This report basically seeks to cover the topic of business integration. For this report we will see how a specific business can integrate e-commerce into its day to day operations in order to bring in efficiency and effectiveness in the daily. The report will present three learning points that have been extracted not only from the class room discussions and literature review, but also from the study of a dental supply chain and how it integrates e-commerce in to its daily business operations.
Whenever a business integrates technology or new processes into a business system, it is very much likely that all the stakeholders of the business will not be ready for a sudden change and there has to be a complete analysis of the current information and future information needs of the business before any sort of integration takes place. therefore, most of all the people of the organization have to be analyzed in terms of their work, their use of information, how they process information, how there activities can be merged and what net change a technology implementation will have on their daily routine. Same goes with the current processes and technology of the organization because of the fact that the new technology integration for any business will change the process outlook and technological use to a good extent, therefore current operations and future operations have to be brought into line so that nothing is missed out in the implementation stage and maximum gains and benefits can be reaped from a business integration implementation process (Bauer 2001).
Issues surrounding integration of people processes and technology
As it has been discussed above, whenever a change is brought about in any organization, some resistance always takes place. This resistance can not only be narrowed down to the willingness of stakeholders to adopt the change but it also encompasses the ability of potential of the key elements of the organization to adapt to these changes. From an internal point of view, we can short list the most important elements in an organization as employees, processes and the existing technology that is currently being used. From an external point of view, switiching customers to the new system and attracting more are a major problem along with aligning the strategic partners who have to be integrated to the system as well. A small example of strategic partners can be the suppliers of the organization who will actually be connected to the database of the company in order to keep the stock of the company up-to data to increase efficiency and availability of the products to be sold (Clark and McKenny 1995).
Internal key elements
People
Whenever a company goes about to implement an integration plan, it has to first see what is the goal of the integration plan and how will the plan effect and at the same time be used by the elements who are the basic users of the new system. The reason is the fact that most of the times these employees will both be making information and also using the information that is now integrated with all the departments of the organization and also with the external strategic partners. Now the fact is that understanding the needs of these employees and the information that they will be using is essential before any system is designed. Right information at the right time and at the right place is the essential element for a project to be made successful, thus aligning the work responsibilities and tasks of these employees with the new system have to be aligned on the same scale. Moreover, as the employees will now be using the company website to make and extract information, they also need to be trained thoroughly about the new system as it is now essential to carry out day to day company operations. A system without any users who can operate them not only creates problems but also proves to be fatal (Joseph 1996).
Processes
Many systems and business integration programs fail just because they have not been thoroughly researched upon in light of the processes that the business uses to perform its daily operations. The reason why this mistake becomes fatal for the implementation plan is the fact that the new system is not able to serve all the information needs that are essential for these specific processes. However, if this checking and update is not aligned with the new system at any given point, the whole process will have to be revised through manual input. Then the question lies, what is the use of the system if the whole process has to be revised manually Even if one of the processes is missed out, the e-commerce or implementation system cannot be graded as an enterprise wise system and manual update of all the departments takes away all the effort that has been undertaken for the rest of the processes to bring them in line under one head.
Technology
As far as the technology is concerned, it is important to bring the existing technology in line with the new technology that is being implemented for the system to work smoothly. Many integration programs are designed flawlessly, they integrate all information sources and dispersion centers accurately, take account all the members of the organization and incorporate all users both from within and outside of the organization, however, there is one place that is ignored, the existing technological analysis and its compatibility with the new system which will be implemented in the new business integration plan. Now, the point here is that like all other analysis of for example the processes and the people, current analysis of the technology is also very important because that makes sure that the systems are in line with the new system in order to upload and download information through specific applications and the softwares needed to run the whole system. After implementing the new system and realizing there are technological shortcomings, the extra time and investment incurred to bring everything inline is actually the failure by the implementation team and for the business as well (Thomas 1998).
External environment
The Customers
The customers are the ones who have to make information especially in case of an e-commerce business. The reason is the fact that they will go to the website themselves and move around to find something which suits there requirement. Now the purpose is to help the customer get to find their item as soon as possible and at the right place as well. It is not desirable to make the customer look out at different places and still not having a clue about where to find their specific items. Therefore, the purpose is to design a website which is user friendly and is self informative for the customer to learn how to use it. Also, it should provide convenience to the customer by standardizing the outlook and not changing it again and again to confuse them.
