Unit-I: Electronic Commerce: Definition, types, advantages and disadvantages, E-

Commerce transaction on World Wide Web. Electronic Market-Online shopping,

Three models of Electronic Market - E-Business

E-Commerce or Electronics Commerce is a methodology of modern business which

addresses the need of business organizations, vendors and customers to reduce cost and
improve the quality of goods and services while increasing the speed of delivery. E-
commerce refers to paperless exchange of business information using following ways.

 Electronic Data Exchange (EDI)

 Electronic Mail (e-mail)
 Electronic Bulletin Boards
 Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT)
 Other Network-based technologies

Features
E-Commerce provides following features

 Non-Cash Payment − E-Commerce enables use of credit cards, debit cards, smart
cards, electronic fund transfer via bank's website and other modes of electronics
payment.

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  24x7 Service availability − E-commerce automates business of enterprises and
services provided by them to customers are available anytime, anywhere. Here 24x7
refers to 24 hours of each seven days of a week.

 Advertising / Marketing − E-commerce increases the reach of advertising of

products and services of businesses. It helps in better marketing management of
products / services.

 Improved Sales − Using E-Commerce, orders for the products can be generated any
time, any where without any human intervention. By this way, dependencies to buy a
product reduce at large and sales increases.

 Support − E-Commerce provides various ways to provide pre sales and post sales
assistance to provide better services to customers.

 Inventory Management − Using E-Commerce, inventory management of products

becomes automated. Reports get generated instantly when required. Product
inventory management becomes very efficient and easy to maintain.

 Communication improvement − E-Commerce provides ways for faster, efficient,

reliable communication with customers and partners.

Traditional Commerce v/s E-Commerce

Sr. Traditional Commerce E-Commerce
No.

1 Heavy dependency on information Information sharing is made easy via

exchange from person to person. electronic communication channels making
little dependency on person to person
information exchange.

2 Communication/ transaction are Communication or transaction can be done

done in synchronous way. Manual in asynchronous way. Electronics system
intervention is required for each automatically handles when to pass
communication or transaction. communication to required person or do
the transactions.

3 It is difficult to establish and A uniform strategy can be easily

maintain standard practices in established and maintain in e-commerce.
traditional commerce.

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4 Communications of business In e-Commerce or Electronic Market, there
depends upon individual skills. is no human intervention.

5 Unavailability of a uniform E-Commerce website provides user a

platform as traditional commerce platform where al l information is available
depends heavily on personal at one place.
communication.

6 No uniform platform for E-Commerce provides a universal platform

information sharing as it depends to support commercial / business activities
heavily on personal across the globe.
communication.

E-Commerce advantages can be broadly classified in three major categories:

 Advantages to Organizations
 Advantages to Consumers
 Advantages to Society
Advantages to Organizations
 Using E-Commerce, organization can expand their market to national and
international markets with minimum capital investment. An organization can easily
locate more customers, best suppliers and suitable business partners across the globe.

 E-Commerce helps organization to reduce the cost to create process, distribute,

retrieve and manage the paper based information by digitizing the information.

 E-commerce improves the brand image of the company.

 E-commerce helps organization to provide better customer services.

 E-Commerce helps to simplify the business processes and make them faster and
efficient.

 E-Commerce reduces paper work a lot.

 E-Commerce increased the productivity of the organization. It supports "pull" type

supply management. In "pull" type supply management, a business process starts
when a request comes from a customer and it uses just-in-time manufacturing way.

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Advantages to Customers
 24x7 support. Customer can do transactions for the product or enquiry about any
product/services provided by a company any time, any where from any location.
Here 24x7 refers to 24 hours of each seven days of a week.

 E-Commerce application provides user more options and quicker delivery of

products.

 E-Commerce application provides user more options to compare and select the
cheaper and better option.

 A customer can put review comments about a product and can see what others are
buying or see the review comments of other customers before making a final buy.

 E-Commerce provides option of virtual auctions.

 Readily available information. A customer can see the relevant detailed information
within seconds rather than waiting for days or weeks.

 E-Commerce increases competition among the organizations and as result

organizations provides substantial discounts to customers.

Advantages to Society
 Customers need not to travel to shop a product thus less traffic on road and low air
pollution.

 E-Commerce helps reducing cost of products so less affluent people can also afford
the products.

 E-Commerce has enabled access to services and products to rural areas as well which
are otherwise not available to them.

 E-Commerce helps government to deliver public services like health care, education,
social services at reduced cost and in improved way.

E-Commerce disadvantages can be broadly classified in two major categories:

 Technical disadvantages
 Non-Technical disadvantages

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Technical Disadvantages
 There can be lack of system security, reliability or standards owing to poor
implementation of e-Commerce.

 Software development industry is still evolving and keeps changing rapidly.

 In many countries, network bandwidth might cause an issue as there is insufficient

telecommunication bandwidth available.

 Special types of web server or other software might be required by the vendor setting
the e-commerce environment apart from network servers.

 Sometimes, it becomes difficult to integrate E-Commerce software or website with

the existing application or databases.

 There could be software/hardware compatibility issue as some E-Commerce software

may be incompatible with some operating system or any other component.

Non-Technical Disadvantages
 Initial cost: The cost of creating / building E-Commerce application in-house may be
very high. There could be delay in launching the E-Commerce application due to
mistakes, lack of experience.

 User resistance: User may not trust the site being unknown faceless seller. Such
mistrust makes it difficult to make user switch from physical stores to online/virtual
stores.

 Security/ Privacy: Difficult to ensure security or privacy on online transactions.

 Lack of touch or feel of products during online shopping.

 E-Commerce applications are still evolving and changing rapidly.

 Internet access is still not cheaper and is inconvenient to use for many potential
customers like one living in remote villages.

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E-commerce in India India has an internet users base of about 450 million as of July 2017,
40% of the population.. Despite being the second-largest userbase in world, only behind
China (650 million, 48% of population), the penetration of e-commerce is low compared to
markets like the United States (266 million, 84%), or France (54 M, 81%), but is growing at
an unprecedented rate, adding around 6 million new entrants every month. The industry
consensus is that growth is at an inflection point.

This statistic provides the retail e-commerce volume in India from 2015 to 2021. In 2016, the
sale of physical goods via digital channels in India amounted to 16.08 billion U.S. dollars in
revenues.

India is one of the fastest-growing e-commerce markets worldwide, with millions of new
internet users taking advantage of cheap mobile connections to send mobile messages, watch
online videos, use mobile services, and of course, to shop. As of 2015, only 26 percent of the
local population was using the internet; almost ten times the audience size from a decade
prior. According to recent market research, mobile phone internet user penetration in India is
projected to reach 37.36 percent of the population in 2021, representing a huge potential in
terms of digital and mobile buyer audience. Total internet audiences in India are estimated to
surpass 635 million online users in 2021.

As of 2015, the majority of online users in India were male, and the same held true for online
shoppers. In India, men accounted for almost two thirds of online shopping audiences.
Despite this imbalance in online presence and digital spending, female online shoppers are
estimated to account for 42 percent of all Indian e-retail spending in 2020, up from only 20
percent of total retail e-commerce expenditure in 2015.A

In India, cash on delivery is the most preferred payment method, accumulating 75% of the e-
retail activities. Demand for international consumer products (including long-tail items) is
growing much faster than in-country supply from authorised distributors and e-commerce
offerings.

In 2015, the largest e-commerce companies in India were Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon India,
and Paytm.

Market size and growth

India's e-commerce market was worth about $3.9 billion in 2009, it went up to $12.6 billion
in 2013. In 2013, the e-retail segment was worth US$2.3 billion. About 70% of India's e-
commerce market is travel related.According to Google India, there were 35 million online
shoppers in India in 2014 Q1 and was expected to cross 100 million mark by end of year
2016.CAGR vis-à-vis a global growth rate of 8–10%. Electronics and Apparel are the biggest
categories in terms of sales.

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According to a study conducted by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, the e-
commerce sector is estimated to reach Rs. 211,005 crore by December 2016. The study also
stated that online travel accounts for 61% of the e-commerce market.

According to a study done by Indian Institute of eCommerce, by 2020 India is expected to

generate $100 billion online retail revenue out of which $35 billion will be through fashion e-
commerce. Online apparel sales are set to grow four times in coming years.

India's retail market is estimated at $470 billion in 2011 and is expected to grow to $675 Bn
by 2016 and $850 billion by 2020, – estimated CAGR of 10%..According to Forrester, the e-
commerce market in India is set to grow the fastest within the Asia-Pacific Region at a
CAGR of over 57% between 2012–16.

As per "India Goes Digital", a report by Avendus Capital, the Indian e-commerce market is
estimated at Rs 28,500 Crore ($6.3 billion) for the year 2011. Online travel constitutes a
sizable portion (87%) of this market today. Online travel market in India had a growth rate of
22% over the next 4 years and reach Rs 54,800 crore ($12.2 billion) in size by 2015. Indian e-
tailing industry is estimated at Rs 3,600 crore (US$800 million) in 2011 and estimated to
grow to Rs 53,000 crore ($11.8 billion) in 2015.

