Introduction to Amazon
Discuss about the Coordination Of E-Commerce And Logistics.
For 20 years, Amazon has been known to its customers worldwide. It was founded in the year 1995 by Jeff Bezos. Initially Jeff wanted to sell the books he had in his own personal library so that all the book lovers can read those book in a cheaper rate. After all these years, it continues to build a largest book store which brings books to people from door to door (Amazon, 2016). Amazon’s success was known to everybody in 90’s era. Later Amazon became a retailer’s platform and there were services given to all types of customers such as Consumers, sellers, content creators and enterprises (Amazon, 2013). It serves all such customers from the site named as Amazon.com. Today, people can buy whatever they want to from Amazon. It is also available on app and different types of discounts are available on Amazon and it is one of the most famous and money earning sites all over the world.
Amazon emerged as an American multinational company of E-commerce and it leads the market today. It also offers cloud computing services these days. Customer relationship management and information system management are the two technologies which drives the growth of Amazon. They help in the overall business strategy of this organization. The core strength of Amazon is the Linux technology which helps in building the infrastructure of IT department of Amazon. Linux has helped Amazon in the building of the organization in a way that Amazon can easily handle million operations at the same time and also can easily handle the queries of the customers of half of the sellers at the same time (Demir, 2011).
The information related to the debit and credit cards of more than 1000’s of customers was secured in the data base of the organization. Later the company was exposed to such threats of leaking this type of information. Customer relationship management was used under enterprise resource management for storing the personal information of the customers and the trends on which the customer purchases which is joint with marketing and ad campaigns of Amazon (Zhu & Liu, 2016).
MIS in Amazon reflects a very unique kind of strategy in sales. Operation in Amazon have done the transition from single level to multi-level strategy in E-commerce.
The model of business of Amazon displays the management information systems. Browsing for the products, managing the accounts and then the final step always comes down to shopping (Bluschke, 2016). There is Elastic cloud computing service which is a kind of web service is provided by Amazon. Elastic cloud computing i.e. EC2 has the main objective of serving the developers who work with the web computing. This technology helps the end users to have control over the computing actions and allow the customers a good usage of computer environment of Amazon (Delfmann, et al., 2002). The positive impacts of this technology at Amazon is that it is capable to save time by the ignorance of booting a new server. Machine image by Amazon is developed by the end user for the utilization of E2C services. The best part of E2C is that it has the feature pf paying for the actual use and it also helps all the developers in customizing the applications in order to prevent the most common failures. In this E2C technology, there exists S3 which acts as the storage device with the use of the internet. The search agent acts as the business model which is used by Amazon when the users start surfing the site for the products. This process takes the help of that technology which is known as data mining where the information is stored about the products and thereafter the services are retrieved form the data base and customers are then showed the apt results. For the consumer to consumer transactions, Amazon takes the brokerage model because it works as a platform for b2b service (Golafshani, 2003). Another tool names auction brokers is being used by Amazon which involves information of bidding and fulfillment. Amazon got itself registered in the year 2005 for the offering of the personal content for the customers via tracking the actions of the users when they surf for the products (Lai , et al., 2006).
Amazon’s Growth Strategy
- Sorting of products and anti-phishing interventions: In customer relationship management, amazon could not give the customers the option of surfing for the particular look or product based on the recent products search, reviews and the ranking given by the customers(Almalki, et al., 2017). The issues which are technical are very restrictive in terms of the promotion of implementations which are done in the system. Amazon has been continuously affected by phishing issues which asks the consumers for the information of accounting of the existing users of Amazon. This can be improved by strong anti-phishing interventions that support awareness in between the customers.
- Relationship of the website with the operations in social networking: Amazon faced this difficulty in enhancing the synergy which turns as the result of integrating the information sourcing from the advertising, after sales services and sales too. The information system of the organization must help in the suggestion of the touch points to the consumers every time(Kaur & Singh, 2012). Amazon was incapable of integrating the complete platform with social networking websites like MIS of EBay and most E-commerce organizations do. Usage of enterprise resource planning tool would have helped Amazon in sharing the reviews and the responses of the end users which will be able to enhance the faith amongst the consumers.
- CRM establishments across the business operations: The customer relationship marketing has to be planned even more and also promotes the logistics operations in a specific manner. For this more human resources would be needed and expansion in the market is also needed. The technology should be induced which can help in language preferences on the online website of Amazon to help the customers who do not know English(Post, 2012). This would have helped the organization in more customer fall on the website. Management information system should be extended even more to realize the best brands.
- Artificial Intelligence implementation: With the implementation of MIS, Artificial intelligence is what Amazon lacked in. This tool would have helped in the bonding of the customers in the long run(Oredo & Njihia, 2014). Intelligent Virtual agents would have set the future for amazon and the information systems too. Information systems would have been a little more capable in communicating with the customers. E strategy of Amazon should be flexible enough to meet the all-time changing demands and needs of the customers. The logistics would have been strengthened the operations of the departments if the virtual agents were used.
24 hours’ service for chat wasn’t initiated by Amazon on the first place. Supply Chain management and the customer relation management and human resource management of the organization would have been more driven with the usage of the intelligent virtual agents. The management information’s system used in amazon was inefficient in solving the questions of the customers who were constantly filing complaints because of the delay perceived in the response form amazon. For this the use of virtual agents would have helped the company in relying less on the consumer service center.