Strategic Partners
These partners are basically connected to the business through the integration process in order to help the business achieve efficiency and effectiveness by lowering the costs and at the same time saving time, as time is money. Therefore while designing the website and the data base it has to be kept in mind that only the business has to be integrated to the system, but the strategic partners systems and processes have to be brought in line as well by understanding their needs and requirements and incorporating those into the system. This helps making available all the information that is needed by these partners, nothing more and nothing less (Moore 2000).
Means and Approaches of Business Integration
There are a number of approaches for business integration with technology. There is no good or bad approach that we can grade from an aerial view because of the fact that every business will integrate on the level which suits the processes and style of the business. a business that can use a couple of softwares and a few computers will not go for enterprise wide design of a system and redesign all of its processes by investing heavy amount of money and spending so much time when all of it can be done in much lesser time and money. This shows that advanced technology and the price of the technology does not makes it good or bad, but what makes integration good or bad for a business is its utility and compatibility with the business processes.
There are generally four types of approaches that come handy when we talk about business integration. These approaches are listed as follows
Mergers and Acquisitions
Packaged applications
Business Process Reengineering
Virtual Dynamic Supply Chains
Customer Relationship Management
Corporative Self Service
Business to Business Commerce
Application Server Providers and Hosting
All the above approaches can be implemented by a business depending on their need of information sharing both within and outside the organization. Some of the above approaches are quite extensive and may even encompass all the others under their name and some of the above approaches are actually specific to certain tasks and functions of a business particularly. In the case study that will be discussed in the last part of this paper will show how a dental care supplier integrates the supply chain function of the business with technology and reaps benefits (Palmer 2002).
According to the case which serves as the base of learning for this paper is ENG dental supply company and they wanted to totally reengineer the business and take it to the e-commerce category. Thus, the business basically went for the business process re-engineering technique in which it re-engineered the whole business and for that purpose it bought a software package which helped connect and integrate all the stakeholders of the business to one common site. This site made available relevant information to all the members who are the stakeholders of the company in the right time, in the right quantity and at the right place. The website runs on the basis of real time information sharing where the information is being updated as soon as it is made (Hirschinger 2001).
Business Integration with in and across organizational contexts
A very good example of the application of theory and practicality of the concept of business process integration can be taken from the case study of PG and wall mart. This is one of the most successful and effective example in which not only the departments inside the organization are connected with each other but also the supplier also keeps updating information as soon as it receives from the company.
The following diagrams represent how distributors suppliers business and the customer buying has been integrated in such a way that timely and paperless flow of information has been achieved by Wal-Mart. There is an information highway through which all the important stakeholders in the supply chain are connected and they actually make sure that the inventories level do not drop below a certain level and there is a constant supply of goods from the supplier. (Clark and McKenny 1995)
Case Study Analysis
The case which served as the basis for this paper was related to transforming a dental supply company into an e-commerce business supplier. The company has around 16000 products to supply pertaining to different categories and they have actually experimented to implement the new technology system enterprise wide (Moore 2000).
ENG is basically a family owned business and has around 1000 major clients to cater to. However, the methodology of doing business by the company was based on the manual data transfer and extraction. With this we mean that the company relied very much on the fax machine both for receiving orders and providing the status of the orders to the clients. For example if a client wants to have query about a product, he would fax the query and the order and that copy of fax would move to different departments one by one to see whether the order can be fulfilled or not. This is not only time consuming but also more costly than it seems.
Whenever a technological decision has to be taken, it has to be clear in the minds of the owners and the management that what areas do they want to target through technology.
At present, the level of technology that is being used in the company is mainly for data storage and records keeping. There is a Database Management System running on one single main frame computer which is trying to fulfill the information needs of all the departments in the organization. However, this information sharing is accessible to only the departments that work inside the company and is not available to the supply team and the sales team for security purposes (Charles 2000).