Overall e-commerce market had reached Rs 1,07,800 crores (US$24 billion) by the year 2015
with both online travel and e-tailing contributing equally. Another big segment in e-
commerce is mobile/DTH recharge with nearly 1 million transactions daily by operator
websites.

A new sector in e-commerce is online medicine, selling complementary and alternative

medicine or prescription medicine online. There are no dedicated online pharmacy laws in
India and it is permissible to sell prescription medicine online with a legitimate license.

Online sales of luxury products like jewellery also increased over the years. Most of the retail
brands have also started entering into the market and they expect at least 20% sales through
online in next 2–3 years.

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Closures

Though the sector has witnessed tremendous growth and is expected to grow, many e-
commerce ventures have faced tremendous pressure to ensure cash flows. But it has not
worked out for all the e-commerce websites. Many of them like Dhingana, IndiaPlaza.in,
Rock.in, Seventy MM amongst others had to close down or change their business models to
survive.

Infrastructure

There are many hosting companies working in India but most[citation needed] of them are
not suitable for eCommerce hosting purpose, because they are providing much less secure
and threat protected shared hosting. eCommerce demand highly secure, stable and protected
hosting.Trends are changing with some of eCommerce companies starting to offer SaaS for
hosting web stores with minimal one time costs.

India has got its own version of Cyber Monday known as Great Online Shopping Festival
which started in December 2012, when Google India partnered with e-commerce companies
including Flipkart, HomeShop18, Snapdeal, Indiatimes shopping and Makemytrip. "Cyber
Monday" is a term coined in the USA for the Monday coming after Black Friday, which is
the Friday after Thanksgiving Day. Most recent GOSF Great Online Shopping Festival was
held during Dec 10 to 12, 2014.

In early June 2013, Amazon.com launched their Amazon India marketplace without any
marketing campaigns. In July 2014, Amazon had said it will invest $2 billion (Rs 12,000
crore) in India to expand business, after its largest Indian rival Flipkart announced $1 billion
in funding. In June 2016, Amazon agreed to invest another $3 billion to further pressure
rivals Flipkart & Snapdeal Amazon has also entered grocery segment with its Kirana now in
bangalore and is also planning to enter in various other cities like Delhi, Mumbai and
Chennai and faces stiff competition with Indian startups.[19] A large proportion of traffic
towards e-commerce sites is driven by coupon sites. In July 2014, CouponChaska.com, a
coupon and offers site partnered with some of the largest Indian e-commerce sites including
Amazon and Flipkart. It provides a listing of deals from various Indian online stores for free.
Alternatively, the site offers mobile recharges to users on each purchase.

Funding

Examples of venture capital firms having invested in e-commerce companies in India are as
follows: Flipkart.com raised about USD 2.3 billion.On 10 July 2013, Flipkart announced it
had received $200 million from existing investors Tiger Global, Naspers, Accel Partners, and

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ICONIQ Capital, and an additional $160 million from Dragoneer Investment Group, Morgan
Stanley Wealth Management, Sofina, Vulcan Inc. and more from Tiger Global.

In February 2014, online fashion retailer Myntra.com raised $50 million from a group of
investors led by Premji Invest, the investment company floated by Azim Premji, Chairman of
Wipro. May 2014 also witnessed an acquisition of Myntra by Flipkart reportedly for ₹2,000
crores.

In September 2015, PepperTap raised $36 million from Snapdeal and others.

Niche retailers

The spread of e-commerce has led to the rise of several niche players who largely specialize
their products around a specific theme. As many as 1,06,086 websites are registered daily and
more than 25% are for niche businesses.

During 2014, Royal Enfield sold 200 bikes of special series Online.

Online apparel is one of the more popular verticals, which along with computers and
consumer electronics make up 42% of the total retail e-commerce sales.[28] Niche online
merchandising brands like Headbanger's Merch, Redwolf and No Nasties partner with and
even help sustain independent musicians. Some established brands like Arvind are now
creating clothing lines just for the e-commerce markets. Some of the bigger online retailer
like VoxPop Clothing have secured multiple rounds of funding, the last round raising $1
million from Blume Ventures in 2014.

As these niche businesses get popular, they are slowly getting acquired by the big players.
BabyOye was acquired by Mahindra Retail, part of the $17 billion Mahindra Group. Ekstop
was acquired by the Godrej Group to complement their offline chain of Nature's Basket
stores.

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E-Commerce has many unique features. Some of them are:

1. E-Commerce has global reach. The technology is utilized in all nations.

2. It is virtual reality.

3. It is rich with information and provides maximum information.

4. Provides individual need based messaging services.

5. Provides interactivity among various uses.

6. Provides social technology and social networking.

7. Provides text, audio, video, graphics and all types of entertainment.

8. Uses international or universal standards for transactions.

9. Uses internet and web technologies. It can be reached from all places.

10. Works in digital area.

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EVOLUTION OF E COMMERCE IN INDIA

MILESTONES OF E-COMMERCE

1979- Michael Aldrich is credited with inventing online shopping by connecting a modified
domestic TV to a real-time transaction processing computer via a domestic telephone line.

1982- Minitel was introduced in France and was used for online ordering.

1994- Netscape releases the Navigator browser. Pizza Hut offers online ordering on its web
page, and the first online bank opens.

1998- PayPal comes into existence.

2002- eBay acquires PayPal for $1.5 billion and changes the scope of online shopping
forever.

2003- After eight years, Amazon posts its first yearly profit.

2012- US E-commerce and online retail sales are projected to reach $226 billion (an increase
of 12% over 2011).

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1991: Introduction of E-Commerce The year 1991 noted a new chapter in the history of the
online world where e-commerce became a hot choice amongst the commercial use of the
internet. At that time nobody would have even thought that the buying and selling online or
say the online trading will become a trend in the world and India will also share a good
proportion of this success.

IRCTC teaches India to Book ticket online India first came into interaction with the online
E-Commerce via the IRCTC. The government of India experimented this online strategy to
make it convenient for its public to book the train tickets. Hence, the government came
forward with the IRCTC Online Passenger Reservation System, which for the first time
encountered the online ticket booking from anywhere at any time. This was a boon to the
common man as now they don’t have to wait for long in line, no issues for wastage of time
during unavailability of the trains, no burden on the ticket bookers and many more. The
advancements in the technology as the years passed on have been also seen in the IRCTC
Online system as now one can book tickets (tatkal, normal, etc.) on one go, easy payments,
can check the status of the ticket and availability of the train as well. This is a big
achievement in the history of India in the field of online E-Commerce.

Introduction of Low Cost Airline with AirDeccan After the unpredicted success of the
IRCTC, the online ticket booking system was followed by the airlines (like AirDeccan,
Indian Airlines, Spicejet, etc.). Airline agency encouraged, web booking to save the
commission given to agents and thus in a way made a major population of the country to try
E-Commerce for the first time. Today, the booking system is not just limited to the
transportation rather hotel bookings, bus booking etc. are being done using the websites like
Makemytrip and Yatra.

2007: The Deep Discounted model of Flipkart The acceptance of the ecommerce on a large
scale by the Indian people influenced other business players also to try this technique for their
E-businesses and gain high profits. Though online shopping has been present since the 2000
but it gained popularity only with deep discount model of Flipkart. In a way it re-launched
online shopping in India. Soon other portals like Amazon, Flipkart, Jabong, etc. started
hunting India for their businesses.

E-Commerce or Electronics Commerce business models can generally categorized in

following categories.

 Business - to - Business (B2B)

 Business - to - Consumer (B2C)
 Consumer - to - Consumer (C2C)
 Consumer - to - Business (C2B)
 Business - to - Government (B2G)
 Government - to - Business (G2B)
 Government - to - Citizen (G2C)

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  Business - to - Business (B2B)
Website following B2B business model sells its product to an intermediate buyer who
then sells the product to the final customer. As an example, a wholesaler places an
order from a company's website and after receiving the consignment, sells the end
product to final customer who comes to buy the product at wholesaler's retail outlet.

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  Business - to - Consumer(B2C)
 Website following B2C business model sells its product directly to a customer. A
customer can view products shown on the website of business organization. The
customer can choose a product and order the same. Website will send a notification to
the business organization via email and organization will dispatch the product/goods
to the customer.


 Consumer - to - Consumer (C2C)
 Website following C2C business model helps consumer to sell their assets like
residential property, cars, motorcycles etc. or rent a room by publishing their
information on the website. Website may or may not charge the consumer for its
services. Another consumer may opt to buy the product of the first customer by
viewing the post/advertisement on the website.

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  Consumer - to - Business (C2B) In this model, a consumer approaches website showing
multiple business organizations for a particular service. Consumer places an estimate
of amount he/she wants to spend for a particular service. For example, comparison of
interest rates of personal loan/ car loan provided by various banks via website.
Business organization who fulfills the consumer's requirement within specified
budget approaches the customer and provides its services.

