A second lesson learned is that e-commerce can be used for creating a unique product based on customer requirements. Michael Dell quickly realized that his build-to-order PC business could grow much faster than his small shop in Austin, Texas would allow for. He chose to create one of the first product configurators that could be used on a website, making it a unique differentiator relative to all other PC companies selling through e-commerce channels before (Jones, et.al.). The product configurator Dell created has specifically designed to allow customers online to work at their own pace, and even abandon a product configuration midway through building it (Liu, Mackie, 292). Customers online could also mix and match accessories for the PCs first, and then their entire laptops as well. Soon, customers were creating dozens of laptops and then printing out the configurations and comparing them to see which best fit their needs (Jones, et.al.). Dell had been able to do what no other company had been able to accomplish using e-commerce at the time, and that was change how people buy (Liu, Mackie, 293). By changing customer behavior using a stable, secure and trusted e-commerce website combined with a state-of-the-art configurator, Dell had successfully done what many business using only storefront had been able to do (Weill, Vitale, 261). The company had been able to create loyal customers entirely online, eventually attracting an entirely different set of new customers who were willing to pay more to purchase online than to walk in stores (Jones, et.al.). Dell found that people would pay for the convenience of using e-commerce to customize a new PC or laptop and then have it shipped to them using FedEx, UPS or another other shipping provider they preferred. Dell was only able to do this by concentrating on making their suppliers immediately aware of when a new order was placed. In addition to creating systems that linked together the website and order management systems, Dell pioneered the development of supply chain systems as part of their e-commerce strategies (Newing, et.al.). This saved millions of dollars in costs...
When companies and IT managers think of websites, they see a series of systems supporting the selling efforts online (Newing, et.al.). When marketing and sales executives in a company see their website, they think of how to bring customers from stores to the Web to buy from them (Weill, Vitale, 268). Everyone in a company then has a different view of what e-commerce is. But all of these different viewpoints are consolidated, and united to the common goal of giving the customer control of when, where, how and why they buy online. The background systems are what make e-commerce so successful today, along with making websites themselves very user-friendly. For an e-commerce website to succeed, all of these different areas of a company need to coordinate and work with each other to make sure the customer can reliably buy from them anytime.
References
Ho, S., R. Kauffman, and T. Liang. "Internet-based selling technology and e-commerce growth: a hybrid growth theory approach with cross-model inference. " Information Technology and Management 12.4 (2011): 409-420. (journal)
Kathryn Jones. "The Dell Way. " Business 2.0-1 Feb. 2003 (article)
Liu, C., and B. Mackie. "Enabling Customization through Web Development: An Iterative Study of the Dell Computer Corporation Website. " Journal of Information Systems Education 19.3 (2008): 291-300. (journal)
Newing, Rod. "Variety, the spice of life: ONLINE PRODUCT CONFIGURATION: One of the biggest challenges is bringing supply chains together to respond rapidly to customers' diverse requirements: [Surveys edition]. " Financial Times 1 Nov. 2000 (newspaper)
Weill, P. And M.R. Vitale. Place to Space: Migrating to ebusiness Models. Harvard Business School Press. 2001. (Book)