Another problem with this data base system is the up gradation of data and records. The system only updated the data on the receipt of the goods from the supplier. Although the order has been placed and the items are on its way, still the system would show a deficiency on which new orders could not be served. Moreover, as the data had to be updated manually time and again, some of the data would be missed out and would be shifted to the next working day to be completed. This created problems in calculating the current inventory levels as well.
As the case proceeds, we see one important research that many businesses fail to consider when they are implementing their technology and updating their systems. This is the market and competitor analysis. The reason why the new technology decision at ENG was successful was mainly because they knew where they want to be in the next few years, how they wanted to be there and where can they extract more customers.
According to the case study, some other major competitors of the company in the same industry are Aconite Dental Supply, Atlanta Dental, Applied Dental, Burkhart Dental, Conger Dental Supply Company, Darby Dental Supply, Discus Dental, and Eastern Dental Supply. However, the competitive edge that each of these companies will have on their competitors will be based on the presence of the company on the internet and the world wide web to actually redefine the patient care, practice efficient and effective management, referral relationships, professional and quality services that will be provided with just a few clicks.
Moving on with the case study we see that the company is seeking to centralize its information sources on the web and making it available only to those who need it anywhere any time. The purpose is to increase revenue, decrease costs and slash down time taken to service every order to the minimum so that more orders can be served at the place of one. The stakeholders in this project have been defined as all the major elements of the company (Moore 2000).
The ENG Web site will ultimately consist of four systems
(a) The product system, which will include product search and an online catalog system,
(b) The customer system, which will include a customer account system, authentication system, and links to the order and product systems,
(c) The order system, which will include customer orders and delivery systems, and
(d) The supplier system, which will tie the products and inventory levels to suppliers for automated reordering.
The first phase of the project was the planning phase which can be clearly understood through the following diagram.
This is essential because the scope of the project has to take the budget in consideration as well because in many cases the budget increases to such extents that the project is no more feasible for companies to undertake or continue.
As shown above, the next phase was research based. The first part of this phase is to see how the competitors are incorporating technology in their business in order to attract customers and make relationships with them through their online portals. The next part talks about the information needs of the clients and employees who will be the key users of the system. For this matter the current processes in the organization will have to be studied that how the order is processed, what information the customer wants and what the employees want from each department to complete the sale and the order (Marks 2004).
The next part of this phase will be gathering information about the internet service providers through which the company will host its website. This is important as well because now this has to be a long term contract, thus, a vendor who can fulfill the requirement will have to be appointed for the companys website hosting. Similarly, a software package that actually accounts for the companys needs and processes will have to be searched for so that a package with the optimum facilities, specifications and upgrade options can be implemented.
Once the package is selected, now the above mentioned functions in the diagram will have to be performed in order to install the package on the website. The first phase will have to be the designing of the user interface that will displayed on the website and will be kept as much user friendly as possible. Then a process will be designed in which every product will be updated on line interns of details, specifications, images, warranties and price. There has to be a process in which all these factors can be modified with time as for example to account for the price change.
Now this is the stage where the company will be purchasing and testing its systems with the new software package that it has acquired. Systems need to be checked for compatibility and performance. The website will be created and it will be tested based on the specific processes that the company wants it to perform.
After testing the hardware and software performance, now is the final stage of integrating the current database system into the new website and e-commerce set up that the company has invested into. The reason for this is the fact that entire data base has to made available online so that every user or every stakeholder can access the information that they want.
In the above stage, the stakeholders will be trained both in meetings, training rooms and online drills so that they are fully aware and acquainted to the new system and any problems at this stage can be removed. This is the stage when a number of discrepancies come forth and it is better to remove them in this stage rather than revising the whole system back again from the very start just because of a small problem.
This is the final process in which the marketing department will try to market the products not only through the website but it will also market the availability of the website and the facilities at other places as well (Guest 2000).
Conclusion and Recommendations
As the system is new for everyone, therefore it is recommended that the support function performs effectively and efficiently not disappoint the people in their early use of the website. The adaption process of the new system will take some time for people to get used to the new system and the new processes through which the information will pass. However, this has to be handled through helpful leadership and continuous feedback to evaluate people and their performance with the new system.
Moreover, another recommendation would to be to keep updating the security systems of the data base because of the increase in cyber crime. The data base has valuable information assets that are the sole property of the company and incase it gets into wrong hands, the company can lose key competitors.