 Business - to - Government (B2G) B2G model is a variant of B2B model. Such websites
are used by government to trade and exchange information with various business
organizations. Such websites are accredited by the government and provide a medium
to businesses to submit application forms to the government.

 Government - to - Business (G2B) Government uses B2G model website to approach

business organizations. Such websites support auctions, tenders and application
submission functionalities.

 Government - to - Citizen (G2C) Government uses G2C model website to approach

citizen in general. Such websites support auctions of vehicles, machinery or any other
material. Such website also provides services like registration for birth, marriage or
death certificates. Main objectives of G2C website are to reduce average time for
fulfilling people requests for various government services.

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 WORLD WIDE WEB (WWW) AS THE ARCHITECTURE

Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers co-operate

efficiently for seamless sharing of information. Unfortunately, this assumption of
interoperability has not been supported by the realities of practical computing.
Computing is still a world make up of many technical directions, product
implementations and completing vendors.

The web community of developers and users is tackling these complex problems.

The Web architecture is made up of three primary entities ; client browser, web
browser and third party services. The client browser usually interacts with the WWW
server, which acts as an intermediary in the interaction with third-party services.

The client browser is rested on the user’s PC or workstation and provides an interface
to the various type of content. The browser has to be smart enough to understand what
file it is downloading and what browser connection it requires to activate to display
the file. Browsers are also capable of manipulating local files.

Web server functions can be categorized into information retrieval, data and
transaction management, and security. The third party services could be other web
servers that make up the digital library, information processing tools and electronic
payment systems.

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 The World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or the Web) is an information space where
documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators
(URLs), interlinked by hypertext links, and can be accessed via the Internet.English
scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. He wrote the first
web browser computer program in 1990 while employed at CERN in Switzerland.The
Web browser was released outside of CERN in 1991, first to other research
institutions starting in January 1991 and to the general public on the Internet in
August 1991.

The World Wide Web has been central to the development of the Information Age
and is the primary tool billions of people use to interact on the Internet.Web pages are
primarily text documents formatted and annotated with Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML). In addition to formatted text, web pages may contain images, video, audio,
and software components that are rendered in the user's web browser as coherent
pages of multimedia content.

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 Unit-II: Supply Chain Management: Definition, Benefits, goals, functions,
characteristics, Strategies of SCM, Electronic Logistics and its implementation in
business houses Electronic Data Interchange (EDI): Definition, benefits of EDI,
applications, advantages and limitations, EDI Model.

Logistics is defined as “handling an operation that involves providing labour and materials to
be supplied as needed”. E-logistics is defined to be “the mechanism of automating logistics
processes and providing an integrated, end-to-end fulfilment and supply chain management
services to the players of logistics processes. Those logistics processes that are automated by e-
logistics provide supply chain visibility and can be part of existing e-Commerce or Workflow
systems in an enterprise”. (Watson Research Center, 2007).

In a typical E-logistics process, three components come into play: Request for Quotes (RFQ),
Shipping and Tracking. The Logistics intercommunicate with the business process manager in
an e-commerce server. It is the role of the business service manager to invoke the RFQ
(request for Quote) process. After getting the response, the purchase order is updated, after
which the shipping process is invoked by the business process manager. Once the products are
shipped for the specified destination, the tracking number is then provided to the customer.
This tracking number is mapped to the PO number in an e-commerce system. This facilitates
easy tracking of shipments for the customers. This is the essential interaction of a business
process manager and e-logistics.

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the process of planning, implementing, and controlling
the operations of the supply chain as efficiently as possible. A retail supply chain may pose a
few challenges like “linking the consumer in the supply chain planning process, managing
product life cycles, promotional planning, planning for seasonal products, determining cost-
effective supply channels, forecasting (CPFR) and scheduling in a volatile economic
environment and many more”. .

The process of Supply Chain Management includes the movement and storage of all raw
materials, current inventory, and the finished commodities from point-of-origin to point-of-
consumption. The Supply Chain Management process embraces all related aspects including
planning and management of all activities involved in sourcing, procurement, conversion, and
logistics management activities. It also involves effective integration of supply and demand
management, both within and between companies.

The process of Supply Chain Management is all-inclusive, comprehensive, complex and

needs to address issues like:

Distribution Strategy: Centralized versus decentralized, direct shipment, Cross docking, pull
or push strategies, third party logistics; Distribution Network Configuration: Supplier location,
number of suppliers, production facilities, distribution centres, warehouses and customers;
Inventory Management; Cash-Flow and streamlined information process i.e. integration of

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systems and processes through the supply chain which includes information like demand
signals, forecasts, inventory and transportation etc to be shared. (Wikipedia, 2007).

In order to stay within the league of competitors and successfully compete in the global
market, it is important for the organizations that they rely on “effective” supply chains and
networks.
In simple words, distribution can be described as a commercial activity of transporting and
selling goods from a producer to a consumer. A distributor actually serves as a middle man
between the manufacturer and retailer. Today, a distribution channel may constitute one or all
of the following:

• Direct selling, via email or internet.

• An agent who sells on behalf of the producer
• A distributor (or wholesaler)who sells to the retailer
• A retailer who sells goods to its customers

Distribution in effect is an important aspect of marketing. The other aspects include product
management, pricing and information.

A Supply Chain Management (SCM) system is an application system for planning,

optimizing and controlling of volumes, due dates and capacities along the whole Supply
Chain

Benefits of SCM Systems

 Improvement of delivery dependability and customer orientation

 Reduction of stocks
 Cost reduction within the procurement, production and distribution network
 Decrease of processing time5)
 Avoidance of the bullwhip-effect

Use of SCM Systems in eCommerce

eCommerce is the electronic trade with goods and services. eCommerce means an electronic
integration of processes across companies using information- and communication
technologies in order to eliminate media disruptions. In eCommerce business processes and
information transfers are conducted electronically in order to improve the efficiency of
processes and to accelerate them. For instance, Chain Execution-Suites/-Software is an
efficient support for eCommerce solutions.

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SCM Functions Business
Business teams select suppliers for parts or services by identifying the
suppliers, evaluating them and finally contracting with the best available
Sourcing suppliers.
Business teams acquire parts or services by executing the contracts with
Procurement the preferred suppliers and getting them delivered to the customers.
Business teams repair/customize parts and equipment that meet or exceed
Conversion requirements of ATC customers/partners.
Business teams manage planning, designing, ordering, storing, shipping,
Logistics and installation, of parts and equipment for customers/partners across the
management globe.
Coordination and
collaboration
with channel Business teams cooperate with partners to design, customize, and
partners implement solutions that meet or exceed ATC customers' requirements.
Integrates supply
and
demand management
within and across Business teams manage available parts/equipment/services and needs
companies from ATC customers and partners.

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Advantages of Supply Chain Management :

1. Supply Chain Management helps to increase savings in labour and procurement costs.

2. Supply Chain Management helps to achieve better inventory control.

3. Supply Chain Management is used to get better control over suppliers.

4. Supply Chain Management can increase market visibility.

5. Chances of product failure rate can be reduced by Supply Chain Management.

6. Supply Chain Management is used to provide better information on customer needs, tastes
etc.,

7. Supply Chain Management helps to achieve regular and better communication with the
customers.

8. Supply Chain Management helps to improve customer care service.

9. Supply Chain Management is used to achieve higher revenues.

10.Supply Chain Management increases performance and profitability.

11.Supply Chain Management is used to lower transportation, warehousing and packaging

costs.

12.Supply Chain Management increases capacity, capability or flexibility.

13.Supply Chain Management enhance value for money.

14.Supply Chain Management is used to improve reputation of brand in market.

15.Supply Chain Management also increases the value of shareholder.

16.Supply Chain Management is used for faster and more accurate order processing.

17.Supply Chain Management allows higher discount on price to wholesaler due large order
size.

18.Supply Chain Management is also good for returns and recall management.

19.Supply Chain Management is used for production tracking.

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Disadvantages of Supply Chain Management :

1. Sometimes Supply Chain Management can be very expensive to implement.

2. Competitors can easily copy the strategy of Supply Chain Management.

3. For better Supply Chain Management, proper skills and experience is required to achieve
success.

4. Sometimes in Supply Chain Management various functions may be difficult to manage.

5. In Supply Chain Management there may be staff resistance.

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Flipkart is an electronic commerce company and among India’s largest online retailers with
reported sales of $12.5million. Flipkart initially started with selling books online but has
diversified today into a generic e-commerce website, selling CDs/DVDs, mobile phones and
electronics. The mission of the organization is to provide a memorable online shopping
experience to the customers so that they come back again and they use innovative services
like 30 day replacement, Cash on Delivery, free shipping, EMI options mainly for electronics
and on-time delivery.

Flipkart's inventory management

The operations team deals with Supply chain management; from procurement to warehouse
management and customer support.

