How does E-Commerce Reduce Cycle Time, Improve Employees' Empowerment and Facilitate Customer Support

Due to the booming usage of internet, E-Commerce is getting usual in our life. And now, its advantages will be discussed in this post.

Reduce cycle time
As we known, E-Commerce is designed as paperless based workflow with faster, more efficient and reliable communication between computers. And website can remain open 24 hours, it would not affected by the boundaries of geography and other barriers. So, E-Commerce reduces the unnecessary phone calls and mailings, electronic data exchange allows business to continue outside the normal business day. Besides, employees are allowed to access customer inventory data to decide whether to place order. As a result, it could reduce its cycle time from the stage of purchasing to delivery. Furthermore, all these stages can be monitored, and the orders can be easily passed and processed to other related department. For example,

Improve Employees' empowerment
Empowerment is defined as giving authority to employees in decision making in order to improve operation and quality, reduce costs without consulting manager. In Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) system, employees are given authority to access customer database to obtain relevant information. If customer's inventory below minimum level, employee will place the order. Besides, employees are allowed to verify order received and checking customer's credibility.

Facilitate customer support

Nowadays, efficient customer support is vital to E-Commerce business. Sometimes, merely publishing online catalog and offer a list of frequently asked questions will not satisfy online customer needs. So, immediate response to customer is viewed as important task of company. Since the company has shared database, employees can obtain customer and relevant information immediately in order to solve problem. Besides, customer can trace its product in which stage of production through seller’s website. For example, Dell provides this function to their customer to trace product. Moreover, customer can download relevant software from Dell website. It helps customer solve their problem.

link:

1.http://www.remarkable.co.nz/ebusiness/ebusiness_cost_benefit.htm 2.http://ecommerce.objectwareinc.com/art/benefit-of-ecommerce/index.html 3.http://203.210.126.185/dsdweb/v4/apps/web/secure/docs/2285.pdf