Lastly, the system should be used to the optimum as it is intended because otherwise the system will not be effective in cutting costs, saving time and attracting more customers.
Whenever a business integrates technology or new processes into a business system, it is very much likely that all the stakeholders of the business will not be ready for a sudden change and there has to be a complete analysis of the current information and future information needs of the business before any sort of integration takes place. therefore, most of all the people of the organization have to be analyzed in terms of their work, their use of information, how they process information, how there activities can be merged and what net change a technology implementation will have on their daily routine. Same goes with the current processes and technology of the organization because of the fact that the new technology integration for any business will change the process outlook and technological use to a good extent, therefore current operations and future operations have to be brought into line so that nothing is missed out in the implementation stage and maximum gains and benefits can be reaped from a business integration implementation process (Bauer 2001).
Issues surrounding integration of people processes and technology
As it has been discussed above, whenever a change is brought about in any organization, some resistance always takes place. This resistance can not only be narrowed down to the willingness of stakeholders to adopt the change but it also encompasses the ability of potential of the key elements of the organization to adapt to these changes. From an internal point of view, we can short list the most important elements in an organization as employees, processes and the existing technology that is currently being used. From an external point of view, switiching customers to the new system and attracting more are a major problem along with aligning the strategic partners who have to be integrated to the system as well. A small example of strategic partners can be the suppliers of the organization who will actually be connected to the database of the company in order to keep the stock of the company up-to data to increase efficiency and availability of the products to be sold (Clark and McKenny 1995).
Internal key elements
People
Whenever a company goes about to implement an integration plan, it has to first see what is the goal of the integration plan and how will the plan effect and at the same time be used by the elements who are the basic users of the new system. The reason is the fact that most of the times these employees will both be making information and also using the information that is now integrated with all the departments of the organization and also with the external strategic partners. Now the fact is that understanding the needs of these employees and the information that they will be using is essential before any system is designed. Right information at the right time and at the right place is the essential element for a project to be made successful, thus aligning the work responsibilities and tasks of these employees with the new system have to be aligned on the same scale. Moreover, as the employees will now be using the company website to make and extract information, they also need to be trained thoroughly about the new system as it is now essential to carry out day to day company operations. A system without any users who can operate them not only creates problems but also proves to be fatal (Joseph 1996).
Processes
Many systems and business integration programs fail just because they have not been thoroughly researched upon in light of the processes that the business uses to perform its daily operations. The reason why this mistake becomes fatal for the implementation plan is the fact that the new system is not able to serve all the information needs that are essential for these specific processes. However, if this checking and update is not aligned with the new system at any given point, the whole process will have to be revised through manual input. Then the question lies, what is the use of the system if the whole process has to be revised manually Even if one of the processes is missed out, the e-commerce or implementation system cannot be graded as an enterprise wise system and manual update of all the departments takes away all the effort that has been undertaken for the rest of the processes to bring them in line under one head.
Technology
As far as the technology is concerned, it is important to bring the existing technology in line with the new technology that is being implemented for the system to work smoothly. Many integration programs are designed flawlessly, they integrate all information sources and dispersion centers accurately, take account all the members of the organization and incorporate all users both from within and outside of the organization, however, there is one place that is ignored, the existing technological analysis and its compatibility with the new system which will be implemented in the new business integration plan. Now, the point here is that like all other analysis of for example the processes and the people, current analysis of the technology is also very important because that makes sure that the systems are in line with the new system in order to upload and download information through specific applications and the softwares needed to run the whole system. After implementing the new system and realizing there are technological shortcomings, the extra time and investment incurred to bring everything inline is actually the failure by the implementation team and for the business as well (Thomas 1998).
External environment
The Customers
The customers are the ones who have to make information especially in case of an e-commerce business. The reason is the fact that they will go to the website themselves and move around to find something which suits there requirement. Now the purpose is to help the customer get to find their item as soon as possible and at the right place as well. It is not desirable to make the customer look out at different places and still not having a clue about where to find their specific items. Therefore, the purpose is to design a website which is user friendly and is self informative for the customer to learn how to use it. Also, it should provide convenience to the customer by standardizing the outlook and not changing it again and again to confuse them.