Supplier Network:
Flipkart has a network of 500 plus distributors and only stocks frequently ordered items.
Items with low demand elasticity, fast selling items which have a long shelf life are
maintained in inventory. Whereas items with low and unpredictable demand are procured
once the customers places the order.

Warehouse Management:
Flipkart has & major warehouse spread across the Metros like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and
Chennai and in the cities of Pune, Bangalore and Noida. They further have smaller regional
distribution centers at over 500 locations. Company has tie-ups with more than 15 courier
companies like Blue Dart, First Flight etc. to deliver their products and Indian post for areas
where courier do not reach.
Flipkart’s warehouse management has 3 major steps:
 Inward Processing
 Storage Management
 Outward Processing

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Order Fulfillment Process:
Customer orders are filled via Inventory Management ot Just in time delivery depending on
the availability of products

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Inventory Management:
Flipkart uses a Continuous review model. The inventory stocks are replenished when the
inventory levels reach Reorder point (ROP). The company employs first in first out(FIFO)
method for its inventory management. Under the FIFO method, shipment request is sent to a
particular warehouse where the oldest inventory items are shipped first. This model makes
sense for electronics since technology becomes obsolete very quickly.

Flipkart uses sales to predict the levels of inventory. The warehouses are divided into
multiple parts such as inventory, packaging, shipping etc. Stocks are replenished every 24-48
hours and in the back end the company records details of all the transactions. The company
has partnered with postal companies for order tracking and reconcilation, Thus the customer
is updated about the state of his order via email, website or text messages. If the product
needs to be returned, it is done effectively and efficiently due to the companies partnership
with the courier companies. In the case of electronics, warranty and after sales service is
solely the manufacturer’s responsibility but Flipkart facilitates interaction between supplier
and customer.

With increased penetration of internet services, the e-commerce business in India is

forecasted to increase from 11 million customers to 30 million by 2015. Seeing the prospects
for growth, several new companies are going to enter the e-commerce market and a price war
is unavoidable. Thus in order to stay profitable in this growing competition, companies will
have to focus dramatically on reducing their costs and this can be achieved by maintaining an
efficient backend- nationwide delivery network, warehouses, inventory management,
logistics etc. and thus the importance of managing one’s supply chain should not be
undermined.

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EDI: Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the computer-to-computer exchange of
business documents in a standard electronic format between business partners.
By moving from a paper-based exchange of business document to one that is electronic,
businesses enjoy major benefits such as reduced cost, increased processing speed, reduced
errors and improved relationships with business partners. Learn more about the benefits of
EDI here. »
Each term in the definition is significant:

 Computer-to-computer– EDI replaces postal mail, fax and email. While email is also
an electronic approach, the documents exchanged via email must still be handled by
people rather than computers. Having people involved slows down the processing of the
documents and also introduces errors. Instead, EDI documents can flow straight through
to the appropriate application on the receiver’s computer (e.g., the Order Management
System) and processing can begin immediately. A typical manual process looks like this,
with lots of paper and people involvement:

The EDI process looks like this — no paper, no people involved:

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 Business documents – These are any of the documents that are typically exchanged
between businesses. The most common documents exchanged via EDI are purchase
orders, invoices and advance ship notices. But there are many, many others such as bill
of lading, customs documents, inventory documents, shipping status documents and
payment documents.

 Standard format– Because EDI documents must be processed by computers rather than
humans, a standard format must be used so that the computer will be able to read and
understand the documents. A standard format describes what each piece of information
is and in what format (e.g., integer, decimal, mmddyy). Without a standard format, each
company would send documents using its company-specific format and, much as an
English-speaking person probably doesn’t understand Japanese, the receiver’s computer
system doesn’t understand the company-specific format of the sender’s format.

o There are several EDI standards in use today, including ANSI, EDIFACT,
TRADACOMS and ebXML. And, for each standard there are many different
versions, e.g., ANSI 5010 or EDIFACT version D12, Release A. When two
businesses decide to exchange EDI documents, they must agree on the specific EDI
standard and version.
o Businesses typically use an EDI translator – either as in-house software or via an
EDI service provider – to translate the EDI format so the data can be used by their
internal applications and thus enable straight through processing of documents.

 Business partners – The exchange of EDI documents is typically between two different
companies, referred to as business partners or trading partners. For example, Company A
may buy goods from Company B. Company A sends orders to Company B. Company A
and Company B are business partners.

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Advantages of EDI

 EDI provides cost savings by reducing paper and eliminating paper processing.
 Time savings and eliminating repetition are other benefits from the reduction in paper
processing.
 Documents can be transferred more quickly and processing errors can be decreased
allowing business to be done more efficiently.
 More efficient processing will likely lead to improved customer service which will
ultimately expand the customer base.

Disadvantages of EDI

 Contrasted to XML, which is not strictly standardized, many consider EDI to have too
many standards.
 There are various standards bodies who have developed 'standard document formats'
for EDI which can cause problems with cross compatibility.
 These standards bodies also push standards revisions annually which could cause
problems if you have a more recent version of a document than a business partner.
 EDI systems are extremely expensive making it difficult for small businesses to
implement.
 Many large organizations will only work with others who utilize EDI. This may limit
the business small companies are able to do with such organizations and limit trading
partners.

Common EDI Codes

810 Invoice

850 Purchase Order

855 Purchase Order Acknowledgment

856 Shipment Notice/Manifest

894 Delivery/Return Base Record

997 Functional Acknowledgment

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EDI Documents

Following are few important documents used in EDI −

 Invoices
 Purchase orders
 Shipping Requests
 Acknowledgement
 Business Correspondence letters
 Financial information letters

Steps in an EDI System

Following are the steps in an EDI System.

1. A program generates the file which contains the processed document.

2. The document is converted into an agreed standard format.
3. The file containing the document is send electronically on network.
4. The trading partner receives the file.
5. An acknowledgement document is generated and sent to the originating organization.

EDI IMPLEMENTATION

1. EDI software
2. Mail boxing of EDI transactions
3. VAN (Value Added Network) or AS/2 or FTP communication as required by various
partners
4. A server or PC, communication devices, and peripherals
5. Monitored security, backups and redundant power
6. Mapping and translation software
7. Additional EDI software if integration of the transactions with accounting or other
back office systems is desired
8. Personnel training in how to use the software and communication devices
9. Development and testing of maps with each EDI trading partner for all EDI
transaction types.

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Unit-III: Electronic Payment Systems: Types of EPS- traditional payment system and
modern payment system, electronic cash, steps for electronic payment, payment
security - E-Security- cryptography, hacker, secure electronic transaction, secure-socket
layer

Electronic funds transfer (EFT) is the electronic transfer of money from one bank
account to another, either within a single financial institution or across multiple institutions,
via computer-based systems, without the direct intervention of bank staff. EFT's are known
by a number of names.

In the United States, they may be referred to as electronic checks or e-checks.

The term covers a number of different payment systems, for example:

• cardholder-initiated transactions, using a payment card such as a credit or debit card

• direct deposit payment initiated by the payer
• direct debit payments for which a business debits the consumer's bank accounts for
payment for goods or services
• wire transfer via an international banking network such as SWIFT {Society for
Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication}
• electronic bill payment in online banking, which may be delivered by EFT or paper
check
• transactions involving stored value of electronic money, possibly in a private
currency.
An e-commerce payment system facilitates the acceptance of electronic payment for online
transactions.

Also known as a sample of Electronic Data Interchange(EDI), e-commerce payment systems

have become increasingly popular due to the widespread use of the internet-based shopping
and banking.

Over the years, credit cards have become one of the most common forms of payment for e-
commerce transactions. In North America almost 90% of online retail transactions were made
with this payment type.

• Modes of electronic payments are following.

• Credit Card

• Debit Card

• Smart Card

• E-Money

• Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT)

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 Credit Card

Payment using credit card is one of most common mode of electronic payment. Credit card is
small plastic card with a unique number attached with an account. It has also a magnetic strip
embedded in it which is used to read credit card via card readers. When a customer purchases
a product via credit card, credit card issuer bank pays on behalf of the customer and customer
has a certain time period after which he/she can pay the credit card bill. It is usually credit
card monthly payment cycle.

Following are the actors in the credit card system.

• The card holder - Customer

• The merchant - seller of product who can accept credit card payments.

• The card issuer bank - card holder's bank

• The acquirer bank - the merchant's bank

• The card brand - for example , visa or mastercard.

Step Description

Step 1 Bank issues and activates a credit card to customer on his/her request.

Step 2 Customer presents credit card information to merchant site or to merchant from
whom he/she want to purchase a product/service.

Step 3 Merchant validates customer's identity by asking for approval from card brand
company.

Step 4 Card brand company authenticates the credit card and paid the transaction by
credit. Merchant keeps the sales slip.

Step 5 Merchant submits the sales slip to acquirer banks and gets the service chargers
paid to him/her.

