Student Advantage Captures the College Market Through an Integration of Their On and Offline Businesses

This chapter describes how Student Advantage successfully transformed itself from a brick-and-mortar company to the leading online portal to the higher education community. The company has followed a business strategy that includes creating Web sites that appeal to college students and forming partnerships with businesses and universities. Through its activities, Student Advantage has assembled a wealth of information about college students, all organized around a common student identifier. This information is important to Student Advantage and to its partners who are willing to pay for the insights that Student Advantage can provide about the college market. Interestingly, Student Advantage only recently developed a strong in-house information technology capability. This capability is now allowing Student Advantage to implement a variety of e-marketing applications. Lessons learned from Student Advantage’s experiences are discussed.

A Three-Tiered Approach to Global E-Commerce

Access to the world enabled by the Internet facilitates internationalization as never before. However, lack of a coherent global Internet strategy can relegate any company to a strictly provincial “neighborhood” status. Globalization strategies and tactics should therefore be of central concern to all enterprises. To research the strategic issues involved in Internet-based globalization, we embarked on a case study. Our goal is to explore how the Internet and its related technologies can serve to help organizations better deal with the challenges of conducting global business. Our research enabled us to identify a set of heuristic “rules of thumb” that might be used to support Internet-based globalization efforts. In our study we discuss the many challenges to establishing successful global enterprises. We then introduce a model for understanding global business requirements in the e-commerce age. We conclude by analyzing a case study to initially validate our theoretical model and summarize our findings.

Implementation Management of an E-Commerce-Enabled Enterprise Information Systems

This chapter presents a case study of an overview of the efforts of Texas Instrument’s (TI’s) internal and external ERP implementation, with a focus on linking its ERP system in a global e-commerce setting. This linkage is especially important since it had been stated in TI’s strategic plan as an objective of this project to provide visibility of the ERP system to external constituents via Web linkages along with the objective of standardizing internal processes and important information technology systems to support market needs. Thus, its ERP system is central to managing its supply chain and B2B e-commerce linkages from both a customer and supplier perspective. Issues faced by TI are clearly outlined with future questions also posed in the final section.

GlobeRanger Corporation

This case traces the dynamic evolution/revolution of an e-commerce entity from concept through first-round venture financing. It details the critical thought processes and decisions that made this enterprise a key player in the explosive field of supply chain logistics. It also provides a highly valuable view of lessons learned and closes with key discussion points that may be used in the classroom in order to provoke thoughtful and meaningful discussion of important business issues.

E*Trade Securities, Inc., Pioneer Online Trader, Struggles to Stay on Top

E*Trade revolutionized the securities brokerage industry by “creating” Internet trading. E*Trade’s original strategy was to deliver cost savings to customers while amortizing fixed costs over a greater number of accounts. In 1997, several competitors established Internet sites and E*Trade was dethroned as the price leader. Its management team introduced a strategic initiative to transform the company into a financial, one-stop shop for investors. The initiative included expanding its information technology, improving its marketing and advertising program, and developing new strategic alliances. By early 1999, E*Trade had established a popular Web site offering the convenience and control of automated stock, options, and mutual fund order placement at low commission rates. E*Trade’s success pleased management but was challenged by fierce competition and emerging ethical and operational problems.

SAFECO

The Internet and World Wide Web present significant business opportunities and threats, particularly for business organizations that are knowledge-based and/or that offer primarily information-based services. For these types of firms, the Web offers opportunities that range from exchanging information with partner organizations, the delivery of existing services to customers, and the creation of new services. The potential threats include choosing the wrong strategies for adopting We7b technologies, poor implementation of Web technologies, entering late into the realm of electronic commerce and thus losing market share, or worse, ignoring the use of the Web altogether and potentially being replaced by more nimble rivals. The majority of large organizations in a variety of industries have slowly, cautiously begun deploying Web technologies. This is perhaps not surprising considering the implementation challenges and risks posed by this new technological innovation. It is not yet clear how large organizations, particularly those that are knowledge-based and provide primarily information-based services, should strategize about, adopt, and implement Web technologies. The purpose of this study is to understand how SAFECO, a large corporation in the insurance and financial services industry, is strategizing for and implementing technologies to exploit the Web. SAFECO was recently ranked as one of the leading innovative users of the Web technology in its industry. This further legitimizes the selection of the company as an appropriate case study site.

ENI Company

ENI Company is an electronic commerce firm in South Korea. ENI Company provides English news items and English lessons to the subscribers through daily e-mail service that includes free English news-related question and answer sessions via e-mail. This case study deals with the struggle of this firm to establish and sustain its business in a less-developed national information infrastructure. Information on national information infrastructure and the Internet in South Korea is provided in order to facilitate understanding of the difficulty that ENI Company faces while conducting e-commerce in South Korea. The chronology of ENI Company evolution is described and the organizational structure of ENI Company is also presented. The marketing of ENI Company’s products that is the biggest challenge for the firm is also discussed. This case is a good example of how to conduct an e-commerce in a county where national IT infrastructure is not ready for it.

Turning E-Commerce Theory into Action in Ireland

E-Europe is not a place or a group of countries but the philosophy of an emerging region within the scope of a technological revolution. E-Europe can be viewed from many perspectives including Euro currency makeup, European Union membership, or technological contributions to the region. Ireland, the “Celtic Tiger,” presents an interesting opportunity of entrepreneurial activity. As Evans and Wurster (2000) have pointed out, the traditional value chains may be redefined. The availability of the Internet as an enabling communications technology has markedly changed the possibilities for countries far from the centers of economic power. On the other hand, the realities of the Internet have been obvious. Porter (2001) and Kanter (2001) have identified many of the realistic strategies for traditional and new businesses. Yet there will always be room for new ventures provided, of course, that entrepreneurs understand these issues and this challenging environment. Joshi and Yermish (2000) have summarized the challenges facing the entrepreneur in this kind of environment.

Reality vs. Plan

Part of efficient management is measuring actual performance against desired metrics. In turn, actual strategic outcomes can be measured against plan. The authors show that this is also true of organizations’ e-commerce performance versus planned performance. While most organizations with successful e-commerce tend to take the view “There’s no stopping us now!,” the authors explore the interesting relationship between what the organizations had originally intended versus what operations actually dictated and how those changes affected their sites’ performance. To add to the literature, the authors explore the ramifications of the results of a survey conducted among some of the leading organizations in today’s business and the analysis of several dot.com enterprises. Along the journey, the authors discovered changes in organizations’ “desired capability” occurred as the organizations encountered various challenges to their global e-commerce, such as currency fluctuation and logistical considerations involved with order fulfillment, from industrially powerful countries versus third world countries. The authors also explore various aspects of organizational change evidenced when organizations entered into e-commerce globally. The authors show that theoretical approaches quite often must change with the realities of business when organizations commence e-commerce operations.

E-Learning Business Models

According to several forecasts given by Gartner Group or International Data Corporation, for example, e-learning as a new buzzword for Web-based education and its commercialization seems to be a growing market in the digital economy. This case study will analyze this new and dynamic e-learning market and the corresponding changes on the education market. A framework of the different education models that have already developed on the e-learning market will be introduced and their benefits and risks discussed. Several cases demonstrate the new e-learning models in action. Therefore, this contribution consists of several smaller cases that can be used for getting an overview of the e-learning market and for a discussion about e-learning as a promising e-commerce application on the Internet.