Success
Essays

Amazon's remarkable ascent as one of the top online global retailers can be attributed to the foresight they had in creating a comprehensive distributed order management, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and e-commerce series of systems. The many other e-commerce sites that rose quickly with massive infusions of venture capital just as quick exited the market, flaming out due to a lack of system and process scalability, lack of understanding of customer dynamics, and a complete loss of focus on scalable business models. All of these factors are what caused competitors to Amazon to exit the e-commerce market either through acquisition, merger or complete exist from the market. When starting Amazon, Jeff Bezos invested heavily in the distributed order management, ERP, SCM and e-commerce integration points to book distributors initially, and then expanded into a broader product mix. This allowed the enterprise to quickly scale as volumes increased during the first five years of the company's existence. Having creating this reliable, scalable and secure platform, Mr. Bezos and the Amazon founders concentrated on creating an analytics layer throughout their architecture that could quantify customer, distributor, dealer and even competitor activity on the site (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). This reliance on analytics also gave Amazon executives and technical staff the insight they needed to launch quickly into entirely new product categories, get the complex and often confusing task of localization right, and also create a highly popular and profitable Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform and hosting platform for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications (Mitchell, 2012). From a technology standpoint the performance of Amazon today can be directly attributed to the insightful decisions made in 1994 and 1995 when the company founders prioritized the development of enterprise-wide platforms and a strong focus on analytics over spending all their time on the front-end website and its façade (Lindic, Bavdaz, Kovacic, 2012). As Jeff Bezos would later remark in interviews, by investing to create a truly world-class enterprise back-end system first, his company was freed up to fast track the actual user interface of the e-commerce sites globally at a pace that left comp[editors far behind in terms of functionality and product breadth (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). Mr. Bezos chose in 2007 to also institute a culture of metrics that also capitalized on the nearly two decades of investment in their infrastructure (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). Combining the global e-commerce, enterprise-tested infrastructure and the most robust set of analytics that any e-commerce provider had, Amazon was ready to begin expanding their product strategies, start offering greater options in their Amazon Web Services initiative which today is expected to be a $1B by 2015, even by conservative forecasts (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012) and also invest heavily in their state-of-the-art recommendation engine technology that seeks out products and services customers may be interested in and present them during shop[ping sessions in real-time (Sun, 2012). It's important to appreciate just how vast of an e-commerce infrastructure Amazon has in completing this analysis of their e-strategy. They have greater agility, flexibility and capability to execute than any other online retailer globally today. How they choose to use these technologies to attract new customers and keep existing ones loyal, a point the case study makes in greater detail, is predicated on the ability to get the most value from this infrastructure while still staying focused on delivering a world-class customer experience in each transaction. Based on the analysis undertaken for this case analysis, it is abundantly clear that Jeff Bezos and the executive management team are passionate about keeping the company as customer-focused as possible, including the continual selective use of technology to accentuate and strengthen the user experience online and off (Murphy, Narkiewicz, 2010). With these foundational aspects of Amazon defined, the seven areas of focus in this analysis are next presented. The overarching objective of this analysis is to understand the value of e-strategies in organizations, with Amazon being the organization of interest in the analysis. Specifically concentrating on the benefits of having an e-strategy at Amazon, defining how e-strategies contribute to Amazon's broader accomplishments, and an analysis of how Amazon aligns their e-strategy to the overarching organizational strategy as well., The analysis continues with an analysis of the key business factors that are the catalysts of the e-strategy at Amazon, followed by a suggested strategic plan for ensuring e-strategy initiatives at the company continue to lead to profitable growth. The final section of this analysis provides an assessment of the technical infrastructure needed to accomplish the proposed strategic plan. As Amazon has continually evolved its position as a global force in online retailing, its command of supply chains globally has also evolved very quickly. In the latest rankings of the highest-performing supply chains completed by Gartner, a leading research consultancy, Amazon has ranking within the top twenty five for five years running (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). What this signals is that Amazon has progressed from relying on enterprise-wide infrastructure to compete and is now on the growth trajectory of making supply chain processes their competitive advantage.

Introduction Workplace training is vitally important for any company – whether the company has mostly native-born experienced workers or a culturally diverse workforce including recent immigrants. But when it comes to training needs for culturally diverse employees there are strategies that should be applied and fine-tuned, and this paper addresses those strategies and tactics. Thesis: Old training models – used by HR departments and in business colleges – that are linear and simplistic should be considered outdated and irrelevant. The up-to-date training strategies do not stereotype cultures based on national cultural generalizations, but rather they approach cultural training based on individuals and their values and their ability to adjust to values in the new work environment.

The Criminal Justice Department has been asking graduating seniors to take an exit exam as a measure of departmental learning outcomes. How could that tool be used to determine if the criminal justice major is effective?

This is the first in a series of papers about Microsoft's purchase of Skype. This begins with the mission, vision and values of Skype. There is then an examination of the internal and external environment of Skype, which includes a SWOT and a PEST analysis. Some recommendations are given based on this analysis.

Brian Smith, who is a network administrator at Advanced Energy Technology (AET) has been tasked with moving a large data centre to a new office location in the newly developed industrial complex at the Corvallis International Airport in Corvallis, Oregon. The company provides application as a service product to two hundred thirty five oil jobbers and gasoline companies. As a result, the company can experience no downtime during the transition to the new facility. Any user interruptions from clients could result in lost revenues and damage to the company's reputation as a reliable IT company in the industry.

HRM (Human Resource Management) is the advancement and management of workers of an organization. Disciplinary training is a case for supervisors with multiple employees, which requires laws; this will prevent employees from taking advantage of their positions or employers causing difficulties in the workplace. ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) is laws which require supervisors to consider the disabled people in their working environments. FMLA laws also govern the wages and working hours of employees. NLRA (national labor related laws) is also recommended preventing supervisors from forcing employees to work when they think they are working under dangerous conditions. Employers can achieve disciplinary action training for supervisors by putting orientation as a requirement of additional supervisors, this will ensure they get the bearings and are familiar with all aspects of the job and avoid ignorance of law or some rules. Training makes employees make the best out of the situations they encounter as they are equipped with the required skills, and, guidance from well trained supervisors.

The more complex the software, product or service, the more critical a role initial customer service and support teams play in ensuring customers' expectations are met and their experiences are positive. In the enterprise software industry this especially holds true, as companies will often invest tens of millions of dollars in new enterprise software to track progress of their goals, orchestrate new product development and efficiently run manufacturing. This is admittedly one of the most stressing areas of IT help desk operations as the users of these systems are often under extreme time pressure to get work done involving these complex enterprise IT systems and applications (McCormack, 2006). There are techniques for ensuring a very high level of customer satisfaction however, and three of these best practices are described in this analysis.

provides the perfect opportunity for a food service venture operated from a food truck. With substantially lower overhead than a traditional restaurant and a typical focus on quick, volume-oriented service of a limited product selection, catering primarily to the high-school lunch crowd would be ideal for a food truck business (Lagorio, 2010; Mealey, 2012). Offering standard "American diner" fare such as hamburgers, French fries, other hot and cold sandwiches, and salads, both food preparation and customer service

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Diversity management is one of the key issues facing corporate America today. Higher number of female workers along with influx of immigrants from various racial and ethnic backgrounds in the workforce has prompted a need for diversity management because lack of the same can cause serious legal and performance problems