Step 6 Acquirer bank requests the card brand company to clear the credit amount and gets
the payment.

Step 7 Now card brand company asks to clear amount from the issuer bank and amount
gets transferred to card brand company.

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Debit Card
Debit card, like credit card is a small plastic card with a unique number mapped with the
bank account number. It is required to have a bank account before getting a debit card from
the bank.
The major difference between debit card and credit card is that in case of payment through
debit card, amount gets deducted from card's bank account immidiately and there should be
sufficient balance in bank account for the transaction to get completed. Whereas in case of
credit card there is no such compulsion.
Debit cards free customer to carry cash, cheques and even merchants accepts debit card more
readily. Having restriction on amount being in bank account also helps customer to keep a
check on his/her spendings.

Smart Card
Smart card is again similar to credit card and debit card in apperance but it has a small
microprocessor chip embedded in it. It has the capacity to store customer work
related/personal information. Smart card is also used to store money which is reduced as per
usage.
Smart card can be accessed only using a PIN of customer. Smart cards are secure as they
stores information in encrypted format and are less expensive/provides faster
processing.Mondex and Visa Cash cards are examples of smart cards.

E-Money
E-Money transactions refers to situation where payment is done over the network and amount
gets transferred from one financial body to another financial body without any involvement
of a middleman. E-money transactions are faster, convenient and saves a lot of time.
Online payments done via credit card, debit card or smart card are examples of e-money
transactions. Another popular example is e-cash. In case of e-cash, both customer and
merchant both have to sign up with the bank or company issuing e-cash.

Electronic Fund Transfer

It is a very popular electronic payment method to transfer money from one bank account to
another bank account. Accounts can be in same bank or different bank. Fund transfer can be
done using ATM (Automated Teller Machine) or using computer. Now a day, internet based
EFT is getting popularity. In this case, customer uses website provided by the bank.
Customer logins to the bank's website and registers another bank account. He/she then places
a request to transfer certain amount to that account.

Customer's bank transfers amount to other account if it is in same bank otherwise transfer
request is forwarded to ACH (Automated Clearing House) to transfer amount to other
account and amount is deducted from customer's account. Once amount is transferred to other
account, customer is notified of the fund transfer by the bank

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E Commerce Security : Security is an essential part of any transaction that takes place over
the internet. Customer will loose his/her faith in e-business if its security is compromised.
Following are the essential requirments for safe e-payments/transactions –

Confidential − Information should not be accessible to unauthorized person. It should not be

intercepted during transmission.

Integrity − Information should not be altered during its transmission over the network.
Availability − Information should be available wherever and whenever requirement within
time limit specified.

Authenticity − There should be a mechanism to authenticate user before giving him/her

access to required information.

Non-Repudiabiity − It is protection against denial of order or denial of payment. Once a

sender sends a message, the sender should not able to deny sending the message. Similary the
receipient of message should not be able to deny receipt.

Encryption − Information should be encrypted and decrypted only by authorized user.

Auditability − Data should be recorded in such a way that it can be audited for integrity
requirements.

Major security measures are following –

Encryption − It is a very effective and practical way to safeguard the data being transmitted
over the network. Sender of the information encrypt the data using a secret code and specified
receiver only can decrypt the data using the same or different secret code.

Digital Signature − Digital signature ensures the authenticity of the information. A digital
signature is a e-signature authentic authenticated through encryption and password.

Security Certificates − Security certificate is unique digital id used to verify identity of an

individual website or user.

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Security Protocols in Internet
Following are the popular protocols used over the internet which ensures security of
transactions made over the internet.

Secure Socket Layer (SSL)

It is the most commonly used protocol and is widely used across the industry. It meets
following security requirements −
• Authentication
• Encryption
• Integrity
• Non-reputability

"https://" is to be used for HTTP urls with SSL, where as "http:/" is to be used for HTTP urls
without SSL.

Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (SHTTP)

SHTTP extends the HTTP internet protocol with public key encryption, authentication and
digital signature over the internet. Secure HTTP supports multiple security mechanism
providing security to end users. SHTTP works by negotiating encryption scheme types used
between client and server.

Secure Electronic Transaction

It is a secure protocol developed by MasterCard and Visa in collaboration. Thereoritically, it
is the best security protocol. It has following components –

 Card Holder's Digital Wallet Software − Digital Wallet allows card holder to make
secure purchases online via point and click interface.

 Merchant Software − This software helps merchants to communicate with potential

customers and financial institutions in secure manner.

 Payment Gateway Server Software − Payment gateway provides automatic and

standard payment process. It supports the process for merchant's certificate request.

 Certificate Authority Software − This software is used by financial institutions to

issue digital certificates to card holders and merchants and to enable them to register
their account agreements for secure electronic commerce.

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CRYPTOGRAPHY is a technique to provide message confidentiality.

• The term cryptography is a Greek word which means "secret writing".

• It is an art and science of transforming messages so as to make them secure and immune to
attacks.

• Cryptography involves the process of encryption and decryption. This process is depicted.

The terminology used in cryptography is given below:

1. Plaintext. The original message or data that is fed into the algorithm as input is called
plaintext.

2. Encryption algorithm. The encryption algorithm is the algorithm that performs various
substitutions and transformations on the plaintext. Encryption is the process of changing
plaintext into cipher text.

3. Ciphertext. Ciphertext is the encrypted form the message. It is the scrambled message
produced as output. It depends upon the plaintext and the key.

4. Decryption algorithm. The process of changing Ciphertext into plain text is known as
decryption. Decryption algorithm is essentially the encryption algorithm run in reverse. It
takes the Ciphertext and the key and produces the original plaintext.

5. Key. It also acts as input to the encryption algorithm. The exact substitutions and
transformations performed by the algorithm depend on the key. Thus a key is a number or a
set of number that the algorithm uses to perform encryption and decryption.

• There are two different approaches to attack an encryption scheme:

1. Cryptanalysis

2. Brute-force attack

Cryptanalysis

• The process of attempting to discover the plaintext or key IS known as cryptanalysis.

• The strategy used by cryptanalyst depends on the nature of the encryption scheme and the
information available to the cryptanalyst.

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• Cryptanalyst can do any or all of six different things:

1. Attempt to break a single message.

2. Attempt to recognize patterns in encrypted messages, to be able to break subsequent ones

by applying a straight forward decryption algorithm.

3. Attempt to infer some meaning without even breaking the encryption, such as noticing an
unusual-frequency of communication or determining something by whether the
communication was short or long.

4. Attempt to deduce the key, in order to break subsequent messages easily.

5. Attempt to find weaknesses in the implementation or environment of use encryption.

6. Attempt to find general weaknesses in an encryption algorithm without necessarily having

intercepted any messages.

Brute-force attack

• This method tries every possible key on a piece of Ciphertext until an intelligible translation
into plaintext is obtained.

• On an average, half of all possible keys must be tried to achieve the success

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Unit-IV: Customer Relationship Management: Definition, Components of CRM, CRM
Architecture, architectural components of a CRM solution, Electronic CRM, Need for
Electronic CRM, E-CRM applications

Meaning of E-CRM:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a way to identify, acquire, and retain
customers – a business’ greatest asset. By providing the means to manage and coordinate
customer interactions, CRM helps companies maximise the value of every customer
interaction and in turn improve corporate performance.

E-CRM, or Electronic Customer Relationship Management, is an integrated online sales,

marketing and service strategy that is used to identify, attract and retain an organisation’s
customers. It describes improved and increased communication between an organisation and
its clients by creating and enhancing customer interaction through innovative technology. E-
CRM software provides profiles and histories of each interaction the organisation has with its
customers, making it an important tool for all small and medium businesses.

E-CRM software systems may contain a selection of the following features:

i. Customer management:
Provides access to all customer information including enquiry status and Correspondence

ii. Knowledge management:

A centralised knowledge base that handles and shares customer Information

iii. Account management:

Access to customer information and history, allowing sales teams and customer service teams
to function efficiently

iii. Case management:

Captures enquiries, escalates priority cases and notifies management of unresolved issues

iv. Back-end integration:

Blends with other systems such as billing, inventory and logistics through relevant customer
contact points such as websites and call centres

v. Reporting and analysis:

Report generation on customer behaviour and business criteria

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Evolutions of E-CRM:
Customer Support – A Historical Perspective:
The Customer is King. This mantra, although used for a long time, has not been put into
practice until recently. Forget the notion of royal treatment, customers were not even treated
with dignity by most organizations.

As recently as the 1970s and 80s, the concept of customer support meant that organizations
were doing a favor by answering a few questions for the customer on the phone – after
putting them on hold for an hour! Standing in line to buy something was common and
expected. Remember when the customers had to go to the airports to buy tickets only because
the airlines kept them there? Organizations simply lost touch with the realization – that they
existed because of these customers.

Evolution of Customer Relationship:

The 1990s brought two new concepts that challenged the prevailing business landscape:
deregulation and the Internet. These forces brought down the barriers of entry resulting in an
environment of intense competition.

