Week 2 Project

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The Internet and Business

The Internet

Consumers use the Internet to �nd a variety of prices, actual wholesale costs of products that are paid by merchants, and other information on different products. An example of this is using the Web to research or purchase an automobile. The Internet has greatly expanded in sophistication and complexity and can reach a large number of consumers simultaneously.

Prior to the growth of the Internet, sales representatives in the �eld waited for days before they received large, green-bar computer reports by mail. The reports gave them the status of their customers’ orders, new prices, and order con�guration information. Now they receive this information instantly over their Web browser. This eliminates the need for making phone calls to customer service. Therefore the cost of information access has gone down and the information is up to date.

Internet Models

A useful Internet model gives investors the ability to make changes in their investment retirement account (IRA) by allowing the transfer of funds between mutual funds, stocks, and bonds with the investor’s IRA account. Another useful Internet model is the clicks-and-mortar business model. Using this model, airlines can send frequent �yer digital messages to the mobile phones, wireless PDAs, or tablet PCs of passengers, con�rming their departure time, �ight number, seat, and gate information two or three hours before a �ight.

Corporate Intranets

Corporate intranets can assist in group collaboration in situations where users are at different locations and frequent travel is time-consuming and costly. Let us consider the example of eLoyalty Corporation, which implemented a project resource allocation intranet application. This application allowed geographically dispersed consultants to view best practices and competency-based information This application was also a repository to share lessons learned from each project to contribute to an internal knowledge library.

Intranets are also good ways to share information cross functionally among sales and marketing, manufacturing and production, �nance and accounting, and human resources within the same organization. Users can also use intranets to access Web interfaces. Extranets are private intranets extended to authorized users outside the company.

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