Strategic Partners
These partners are basically connected to the business through the integration process in order to help the business achieve efficiency and effectiveness by lowering the costs and at the same time saving time, as time is money. Therefore while designing the website and the data base it has to be kept in mind that only the business has to be integrated to the system, but the strategic partners systems and processes have to be brought in line as well by understanding their needs and requirements and incorporating those into the system. This helps making available all the information that is needed by these partners, nothing more and nothing less (Moore 2000).
Means and Approaches of Business Integration
There are a number of approaches for business integration with technology. There is no good or bad approach that we can grade from an aerial view because of the fact that every business will integrate on the level which suits the processes and style of the business. a business that can use a couple of softwares and a few computers will not go for enterprise wide design of a system and redesign all of its processes by investing heavy amount of money and spending so much time when all of it can be done in much lesser time and money. This shows that advanced technology and the price of the technology does not makes it good or bad, but what makes integration good or bad for a business is its utility and compatibility with the business processes.
There are generally four types of approaches that come handy when we talk about business integration. These approaches are listed as follows
Mergers and Acquisitions
Packaged applications
Business Process Reengineering
Virtual Dynamic Supply Chains
Customer Relationship Management
Corporative Self Service
Business to Business Commerce
Application Server Providers and Hosting
All the above approaches can be implemented by a business depending on their need of information sharing both within and outside the organization. Some of the above approaches are quite extensive and may even encompass all the others under their name and some of the above approaches are actually specific to certain tasks and functions of a business particularly. In the case study that will be discussed in the last part of this paper will show how a dental care supplier integrates the supply chain function of the business with technology and reaps benefits (Palmer 2002).
According to the case which serves as the base of learning for this paper is ENG dental supply company and they wanted to totally reengineer the business and take it to the e-commerce category. Thus, the business basically went for the business process re-engineering technique in which it re-engineered the whole business and for that purpose it bought a software package which helped connect and integrate all the stakeholders of the business to one common site. This site made available relevant information to all the members who are the stakeholders of the company in the right time, in the right quantity and at the right place. The website runs on the basis of real time information sharing where the information is being updated as soon as it is made (Hirschinger 2001).
Business Integration with in and across organizational contexts
A very good example of the application of theory and practicality of the concept of business process integration can be taken from the case study of PG and wall mart. This is one of the most successful and effective example in which not only the departments inside the organization are connected with each other but also the supplier also keeps updating information as soon as it receives from the company.
The following diagrams represent how distributors suppliers business and the customer buying has been integrated in such a way that timely and paperless flow of information has been achieved by Wal-Mart. There is an information highway through which all the important stakeholders in the supply chain are connected and they actually make sure that the inventories level do not drop below a certain level and there is a constant supply of goods from the supplier. (Clark and McKenny 1995)
Case Study Analysis
The case which served as the basis for this paper was related to transforming a dental supply company into an e-commerce business supplier. The company has around 16000 products to supply pertaining to different categories and they have actually experimented to implement the new technology system enterprise wide (Moore 2000).
ENG is basically a family owned business and has around 1000 major clients to cater to. However, the methodology of doing business by the company was based on the manual data transfer and extraction. With this we mean that the company relied very much on the fax machine both for receiving orders and providing the status of the orders to the clients. For example if a client wants to have query about a product, he would fax the query and the order and that copy of fax would move to different departments one by one to see whether the order can be fulfilled or not. This is not only time consuming but also more costly than it seems.
Whenever a technological decision has to be taken, it has to be clear in the minds of the owners and the management that what areas do they want to target through technology.
At present, the level of technology that is being used in the company is mainly for data storage and records keeping. There is a Database Management System running on one single main frame computer which is trying to fulfill the information needs of all the departments in the organization. However, this information sharing is accessible to only the departments that work inside the company and is not available to the supply team and the sales team for security purposes (Charles 2000).
Another problem with this data base system is the up gradation of data and records. The system only updated the data on the receipt of the goods from the supplier. Although the order has been placed and the items are on its way, still the system would show a deficiency on which new orders could not be served. Moreover, as the data had to be updated manually time and again, some of the data would be missed out and would be shifted to the next working day to be completed. This created problems in calculating the current inventory levels as well.