Stores faced competition from on-line start-ups. Traditional bricks-and-mortar banks fought
for customers with online or virtual banks. Airline tickets were increasingly purchased from
the convenience of your home. The explosion in information allowed consumers to compare
features, and prices across multiple providers. Products became commodities and prices
could not be lowered further to ensure survival.

Customer service became the only major differentiator in many cases. Customers received
what they have always deserved – respect. The customer was now truly the king. Business
customers, although always treated with more respect than individual consumers, were more
or less ignored in the early stages of the Internet boom.

The emphasis focused on expanding the consumer base regardless of positive cash flow,
revenues, and margins. The demise of many dot-coms brought an epiphany. Companies
realized that they needed to focus on their enterprise customers. The advent of e-CRM
applications was the first big step toward providing better support to the strategic business
customers. Although these solutions provided automated self-service to customers, they still
treated all customers the same.

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Furthermore, the focus of these applications is more on improving call-center productivity.

Clearly, these applications add value and help many organizations execute their CRM
initiatives.

However, they are not effective in meeting the needs of an organization’s strategic enterprise
customers. Each enterprise customer has its own needs and craves personalized support.

Evolution of Customer Relationship Management:

The genesis of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) lies in Sales Force Automation
(SFA) tools. Companies like Siebel and Vantive (now part of PeopleSoft) took the early lead
by introducing tools to help the sales personnel become more efficient in tracking their
customers.

There were also a few problem-tracking tools for help desk such as Remedy. As companies
focused more on customer relationships, additional applications emerged in areas of customer
support, field support, and marketing automation. Most CRM companies today a retrying to
address these four areas usually by partnering with other companies. Most of the ERP players
are also expanding their solutions to include CRM. There are a number of niche players
focused only on certain pieces of CRM such as e-mail management, sales force automation,
technical support, marketing campaigns, among others.

“CRM is a business strategy designed to optimize profitability, revenue, and customer

satisfaction” – Gartner Group

Although there are quite a few vendors providing CRM related products and services, there is
still a lot of confusion around the concept of CRM. CRM is not just an application or a
technology that can be thrown at the customer satisfaction problem to make it go away.

CRM, essentially, is a strategy that involves applications, processes, policies, business

context, and people, to enable companies to manage and increase profitable relationships with
their customers. An enterprise’s strategic customers expect top-notch treatment. They want
the vendor to understand their needs. They want companies to build a strong relationship with
them – on a 1- to- 1 basis.

Current CRM and E-Support Environment:

There are currently over 200 CRM software vendors and the number continues to grow.
Although, there are various types of applications included in CRM suites, as described
earlier, the core application within the CRM landscape that truly builds customer

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relationships is the customer service application. Other pieces, though useful, are focused on
helping the vendor rather than the customer.

Many of these applications were initially focused on providing an environment to improve

the productivity of call-centers. In addition, some of these applications integrated message
queuing functionality to provide a common environment for all channels. So, whether the
customer was trying to reach the call-center by making a call, via e-mail, by fax, or through
the Web site, their query is prioritized and channeled through the same mechanism. Most
customer service applications now provide Web-based self-service features for companies to
offer their customers.

Customers can look up their basic information like billing ,order status, etcetera by logging in
to the vendor’s Web site. While this solution works for a B2Cmodel, for enterprise customers
with hundreds of users and hundreds of products to support, this simply doesn’t work.

Enterprise customers demand personalized support in order to access their information

quickly and easily. In the era of information-glut, they want specific and relevant
information. Companies are trying to manage relationships with their customers, partners,
and suppliers in a personalized and automated manner. True personalization is not easy as
each customer has its own needs and requirements. The issue is further complicated by the
fact that

Business Benefits of E-CRM:

Implementation of an E-CRM system enables an organisation to streamline processes and
provide sales, marketing and service personnel with better, more complete customer
information. The result is that E-CRM allows organisations to build more profitable customer
relationships and decrease operating costs.

Direct benefits of an E-CRM system include:

i. Service level improvements:
Using an integrated database to deliver consistent and improved customer responses

ii. Revenue growth:

Decreasing costs by focusing on retaining customers and using interactive service tools to sell
additional products

iii. Productivity:
Consistent sales and service procedures to create efficient work processes

iv. Customer satisfaction:

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Automatic customer tracking and detection will ensure enquiries are met and issues are
managed. This will improve the customer’s overall experience in dealing with the
organisation.

v. Automation:

E-CRM software helps automate campaigns including:

(i) Telemarketing

(ii) Telesales

(iii) Direct mail

(iv) Lead tracking and response

(v) Opportunity management

(vi) Quotes and order configuration

Across every sector and industry, effective CRM is a strategic imperative for corporate
growth and survival:
a. Sales organisations can shorten the sales cycle and increase key sales-performance metrics
such as revenue per sales representative, average order size and revenue per customer.

b. Marketing organisations can increase campaign response rates and marketing driven
revenue while simultaneously decreasing lead generation and customer acquisition costs.

c. Customer service organisations can increase service agent productivity and customer
retention while decreasing service costs, response times and request-resolution times.

Working of E-CRM:
In today’s world, customers interact with an organisation via multiple communication
channels—the World Wide Web, call centres, field salespeople, dealers and partner networks.
Many organisations also have multiple lines of business that interact with the same
customers.

E-CRM systems enable customers to do business with the organisation the way the customer
wants – any time, via any channel, in any language or currency—and to make customers feel
that they are dealing with a single, unified organisation that recognises them every step of the
way.

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The E-CRM system does this by creating a central repository for customer records and
providing a portal on each employee’s computer system allowing access to customer
information by any member of the organisation at any time. Through this system, E-CRM
gives you the ability to know more about customers, products and performance results using
real time information across your business.

Implementation of an E-CRM System:

When approaching the development and implementation of E-CRM there are

important considerations to keep in mind:
i. Define customer relationships:
Generate a list of key aspects of your customer relationships and the importance of these
relationships to your business.

ii. Develop a plan:

Create a broad Relationship Management program that can be customized to smaller
customer segments. A suitable software solution will help deliver this goal.

iii. Focus on customers:

The focus should be on the customer, not the technology. Any technology should have
specific benefits in making customers’ lives easier by improving support, lowering their
administrative costs, or giving them reasons to shift more business to your company.

iv. Save money:

Focus on aspects of your business that can contribute to the bottom line. Whether it is
through cutting costs or increasing revenue, every capability you implement should have a
direct measurable impact on the bottom line.

v. Service and support:

By tracking and measuring the dimensions of the relationship, organisations can identify their
strengths and weaknesses in the relationship management program and continually fine tune
it based on ongoing feedback from customers.

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Different levels of eCRM

In defining the scope of eCRM, three different levels can be distinguished:

 Foundational services:

This includes the minimum necessary services such as web site effectiveness and
responsiveness as well as order fulfillment.

 Customer-centered services:

These services include order tracking, product configuration and customization as well as
security/trust.

 Value-added services:

These are extra services such as online auctions and online training and education.[24]

Self-services are becoming increasingly important in CRM activities. The rise of the Internet
and eCRM has boosted the options for self-service activities. A critical success factor is the
integration of such activities into traditional channels. An example was Ford’s plan to sell
cars directly to customers via its Web Site, which provoked an outcry among its dealers
network. CRM activities are mainly of two different types. Reactive service is where the
customer has a problem and contacts the company. Proactive service is where the manager
has decided not to wait for the customer to contact the firm, but to be aggressive and contact
the customer himself in order to establish a dialogue and solve problems.

Steps to eCRM Success

Many factors play a part in ensuring that the implementation any level of eCRM is
successful. One obvious way it could be measured is by the ability for the system to add
value to the existing business. There are four suggested implementation steps that affect the
viability of a project like this:

1. Developing customer-centric strategies

2. Redesigning workflow management systems
3. Re-engineering work processes

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 4. Supporting with the right technologies

Mobile CRM

One subset of Electronic CRM is Mobile CRM (mCRM). This is defined as "services that
aim at nurturing customer relationships, acquiring or maintaining customers, support
marketing, sales or services processes, and use wireless networks as the medium of delivery
to the customers. However, since communications is the central aspect of customer relations
activities, many opt for the following definition of mCRM: "communication, either one-way
or interactive, which is related to sales, marketing and customer service activities conducted
through mobile medium for the purpose of building and maintaining customer relationships
between a company and its customer(s).

eCRM allows customers to access company services from more and more places, since the
Internet access points are increasing by the day. mCRM however, takes this one step further
and allows customers or managers to access the systems for instance from a mobile phone or
PDA with internet access, resulting in high flexibility.

Since mCRM is not able to provide a complete range of customer relationship activities it
should be integrated in the complete CRM system.

There are three main reasons that mobile CRM is becoming so popular. The first is that the
devices consumers use are improving in multiple ways that allow for this advancement.
Displays are larger and clearer and access times on networks are improving overall.
Secondly, the users are also becoming more sophisticated. The technology to them is nothing
new so it is easy to adapt. Lastly, the software being developed for these applications has
become worthwhile and useful to end users.

