MOBILE WORKPLACE APPLICATIONS

The following are two scenarios of wireless applications for mobile employees.

Sales Support
Linda is a member of the field sales team at Theru Tools (a fictitious company name). Each day she drives out to her customers in a van stocked with products. For each sale, she has to note the customer, the number and type of products sold, and any special discounts made. This used to be done manually, and many errors were made, leading to customer complaints and lost sales.
The company was reluctant to invest in laptops for such a limited applications, but Linda wanted the speed and reliability of automation. With the help of SAP, Theru was able to implement a system using low-cost but powerful handheld wireless devices.
Using Mobile Sales (an application for handhelds), accessed via the mysap.com Mobile Workplace, Linda and her coworkers in the field now have information at their fingertips, including updates on new products and special promotions. She can place orders without delay and get immediate feedback on product availability and delivery times. What’s more, the system at headquarters can prompt Linda and make plausibility checks on the orders, eliminating many of the errors associated with the manual process. It can also check if she is giving the right discounts to the right customer, and immediately trigger the invoicing process or print out a receipt on the spot.

Customer Service Support
Michael works for Euroblast, Inc. (a fictitious company name) as a service engineer. It is his job to provide time-critical maintenance and support for the company’s customer’s electromechanical control systems. To do so, he needs to know immediately when a customer’s system is faltering, what is malfunctioning, and what type of service contract is in effect for billing purposes.
Using SAP’s Mobile Service, Michael does not need to carry all of this information in his head, but instead has it in the palm of his hand. With only a few taps of the stylus, Michael accesses the mysap.com Mobile Workplace for all the data he requires, including the name and address of the next customer he should visit, equipment specifications, parts inventory data, and so forth.
Once he has completed the job, he can report back on the time and materials he used, and this data can be employed for timely billing and service quality analysis. In addition, his company is able to keep track of his progress and monitor any major fluctuations in activities. As a result, both Michael and his supervisors are better informed and better able to serve the customer.

Sources: Compiled from “CRM and the mySAP.com Mobile Workplace,” SAP AG Corp., 2000 (a publicly available brochure). Read More..

THE INTERNET JOB MARKET

The Internet offers a perfect environment for job seekers and companies searching for hard-to-find employees. The online job market is especially effective for technology-oriented companies and jobs because these companies and workers use the Internet regularly. However, there are thousands of other types of companies that advertise available positions, accept resumes, and take applications over the Internet. The following parties use the Internet job market :

1. Job seekers. Job seekers can reply to employment ads. Or, they can take the initiative and place their resumes on their own home pages or on others' Websites, send messages to members of newsgroups asking for referrals, and use recruiting firms such as headhunter.net, asiajobsearch.org, hotjobs.com, and monster.com. For entry-level jobs and internships for newly minted graduates, job seekers can use jobdirect.com.
2. Employers seeking employees. Many organizations advertise openings on their Web sites. Others advertise job openings on popular public portals, online newspapers, bulletin boards, and with recruiting firms. Employers can conduct interviews and administer tests on the Web.
3. Job agencies. Hundreds of job agencies are active on the Web. They use their own Web pages to post available job descriptions and advertise their services in e-mails and at other Web sites. Recruiters use newsgroups, online forums, bulletin boards, Internet commercial resume services, and portals such as Yahoo! and AOL.
4. Government agencies and institutions. Many government agencies advertise openings for government positions on their Web sites and on other sites. In addition, some government agencies use the Internet to help job seekers find jobs elsewhere, ad done in Hong Kong and the Philipines (see Study case E-Commerce)
   

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Perfect Competition in EC

EC supports efficient markets and could result in almost perfect competition. In such markets, a commodity (undifferentiated product) is produced when the consumer's willingness to pay equals the marginal cost of producing the commodity, and neither sellers nor buyers can influence supply or demand sellers not buyers can influence supply or demand conditions individually. The characteristics necessary for perfect competition are the following :

1. Many buyers and sellers must be able to enter the market at no entry cost (no barriers to entry).
2. Large buyers or sellers are not able to individually influence the market.
3. The products must be homogeneous (no product differentiation). (For customized products, there is no perfect competition.)
4. Buyers and sellers must have comprehensive information about the products and about the market participants' demands, supplies, and conditions.

EC could provide, or come close to providing, these conditions. Read More..