Professional Series
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Authors’ Preface There are dozens
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Authors’ Preface model will there
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Authors’ Preface alliances, bette
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1 e-business and the virtual organi
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e-business and the virtual organiza
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Figure 1.2 e-business and the virtu
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1.5 e-business e-business and the v
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Figure 1.3 e-business and the virtu
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Figure 1.4 Virtual objects, Scholz
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Characteristics of the virtual orga
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Figure 2.1 Formation of business al
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� empowerment of staff; Character
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e-business models for virtual organ
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3.4 Models of efficient response e-
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Figure 3.4 Star alliance model e-bu
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Figure 3.6 Market alliance model Fi
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Figure 3.10 Virtual alliance framew
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Figure 3.11 Virtual organizational
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References e-business models for vi
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IS planning strategies for emerging
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Figure 4.1 The evolution of IS/IT p
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Figure 4.3 A framework for SISP (Wa
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Figure 4.4 Planning adopts a busine
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Figure 4.5 Interconnected ecologies
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Figure 4.6 The interrelationships b
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4.8 Conclusion IS planning strategi
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References IS planning strategies f
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Moving from e-business to i-busines
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Globalization and e-business strate
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Adoption and deployment of online i
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Table 6.1 Online business models On
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Figure 6.2 VIM strategy Globalizati
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7 Developing knowledge-based strate
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Developing knowledge-based strategi
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8 Evaluating strategies for e-busin
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Figure 8.2 Fitness landscapes Evalu
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Evaluating strategies for e-busines
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Table 8.1 Information economics - v
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Customer view Whatisour image? Eval
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Table 8.6 Matrix for preparing to m
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9 Outsourcing, partnering and the v
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Page 224 and 225: e-business strategies in the virtua
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Page 266 and 267: References Creating virtual culture
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[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations

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