There are four basic steps that a company should follow to implement a mobile CRM system.
By following these and also keeping the IT department, the end users and management in
agreement, the outcome can be beneficial for all.

Step 1 - Needs analysis phase: This is the point to take your times and understand all the
technical needs and desires for each of the users and stakeholders. It also has to be kept in
mind that the mobile CRM system must be able to grow and change with the business.

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Step 2 – Mobile design phase: This is the next critical phase that will show all the technical
concerns that need to be addressed. A few main things to consider are screen size, device
storage and security.

Step 3 – Mobile application testing phase: This step is mostly to ensure that the users and
stakeholders all approve of the new system.

Step 4 – Rollout phase: This is when the new system is implemented but also when training
on the final product is done with all users.

Advantages of mobile CRM

1. The mobile channel creates a more personal direct connection with customers.
2. It is continuously active and allows necessary individuals to take action quickly using
the information.
3. Typically it is an opt-in only channel which allows for high and quality
responsiveness.
4. Overall it supports loyalty between the customer and company, which improves and
strengthens relationships.

CRM ARCHITECTURE

SAP CRM consists of various components that allow you to integrate the CRM module
with other SAP and non-SAP modules, internet, mobile devices like smartphones, tablets,
and enterprise portal.

In the center, it has SAP CRM server which has sub components like −

 CRM Enterprise Functions

 CRM Middleware
Then there are adapters to communicate with hand held devices and internet. The SAP
ECC/R3 system is used for backend, SAP BI system is used for analytical reporting and
SAP SCM is used to enhance the capabilities of SAP CRM module.

You can also see the SAP CRM architecture and all its listed key components in the
following image −

 SAP ERM Server (CRM Enterprise, CRM Middleware, Adapter)

 SAP ECC as backend system
 SAP BI for Analytical Reporting

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  SAP SCM
 Mobile and hand held devices
 Internet
 Enterprise Portal

Installable Components of SAP CRM

There are various components that get installed with SAP CRM and provide a large set of
functionalities to manage customer relationship.

 CRM Core − This includes the components that are mandatory for CRM system
landscape, which includes −

o CRM Application Server ABAP

o CRM Application Server Java

o SAP GUI and

o CRM Web Client UI.

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  CRM Mobile Components − This component is used for a mobile system
landscape.

 CRM Handheld Integration − This component is used for CRM handheld

integration.

Workforce Development
Standalone Components − These components are used to provide additional
functionalities. They are optional components shown at the time of installation.

Application System − This contains OLTP backend system, BI in NetWeaver, SAP SCM
and SAP SRM server.

SAP Solution Manager − This is one of the key components for SAP CRM
implementation.

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Unit-V: HTML- Navigating the World Wide Web, Preparing to Publish on the Web,
HTML and XHTML, Learning the Basics of HTML, structure of HTML, Creating
simple web pages, formatting text with HTML, adding images, colour and background,
table creation, designing forms.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for creating web
pages and web applications. With Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript it forms a
triad of cornerstone technologies for the World Wide Web.Web browsers receive HTML
documents from a web server or from local storage and render them into multimedia web
pages. HTML describes the structure of a web page semantically and originally included cues
for the appearance of the document.

HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages. With HTML constructs, images
and other objects, such as interactive forms, may be embedded into the rendered page. It
provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text
such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. HTML elements are
delineated by tags, written using angle brackets. Tags such as <img /> and <input />
introduce content into the page directly. Others such as <p>...</p> surround and provide
information about document text and may include other tags as sub-elements. Browsers do
not display the HTML tags, but use them to interpret the content of the page.

HTML can embed programs written in a scripting language such as JavaScript which affect
the behavior and content of web pages. Inclusion of CSS defines the look and layout of
content. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), maintainer of both the HTML and the
CSS standards, has encouraged the use of CSS over explicit presentational HTML since 1997

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, and it is the most widely used language to
write Web Pages.

 Hypertext refers to the way in which Web pages (HTML documents) are linked
together. Thus, the link available on a webpage is called Hypertext.

 As its name suggests, HTML is a Markup Language which means you use HTML
to simply "mark-up" a text document with tags that tell a Web browser how to
structure it to display.

Originally, HTML was developed with the intent of defining the structure of documents like
headings, paragraphs, lists, and so forth to facilitate the sharing of scientific information
between researchers.

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Now, HTML is being widely used to format web pages with the help of different tags
available in HTML language.

Basic HTML Document

In its simplest form, following is an example of an HTML document −

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<head>

<title>This is document title</title>

</head>

<body>

<h1>This is a heading</h1>

<p>Document content goes here.....</p>

</body>

</html>

Either you can use Try it option available at the top right corner of the code box to check
the result of this HTML code, or let's save it in an HTML file test.htm using your favorite
text editor. Finally open it using a web browser like Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, or
Firefox etc. It must show the following output −
HTML Tags
As told earlier, HTML is a markup language and makes use of various tags to format the
content. These tags are enclosed within angle braces <Tag Name>. Except few tags, most of
the tags have their corresponding closing tags. For example, <html> has its closing
tag </html> and <body> tag has its closing tag </body> tag etc.

Above example of HTML document uses the following tags −

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Sr.No Tag & Description

1 <!DOCTYPE...>

This tag defines the document type and HTML version.

2 <html>
This tag encloses the complete HTML document and mainly comprises of document
header which is represented by <head>...</head> and document body which is represented
by <body>...</body> tags.

3 <head>
This tag represents the document's header which can keep other HTML tags like <title>,
<link> etc.

4 <title>
The <title> tag is used inside the <head> tag to mention the document title.

5 <body>
This tag represents the document's body which keeps other HTML tags like <h1>, <div>,
<p> etc.

6 <h1>
This tag represents the heading.

7 <p>
This tag represents a paragraph.

A Simple HTML Document

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Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>

<h1>My First Heading</h1>

<p>My first paragraph.</p>

</body>
</html>

Example Explained

 The <!DOCTYPE html> declaration defines this document to be HTML5

 The <html> element is the root element of an HTML page
 The <head> element contains meta information about the document
 The <title> element specifies a title for the document
 The <body> element contains the visible page content
 The <h1> element defines a large heading
 The <p> element defines a paragraph

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Basic structure of an HTML document

An HTML document has two* main parts:

1. head. The head element contains title and meta data of a web document.

2. body. The body element contains the information that you want to display on a web
page.

* To make your web pages compatible with HTML 4, you need to add a document type
declaration (DTD) before the HTML element. Many web authoring software add DTD and
basic tags automatically when you create a new web page.

In a web page, the first tag (specifically, <html>) indicates the markup language that is being
used for the document. The <head> tag contains information about the web page. Lastly, the
content appears in the <body> tag. The following illustration provides a summary

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HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. An HTML file is a text file containing
markup tags. The markup tags tell the Web browser how to display the page. An HTML file
must have an ‘htm’ or ‘html’ file extension. An HTML file can be created using a simple text
editor. The rule-making body of the Web is World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). W3C
puts together specifications for Web standards. The most essential Web standards are
HTML, CSS and XML. The latest HTML standard is XHTML 1.0.

Example: Creating a simple web page

1. Start Notepad.
2. Type in the following text

<html>
<head>
<title>Title of page</title>
</head>
<body>
This is a very basic webpage. <b>This text will be displayed in bold</b>
</body>
</html>

3. Save the file as "firstpage.html".

4. Double click the saved file the browser will display the page.

Example Explained:

The first tag in your HTML document is <html>. This tag tells your browser that this is the
start of an HTML document. The last tag in your document is </html>. This tag tells your
browser that this is the end of the HTML document.

The text between the <head> tag and the </head> tag is header information. Header
information is not displayed in the browser window.

The text between the <title> tags is the title of your document. The title is displayed in your
browser's caption.

The text between the <body> tags is the text that will be displayed in your browser.

The text between the <b> and </b> tags will be displayed in a bold font.

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HTM or HTML Extension?

When you save an HTML file, you can use either the .htm or the .html extension. We have
used .html in our example.

HTML Tags

1. HTML tags are used to mark-up HTML elements

2. HTML tags are surrounded by the two characters < and >
3. The surrounding characters are called angle brackets
4. HTML tags normally come in pairs like <b> and </b>
5. The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag
6. The text between the start and end tags is the element content
7. HTML tags are not case sensitive, <b> means the same as <B>

Use Lowercase Tags?

We have just said that HTML tags are not case sensitive: <B> means the same as <b>. It is
recommended to always use because

If you want to prepare yourself for the next generations of HTML, you should start
using lowercase tags. The World Wide Web Consortium recommends lowercase tags in
their HTML 4 recommendation, and XHTML (the next generation HTML) demands
lowercase tags.

Tags can have attributes. Attributes can provide additional information about the HTML
elements on your page.