- Marketing Campaigns: The campaigns of marketing done form amazon should be more customer centric. This could be done with the usage of the data of costumers who belong to a certain community and promotes the practice of offering newsletters which would be customized according to the needs of the customer communities. The best use of information of the customers could be done with the usage and the implementation of the technology. The information system implemented in amazon was not very efficient in doing so. With the help of customer relationship management techniques via enterprise resource management solutions, emphasis would have been given to the HRM and tracking of the activities done is the business. There should have been the transparency in the accomplishments which should be offered to the customers via dashboards and tracking of sales when they order nay products.
- The gap between the marketing and sales activities: The MIS system was not able to help Amazon in the relativity in the sales and the marketing department. ERP has given great success to the company but the errors should be analyzed and pitfalls when the company came across Knowledge management systems as it is an area or department which needs more integration with the information systems and the structure. Employee of amazon also would have offered modes of viewing the complaints of the customers and through returned packages. This would have improved offline customer service and helped the company to gain more emotional bonding with the customers.
- Competing the market: Amazon should come up with something new like it has been in the past. Global market keeps on changing day after day. Competitors are increasing and investing high just to bring this organization down. There is absolutely no rim for relaxation. This is challenging to be consistent in the market and to be on top of all the retailer stores.
- Innovation: New products should be innovated in the store of the company so that the customer will retain and be loyal to the organization. For doing that, collaboration with the brands are to be done. For collaboration, new technologies could be entertained by Amazon in the information system and supply chain management is to be taken care of(Imran, 2014).
- New Technology: Technology is growing day by day. For retaining its domination in the market, Amazon needs to be technology friendly and is able to adapt to the new technologies which come in the market. Although it has done things like that before too by adapting the drone delivery system and investing in this type of technology(Kornkaew, 2012).
- Customer Loyalty: Amazon has loyal customers already but these days the company is receiving many fake products customer complaints. And this is hampering its customer’s loyalty. The information system and the CRM should be more effective so that loyal customers could be retained(Koymen, 2012).
Conclusion
The main focus should always be on determining the problems that surround the organization and finding the key issues in the MIS implementation when key issues in the implementation are being discussed. Every stage of implementation should be presented in order to process altogether with the details of the stages. For the managers in ecommerce or logistic company, they have to realize what is the most important thing for their company own development in a long-term scale, and also, they should balance the relationship between logistics and E-commerce. To offer a service of delivery is not just about sending items to customers, but satisfy customer needs with a good attitude (Li & Fan, 2014). This report focusses on the infrastructure of the amazon and process which happens behind the management information systems of amazon. The complete procedure of the implementation of the information system is focussed upon and the issues which rose in the implementation and after implementation of the information systems are also discussed. It seems that Amazon has huge scope in the enhancement of the customer relationship management via enterprise resource planning in information systems.
References
Demir, A., 2011. Management Information System: Case Study of Amazon.Com. Journal of Research in Business and Management, 4(11), pp. 11-17.
Imran, A. A., 2014. A STUDY ON AMAZON: INFORMATION SYSTEMS, BUSINESS STRATEGIES AND e-CRM. [Online]
Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261440748_A_STUDY_ON_AMAZON_INFORMATION_SYSTEMS_BUSINESS_STRATEGIES_AND_e-CRM
[Accessed 15 May 2018].
Kornkaew, A., 2012. Management Information System Implementation Challenges, Success Key Issues, Effects and Consequences. [Online]
Available at: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:545644/fulltext02
[Accessed 15 May 2018].
Li, Y. & Fan, R., 2014. The coordination of E-commerce and Logistics A case study of Amazon.com. [Online]
Available at: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:685599/FULLTEXT01.pdf
[Accessed 15 May 2018].
Koymen, T., 2012. MANAGING INFORMATION SYSTEMS – Critically evaluation of using of the Management Information Systems at Amazon.com. [Online]
Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/TolgaKoymen/kcb-14508-managing-information-assignment
[Accessed 15 May 2018].
Amazon, 2016. Annual Report, s.l.: s.n.
Amazon, 2013. Annual Report, s.l.: s.n.
Zhu, F. & Liu, Q., 2016. Competing with Complementors: An Empirical Look at Amazon.com. [Online]
Available at: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/15-044_d9d88071-7cf7-4d0f-90ba-548e018265ef.pdf
[Accessed 15 May 2018].
Bluschke, N., 2016. „To E or not to Be“ Amazon’s role in the retail industry. [Online]
Available at: https://www.modul.ac.at/uploads/files/Theses/Bachelor/undergrad_theses_2016/Thesis_1311069_BLUSCHKE__Nicole.pdf
[Accessed 15 May 2018].
Delfmann, W., Albers, S. & Gehring, M., 2002. The Impact of Electronic Commerce on Logistics Service Providers. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 32(3), pp. 203-222.
Golafshani, N., 2003. Understanding Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Researc. The Qualitative Report, 8(4), pp. 597-607.
Lai , . F., Zhao, X. & Wang, Q., 2006. The impact of information technology on the competitive advantage of logistics firms in Chin. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 106(9), pp. 1249-1271.
Almalki, M., Flei, S. A. & Zafar , A., 2017. Challenges in Implementation of Information System Strategies in Saudi Business Environment: A Case Study of aBank. International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology, 43(1).
Kaur, B. & Singh, K., 2012. Role of Management Information System in Business: Opportunities and Challenges. GIAN JYOTI E-JOURNAL, 1(2).
Post, G. V., 2012. Management Information Systems Cases. [Online]
Available at: https://www.jerrypost.com/MIS/MISCases2012.pdf
[Accessed 15 May 2018].
Oredo, J. O. & Njihia, J., 2014. Challenges of Cloud Computing in Business: Towards New Organizational Competencies. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 5(3).