Week 4

Presentations
As usual the class started with group presentations about strategic decision making. Our group The Bugs presented “Discovering Reengineering Opportunities.” I found that interesting as it is an opportunity for a company to increase efficiency. We looked at how HPU Online registration can be improved and found that there are broken, redundant and antiquated situations that can be improved such as class such, current use of advisors and holds. Furthermore we saw that the tuition payment can be improved by reengineering.

E-business
The next part of the class was a lecture about e-business. I find that a very interesting and important topic today as the world get more and more dependent on new technology. E-business makes it easier and more convenient for people to communicate and work across borders.

E-business is the conducting of business on the Internet, not only buying and selling, but also serving customers and collaborating with business partners. The history of technology consists of disruptive and sustaining technology. With disruptive means new technology that destroys other products. iPod is an example that destroys the walk-man, disc-man etc. Sustainable technology on the other side makes better and improving products such as faster cars.

The evolution of the Internet has had an enormous impact on the communication between people, companies and countries.
WWW: a global hypertext system that uses the Internet as its transport mechanism.
Http: The internet standard that supports the exchange information on the www.
Intranet: Internalized portion of the Intranet used for information inside a company and is protected from the outside
Extranet; An intranet that is available to strategic alliances
Portal: A Web site that offers broad array of recourses and services like e-mails, discussion groups, search engines etc.
Kiosk: A publicityaccessible computer system that has been set up tp allow interactive information browsing.

E-business models
An e-business model is an approach to conducting electronic business on the Internet.
B2B: Business to business
B2C: Business to consumer
C2B: Consumer to business
C2C: Consumer to consumer

A business on the Internet includes benefits and challenges. Organizations must refocus their information systems and ways of working. People must be thought to use the new equipment in order for the organizational change to happen. Furthermore, having a service online demands good customer service. People do not trust the Internet as face to face conversations and the customer service must always be available. Moreover the web page must be user friendly and easy to find. Search engines such as Google are one way to make the web page visible.

Marketing on the Internet is one way to make the web page available.
On line ads, pop-up ads and assosiates programs are some ways the marketing departments of an online organization should consider. Moreover to search engine optimilization of the web page and pay per click advertisements on Googe are other ways of making the web available for potensial customers. As been working for a Norwegian search enigne for 3 and a halv years, I've learnd that it doesn't help to have an attractive web site if nobody finds it.