As the case proceeds, we see one important research that many businesses fail to consider when they are implementing their technology and updating their systems. This is the market and competitor analysis. The reason why the new technology decision at ENG was successful was mainly because they knew where they want to be in the next few years, how they wanted to be there and where can they extract more customers.
According to the case study, some other major competitors of the company in the same industry are Aconite Dental Supply, Atlanta Dental, Applied Dental, Burkhart Dental, Conger Dental Supply Company, Darby Dental Supply, Discus Dental, and Eastern Dental Supply. However, the competitive edge that each of these companies will have on their competitors will be based on the presence of the company on the internet and the world wide web to actually redefine the patient care, practice efficient and effective management, referral relationships, professional and quality services that will be provided with just a few clicks.
Moving on with the case study we see that the company is seeking to centralize its information sources on the web and making it available only to those who need it anywhere any time. The purpose is to increase revenue, decrease costs and slash down time taken to service every order to the minimum so that more orders can be served at the place of one. The stakeholders in this project have been defined as all the major elements of the company (Moore 2000).
The ENG Web site will ultimately consist of four systems
(a) The product system, which will include product search and an online catalog system,
(b) The customer system, which will include a customer account system, authentication system, and links to the order and product systems,
(c) The order system, which will include customer orders and delivery systems, and
(d) The supplier system, which will tie the products and inventory levels to suppliers for automated reordering.
The first phase of the project was the planning phase which can be clearly understood through the following diagram.
This is essential because the scope of the project has to take the budget in consideration as well because in many cases the budget increases to such extents that the project is no more feasible for companies to undertake or continue.
As shown above, the next phase was research based. The first part of this phase is to see how the competitors are incorporating technology in their business in order to attract customers and make relationships with them through their online portals. The next part talks about the information needs of the clients and employees who will be the key users of the system. For this matter the current processes in the organization will have to be studied that how the order is processed, what information the customer wants and what the employees want from each department to complete the sale and the order (Marks 2004).
The next part of this phase will be gathering information about the internet service providers through which the company will host its website. This is important as well because now this has to be a long term contract, thus, a vendor who can fulfill the requirement will have to be appointed for the companys website hosting. Similarly, a software package that actually accounts for the companys needs and processes will have to be searched for so that a package with the optimum facilities, specifications and upgrade options can be implemented.
Once the package is selected, now the above mentioned functions in the diagram will have to be performed in order to install the package on the website. The first phase will have to be the designing of the user interface that will displayed on the website and will be kept as much user friendly as possible. Then a process will be designed in which every product will be updated on line interns of details, specifications, images, warranties and price. There has to be a process in which all these factors can be modified with time as for example to account for the price change.
Now this is the stage where the company will be purchasing and testing its systems with the new software package that it has acquired. Systems need to be checked for compatibility and performance. The website will be created and it will be tested based on the specific processes that the company wants it to perform.
After testing the hardware and software performance, now is the final stage of integrating the current database system into the new website and e-commerce set up that the company has invested into. The reason for this is the fact that entire data base has to made available online so that every user or every stakeholder can access the information that they want.
In the above stage, the stakeholders will be trained both in meetings, training rooms and online drills so that they are fully aware and acquainted to the new system and any problems at this stage can be removed. This is the stage when a number of discrepancies come forth and it is better to remove them in this stage rather than revising the whole system back again from the very start just because of a small problem.
This is the final process in which the marketing department will try to market the products not only through the website but it will also market the availability of the website and the facilities at other places as well (Guest 2000).
Conclusion and Recommendations
As the system is new for everyone, therefore it is recommended that the support function performs effectively and efficiently not disappoint the people in their early use of the website. The adaption process of the new system will take some time for people to get used to the new system and the new processes through which the information will pass. However, this has to be handled through helpful leadership and continuous feedback to evaluate people and their performance with the new system.
Moreover, another recommendation would to be to keep updating the security systems of the data base because of the increase in cyber crime. The data base has valuable information assets that are the sole property of the company and incase it gets into wrong hands, the company can lose key competitors.
Lastly, the system should be used to the optimum as it is intended because otherwise the system will not be effective in cutting costs, saving time and attracting more customers.
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