This tag defines the body element of your HTML page: <body>. With an added bgcolor
attribute, you can tell the browser that the background color of your page should be red, like
this: <body bgcolor="red">.

Attributes always come in name/value pairs like this: name="value".

Attributes are always added to the start tag of an HTML element.

Quote Styles, "red" or 'red'?

Attribute values should always be enclosed in quotes. Double style quotes are the most
common, but single style quotes are also allowed. In some rare situations, like when the
attribute value itself contains quotes, it is necessary to use single quotes:

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Headings

Headings are defined with the <h1> to <h6> tags. <h1> defines the largest heading. <h6>
defines the smallest heading.

<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<h2>This is a heading</h2>
<h3>This is a heading</h3>
<h4>This is a heading</h4>
<h5>This is a heading</h5>
<h6>This is a heading</h6>

HTML automatically adds an extra blank line before and after a heading.

Paragraphs

Paragraphs are defined with the <p> tag.

<p>This is a paragraph</p>

<p>This is another paragraph</p>

HTML automatically adds an extra blank line before and after a paragraph.

Line Breaks

The <br> tag is used when you want to end a line, but don't want to start a new paragraph.
The <br> tag forces a line break wherever you place it.

<p>This <br> is a para<br>graph with line breaks</p>

The <br> tag is an empty tag. It has no closing tag.

Comments in HTML

The comment tag is used to insert a comment in the HTML source code. A comment will be
ignored by the browser. You can use comments to explain your code, which can help you
when you edit the source code at a later date.

<!-- This is a comment -->

Note: that you need an exclamation point after the opening bracket, but not before the closing
bracket.

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 Text Formatting Tags

Tag Description

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<i> Defines italic text

<small> Defines small text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<ins> Defines inserted text

<del> Defines deleted text

Character Entities

Some characters have a special meaning in HTML, like the less than sign (<) that defines the
start of an HTML tag. If we want the browser to actually display these characters we must
insert character entities in the HTML source.

A character entity has three parts: an ampersand (&), an entity name or a # and an entity
number, and finally a semicolon (;).

To display a less than sign in an HTML document we must write: &lt; or &#60;

The advantage of using a name instead of a number is that a name is easier to remember. The
disadvantage is that not all browsers support the newest entity names, while the support for
entity numbers is very good in almost all browsers.

Note that the entities are case sensitive.

Non-breaking Space

The most common character entity in HTML is the non-breaking space.

Normally HTML will truncate spaces in your text. If you write 10 spaces in your text HTML
will remove 9 of them. To add spaces to your text, use the &nbsp; character entity.

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 Most Common Character Entities

Result Description Entity Name Entity Number

non-breaking space &nbsp; &#160;

< less than &lt; &#60;

> greater than &gt; &#62;

& Ampersand &amp; &#38;

" quotation mark &quot; &#34;

' apostrophe &apos; (does not work in IE) &#39;

Additional Commonly Used Character Entities

Result Description Entity Name Entity Number

¢ Cent &cent; &#162;

£ Pound &pound; &#163;

¥ Yen &yen; &#165;

§ Section &sect; &#167;

© Copyright &copy; &#169;

® registered trademark &reg; &#174;

× Multiplication &times; &#215;

÷ Division &divide; &#247;

The Anchor Tag and the Href Attribute

HTML uses the <a> (anchor) tag to create a link to another document.

An anchor can point to any resource on the Web: an HTML page, an image, a sound file, a
movie, etc.

The syntax of creating an anchor:

<a href="url">Text to be displayed</a>

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The <a> tag is used to create an anchor to link, the href attribute is used to address the
document to link to, and the words between the open and close of the anchor tag will be
displayed as a hyperlink.

This anchor defines a link to EEE 111 webpage:

<a href="http://faraday.ee.emu.edu.tr/eee111">Visit EEE 111</a>

The line above will look like this in a browser:

The Target Attribute

With the target attribute, you can define where the linked document will be opened.

The line below will open the document in a new browser window:

<a href="http://faraday.ee.emu.edu.tr/eee111" target="_blank"> Visit EEE 111</a>

The Anchor Tag and the Name Attribute

The name attribute is used to create a named anchor. When using named anchors we can
create links that can jump directly into a specific section on a page, instead of letting the user
scroll around to find what he/she is looking for.

Below is the syntax of a named anchor:

<a name="label">Text to be displayed</a>

The name attribute is used to create a named anchor. The name of the anchor can be any text
you care to use.

The line below defines a named anchor:

<a href="#down">Bottom of the page</a>

You should notice that a named anchor is not displayed in a special way.

To link directly to the "down" section, add a # sign and the name of the anchor to the end of a
URL, like this:

<a href="http://faraday.ee.emu.edu.tr/eee111#down">Jump to down section</a>

A hyperlink to the Useful Tips Section from WITHIN the file "firstpage.html" will look like
this:

<a name="down">Down is here</a>

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Tables

Tables are defined with the <table> tag. A table is divided into rows (with the <tr> tag), and
each row is divided into data cells (with the <td> tag). The letters td stands for "table data,"
which is the content of a data cell. A data cell can contain text, images, lists, paragraphs,
forms, horizontal rules, tables, etc.

<table border="1">
<tr>
<td>row 1, cell 1</td>
<td>row 1, cell 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>row 2, cell 1</td>
<td>row 2, cell 2</td>
</tr>
</table>

How it looks in a browser:

row 1, cell 1 row 1, cell 2

row 2, cell 1 row 2, cell 2

Tables and the Border Attribute

If you do not specify a border attribute the table will be displayed without any borders.
Sometimes this can be useful, but most of the time, you want the borders to show.

To display a table with borders, you will have to use the border attribute:

<table border="1">
<tr>
<td>Row 1, cell 1</td>
<td>Row 1, cell 2</td>
</tr>
</table>

Headings in a Table

Headings in a table are defined with the <th> tag.

<table border="1">
<tr>
<th>Heading</th>
<th>Another Heading</th>
</tr>
<tr>

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<td>row 1, cell 1</td>
<td>row 1, cell 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>row 2, cell 1</td>
<td>row 2, cell 2</td>
</tr>
</table>

How it looks in a browser:

Heading Another Heading

row 1, cell 1 row 1, cell 2
row 2, cell 1 row 2, cell 2

Empty Cells in a Table

Table cells with no content are not displayed very well in most browsers.

<table border="1">
<tr>
<td>row 1, cell 1</td>
<td>row 1, cell 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>row 2, cell 1</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</table>

How it looks in a browser:

row 1, cell 1 row 1, cell 2

row 2, cell 1

Note that the borders around the empty table cell are missing (NB! Mozilla Firefox displays
the border).

To avoid this, add a non-breaking space (&nbsp;) to empty data cells, to make the borders
visible:

<table border="1">
<tr>
<td>row 1, cell 1</td>
<td>row 1, cell 2</td>
</tr>

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<tr>
<td>row 2, cell 1</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</table>

How it looks in a browser:

row 1, cell 1 row 1, cell 2

row 2, cell 1

Table Tags

Tag Description

<table> Defines a table

<th> Defines a table header

<tr> Defines a table row

<td> Defines a table cell

<caption> Defines a table caption

<colgroup> Defines groups of table columns

<col> Defines the attribute values for one or more columns in a table

<thead> Defines a table head

<tbody> Defines a table body

<tfoot> Defines a table footer

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HTML supports ordered, unordered and definition lists

Unordered Lists

An unordered list is a list of items. The list items are marked with bullets (typically small
black circles).

An unordered list starts with the <ul> tag. Each list item starts with the <li> tag.

<ul>
<li>Coffee</li>
<li>Milk</li>
</ul>

Here is how it looks in a browser:

 Coffee
 Milk

Inside a list item you can put paragraphs, line breaks, images, links, other lists, etc.

Ordered Lists

An ordered list is also a list of items. The list items are marked with numbers.

An ordered list starts with the <ol> tag. Each list item starts with the <li> tag.

<ol>
<li>Coffee</li>
<li>Milk</li>
</ol>

Here is how it looks in a browser:

1. Coffee
2. Milk

Inside a list item you can put paragraphs, line breaks, images, links, other lists, etc.

Definition Lists

A definition list is not a list of items. This is a list of terms and explanation of the terms.

A definition list starts with the <dl> tag. Each definition-list term starts with the <dt> tag.
Each definition-list definition starts with the <dd> tag.

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<dl>
<dt>Coffee</dt>
<dd>Black hot drink</dd>
<dt>Milk</dt>
<dd>White cold drink</dd>
</dl>

Here is how it looks in a browser:

Coffee

Black hot drink

Milk

White cold drink

Inside a definition-list definition (the <dd> tag) you can put paragraphs, line breaks, images,
links, other lists, etc.

List Tags

Tag Description

<ol> Defines an ordered list

<ul> Defines an unordered list

<li> Defines a list item

<dl> Defines a definition list

<dt> Defines a definition term

<dd> Defines a definition description

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