My thoughts about E-Business and E-Commerce Management book

Introduction

This is going to be my final post on the E-Business and E-Commerce Management book. This post will be divided into two parts: the first part will cover the third part of this book which is “Implementation”, this part includes change management, analyses & design, and implementation & maintenance.  I will give my personal experiences about this topic as well. The second part will reflect the overall outcome of this unit, and that will include class exercises, my thoughts about debate exercise, student characteristics, and second life case study. I will conclude the post with some recommendations that are based on my experience and knowledge from the survey that I conducted amongst the classmates. 

Implementation

There is no doubt about the importance of making a change in management from time to time, as it’s the key to success for any organization. However, we have to understand that there are different types of changes in businesses that have to be considered; while implementing a flexible plan for e-commerce that could adapt to unexpected changes, human resource requirements and employees abilities & capabilities to deal with new technology, describing alternative approaches to organization structure resulting from organizational change, and understanding the role of the manager amongst employees and how in the staff should be managed in different marketing conditions. It is not easy to implement all these factors without analyzing and designing a system that enables us to identify the key factors that ensure success. The video that we watched in class “Change Management Training” made me think how important it is to involve employees in the change process within the organization, this is because when employees participate in making decision, they feel important and as a result they enhance their efficiency. Moreover, the leader of the team or the manger must estimate each member’s skills and distribute the role according to that, and also take control according to the situation.

Coming to my personal experience with the topic of management, in 2006 I worked in Saudi Arabia for an organization called Saudi Cancer Society. It works to help unfortunate people who are diagnosed with cancer, and are facing financial difficulties. I do remember the low ranking of our organization compared to others, the system in this organization was a topical old system, with interference in the role of the employees. Conflict between the decisions wasted a large amount of resources on useless services and as a result the organization had a weak reputation. However, in the mid of 2007 we had a new management. Ever since the new manager came, the entire plan of the organization has changed. Each employee in the organization is now able to raise his voice, and suggest new ideas and works within an integrated plan. As a result of that change, in the end of year 2008 the organization had three different awards, two of them were local for being the number one organization in this field, and there was an international award as well. Hillary Clinton also visited the organization on her trip to Saudi Arabia. However, none of these accomplishments could be achieved without making a change in the plans and decision making process, and it showed how change management is important for any organization.

Electronic Business

As we live in the 21st century, our life has become very dependent on technology, and as a student doing marketing, I know how important it is for marketers to get a clear insight on new technology to capture any promising opportunity for making money within a market full of different competitors. I have chosen to do this unit because it fits my interest as it integrates new technology with marketing which is a necessity in our days, and also because it is an important required course. I also took it because I knew Professor Wade before I decided to take the unit; he has taught me buyer behavior unit and E- marketing unit. I like his style of teaching and his interest towards new technology in the marketing field. I really like this unit as it gave a nice introduction to the subject of Supply chain management, which I am planning to do in my final semester. However, I really don’t like the first part of this unit as you can tell from my first two quizzes. I think the introduction part focuses on infrastructure in more detail and it applies to IT student in my opinion, it is good to get an idea about technical difficulties and different types of applications. Some students share with me the same thoughts about Electronic Business as the graph shows.

 Class Exercises

Doing exercises during the class is one of the biggest benefits that I experienced in this unit. It involves all the students to take part and participate while working as a group, it is also a great opportunity for students to exchange information and learn from each other, especially for students who don’t have a marketing background and are international students. The Class Exercises worked very well in the first 7 weeks because each group agreed to submit the group discussion on the web.  Class exercises had a positive impact on students and gave us new knowledge and information.

Debate Exercise

It was one of my most memorable experiences ever; the debate exercise truly reflects the degree of understanding of a master’s degree student. It is not just a measure of the knowledge of the student; it also involves English language skills and good use of body language as well. I was very concerned about this exercise from the first week of this semester, thankfully we had a great team so we prepared for the debate from the time we nominated the group members, and as a result of that effort our marks were great on this exercise. It was interesting for me to see the different ways students presented information, especially in the seventh debate where students used a lot of emotional and body language to convince other students. Sometimes the debate became boring because some students tried to remember their speech word by word, and some had a lack of understanding about the debate statement. However, most debates were interesting in general and created a good learning environment. 

Second life “Virtual World”

What is Second life?

I believe virtual world will become a revolution in the coming decade, it is a creative word with no limitation to its dimensions, and businesses have a great opportunity to explore a new world with all types of services and products. Also, customers “avatars” will be able to navigate through different avenues fulfilling their desires and needs regardless of their locations, genders, or behaviors. The first time I was introduced to the topic of virtual world was last year in the buyer behavior unit. I still remember the first time when the lecturer introduced this world to the students, beginning thought it was something beyond my understanding because I had never thought about such a technology. I do remember when we were located by the lecturer in different venues, I was located in Dance Island and the aim was to interview avatars in order to observe and understand different types of behaviors and products that are consumed by real people or avatars. I still have the dialogues of my conversation with the different avatars and I’ll keep it for memory.

However, I have to admit that we faced a lot of difficulties in the beginning, especially in the presentation part of the buyer behavior unit and e-marketing unit. Most of the difficulties were technical difficulties like using the mike, bad internet signals, and graphics problems. In comparison with the first and second experience of second life, in the exercises in this semester we achieved greater success as we presented in the Swiss university on second life. The only problem we had was we ran out of time because some students presented their cases for more than 20 minutes. I wish I experience the time where every university in the world can conduct real lectures on virtual world. Another wish is to see integration between virtual world and games like PS3, Xbox, etc 

Blog Exercise & My recommendation

I did my first blog on e-marketing unit last semester and it’s called ‘ME & Soccer’. The aim of the blog was to stimulate student interest to write about a topic that interests them and integrate that with electronic marketing. This time the aim of the blog has deep meaning, it aims to develop critical thinking of the student. Also it is a good revision tools as we have to write about the topics that we came across in this unit, reflect on our experiences and knowledge through the unit components, and express thoughts and what we believe in. Personally, I do recommend exercises that enhance reflecting thinking for all marketing units, reducing the amount of the exercises during the class, get more explanations of complex concepts like E-procurement and Supply chain management, provide more structure in classes about second life cases, provide students with the lecture notes before the class as it will enhance the degree of participation in the class. To sum up, I really enjoyed this unit.  The lecturer shows great interest in all the topics and in the students as well.  Most students were also very helpful and respectful, and I do recommend this unit for any student doing masters of marketing.