Ecommerce and Organizational Learning Improving

eCommerce and Organizational Learning

Improving the Performance of an Online University Using e-Commerce

Making the most of e-commerce platforms and technologies in the context of an online university needs to include strategies for increasing operational performance across the courses offered to helping students attain the educational goals they are enrolled to achieve. From the strategic aspects of integrating e-commerce platforms into each departments' information systems, to the support for the many suppliers an online university relies on an e-commerce platform just have the ability to support a wide variation in business models and processes. The value of e-commerce platforms and technologies is in unifying diverse business models and making them more centered on and responsive to customers' needs (Chung-Shing, 2001). The greater the integration and cohesive experience delivered by an e-commerce system the greater the level of trust customers have in the services promised and products sold (Beatty, Reay, Dick, Miller, 2011). For an online university, all of these factors are critical to its success, from the back-office integration to the student experience online, and the inclusion of services to support both students and faculty. The intent of this analysis is to define strategies for improving both individual and organizational learning by using e-commerce. The ability to tailor individualized learning programs to students, a technique called scaffolding, is enabled with the latest generation of e-commerce technologies (Najjar, 2008). Combining e-commerce and e-learning shows significant potential in this area as well.

Accelerating Online University Performance with e-Commerce

At the center of what makes any university successful is the ability to transparently and quickly share both explicit and tacit knowledge throughout the organization. As the university's core business model is providing students with the most efficient means possible to get to their educational goals, the underlying e-commerce systems must integrate the diverse back-office and customer-facing systems so real-time analytics and data can be quickly shared. One of the most powerful aspects of having a unified, enterprise-wide e-commerce platform supporting a services business is the ability to make every interaction with a customer (and student) count, contributing to greater growth (Goldberg, Sifonis, 1998). Creating a highly efficient enterprise begins by integrating legacy, 3rd party, financial, operational, customer and student-facing systems around a common set of objectives and metrics (Barsauskas, Sarapovas, Cvilikas, 2008). For the online university to excel at e-commerce there needs to be a common set of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) that the entire organization is galvanized around and believes in. These metrics and KPIs, reporting on dashboards internally, will explain hwo well the university is doing in orchestrating the many functional areas of the business model. This is the core foundation of any successful e-commerce business model, despite what many believe based on what they see on the veneer or surface. It is the real-time integration of these diverse systems and processes that leads to greater cost reductions, higher levels of efficiencies and greater customer satisfaction as a result (Kumar, Petersen, 2006). For the university to succeed with its online initiatives there needs to be a strong focus on this level of real-time, pervasive integration. By doing this, the metrics and KPIs used to measure performance will provide immediate insight into hwo well individual and organizational learning is progressing, in addition to defining galvanizing the culture of the university to a common set of goals, objectives and most importantly, values and perceptions of what excellence looks like.

The ability of any learning institution to attain a high level of consistent performance on e-commerce strategies is predicated on more than the website and customer-facing systems. The true test of any e-commerce system is the ability to orchestrate the many complex processes and systems to a unified, consistent experience to faculty, staff and most important, students. Advanced e-commerce systems have included a series of decision engines or logic workflows that expedite the most common processes throughout their platforms and websites (Nabi, 2005). This significantly increases the accuracy and velocity of information sharing throughout any enterprise, yet it is critical for the online university as time is often at a premium. A critical part of the ability to expedite knowledge sharing across the entire enterprise is to create rules-based workflows that automate the distribution of intelligence in real-time (Nabi, 2005).

Creating an Excellent User Experience Online Using e-Commerce

The front-end websites and interface are also a critical part of the overall e-commerce strategy. These front-end interfaces must be designed to ensure a very high level of adoption on the part of faculty, staff and students. The more attuned the design of these interfaces are to real-time collaboration and communication, the higher the overall level of performance attained based on the use of e-commerce systems (Shin-Ping, 2008). The usability aspects of any e-commerce system are one of the most critical success factors in ensuring each segment of customers or students find it useful and trust the features and applications included (Van Slyke, Belanger, Johnson, Hightower, 2010). The development of any e-commerce system must be predicated on a design that makes its use exceptionally easy and intuitive if those it is designed to serve find continual value within it.