For office use

Grade:

Business Process Re-Engineering

Group Project

Proposal

E-commerce Industry

Submitted to: Prof V.V. Nath

Submitted by:

Ayushi Khandelwal (151314)

Radhika Maheshwari (151340)

Deepak Meena(151414)

Institute of Management, Nirma University

Submitted on: 27th Oct, 2016
 E-commerce Business Scenario

E-commerce is facilitation of products online. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such

as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing,
online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems,
and automated data collection systems.

E-commerce businesses may employ some or all of the following:

Online shopping web sites for retail sales direct to consumers

Providing or participating in online marketplaces, which process third-party business-to-

consumer or consumer-to-consumer sales

Business-to-business buying and selling

Gathering and using demographic data through web contacts and social media

Business-to-business electronic data interchange

Marketing to prospective and established customers by e-mail or fax (for example, with
newsletters)

Engaging in pre tail for launching new products and services

Online financial exchanges for currency exchanges or trading purposes

It has grown in importance as companies have adopted pure-click and brick-and-click channel
systems. One can distinguish pure-click and brick-and-click channel system adopted by
companies.

Pure-click or pure-play companies are those that have launched a website without any
previous existence as a firm.

Bricks-and-clicks companies are those existing companies that have added an online site
for e-commerce.

Click-to-brick online retailers that later open physical locations to supplement their
online efforts.
Impact on Supply Chain performance

For a long time, companies had been troubled by the gap between the benefits which supply
chain technology has and the solutions to deliver those benefits. However, the emergence of e-
commerce has provided a more practical and effective way of delivering the benefits of the new
supply chain technologies. E-commerce has the capability to integrate all inter-company and
intra-company functions, meaning that the three flows (physical flow, financial flow and
information flow) of the supply chain could be also affected by e-commerce. The affections on
physical flows improved the way of product and inventory movement level for companies. For
the information flows, e-commerce optimized the capacity of information processing than
companies used to have, and for the financial flows, e-commerce allows companies to have more
efficient payment and settlement solutions.

In addition, e-commerce has a more sophisticated level of impact on supply chains: Firstly, the
performance gap will be eliminated since companies can identify gaps between different levels
of supply chains by electronic means of solutions; Secondly, as a result of e-commerce
emergence, new capabilities such implementing ERP systems, like SAP ERP, Xero, or
Megaventory, have helped companies to manage operations with customers and suppliers. Yet
these new capabilities are still not fully exploited. Thirdly, technology companies would keep
investing on new e-commerce software solutions as they are expecting investment return.
Fourthly, e-commerce would help to solve many aspects of issues that companies may feel
difficult to cope with, such as political barriers or cross-country changes. Finally, e-commerce
provides companies a more efficient and effective way to collaborate with each other within the
supply chain.
 E-commerce in India

India had an internet user base of about 354 million as of June 2015 and is expected to cross 500
million in 2016. Despite being the second-largest user base in world, only behind China (650
million, 48% of population), the penetration of e-commerce is low compared to markets like the
United States (266 million, 84%), or France (54 M, 81%), but is growing at an unprecedented
rate, adding around 6 million new entrants every month. The industry consensus is that growth is
at an inflection point.

In India, cash on delivery is the most preferred payment method, accumulating 75% of the e-
retail activities. Demand for international consumer products (including long-tail items) is
growing much faster than in-country supply from authorized distributors and e-commerce
offerings.

In 2015, the largest e-commerce companies in India were Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon India, and
Paytm.
 E-commerce Working

1. Sitting at the computer, a customer tries to order a book online. Her Web browser
communicates back-and-forth over the Internet with a Web server that manages the
store's website.
2. The Web server sends her order to the order manager. This is a central computer that
sees orders through every stage of processing from submission to dispatch.
3. The order manager queries a database to find out whether what the customer wants is
actually in stock.
4. If the item is not in stock, the stock database system can order new supplies from the
wholesalers or manufacturers. This might involve communicating with order systems at
the manufacturer's HQ to find out estimated supply times while the customer is still
sitting at her computer (in other words, in "real time").
5. The stock database confirms whether the item is in stock or suggests an estimated
delivery date when supplies will be received from the manufacturer.
6. Assuming the item is in stock, the order manager continues to process it. Next it
communicates with a merchant system (run by a credit-card processing firm or linked to
a bank) to take payment using the customer's credit or debit card number.
7. The merchant system might make extra checks with the customer's own bank computer.
8. The bank computer confirms whether the customer has enough funds.
9. The merchant system authorizes the transaction to go ahead, though funds will not be
completely transferred until several days later.
10. The order manager confirms that the transaction has been successfully processed and
notifies the Web server.
11. The Web server shows the customer a Web page confirming that her order has been
processed and the transaction is complete.
12. The order manager sends a request to the warehouse to dispatch the goods to the
customer.
13. A truck from a dispatch firm collects the goods from the warehouse and delivers them.
14. Once the goods have been dispatched, the warehouse computer e-mails the customer to
confirm that her goods are on their way.
15. The goods are delivered to the customer.
 E-commerce processes

There are 5 main processes which are associated with e-commerce industry. It is important to
automate these processes in order to smarten things up and boost the operations.

Five processes which can be automated for greater efficiency and quality are following:

1. Vendor/Supplier On-boarding Processes

Just about all successful e-commerce companies have solid processes for quickly and accurately
on-boarding new suppliers and vendors into their systems. Vendor/supplier on boarding and
approval processes are often done using spreadsheets and email, slowing things down and
leading to inconsistent data as the spreadsheet flows through the emails.

2. Purchase Order Approvals

For most of the e-commerce start-up, purchase order approvals are a combination of email +
spreadsheet.

3. Item/Catalog Listings Approval

The process of listing new items on ecommerce site often involves multiple internal approvals
before they get online.

4. Refund Claims

One of the most common sources of dissatisfaction for ecommerce companies is centered around
refunds. When customers file claims for refunds, it often ends up as an email in someones inbox.
Many ecommerce companies, especially the ones that are young and growing, process these
manually. Thatll not only be lots of time and effort wasted, but will also result in a negative
brand image in the minds of your customers as there might be delays and inaccuracies in the
refunding process.

5. Customer Complaints (non-refund)

While process lapse in refunds can create social media fires and earn you a couple of bad
reviews, being lethargic on non-financial complaints and feedback can erode value slowly over
time. It is like the parable of the boiled frog. Processing complaints and feedback manually, from
desk to desk, is unwieldy and can result in poor handling of such complaints. This makes the
processing of customer complaints an ideal candidate for automation.

All the above stated processes are common in e-commerce industry, which impacts the business
most and need to be taken care of. These processes need to be re-engineered.
 References

https://kissflow.com/process_playbook/

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/ecommerce.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce_in_India

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce