Evolving Internet Business Model for Electronic Commerce Using Flexible Systems Methodology

Palanisamy, Ramaraj

Abstract

To gain the attention of online customers and interact with them, a number of business models are developed over the Internet. Each model is unique in its application to generate revenue for an organization. Any given may combine different models as part of its Internet business strategy to increase profitability. This paper focuses on a methology to evolve an intergrated e-business model by combining available models over the internet. A collection of e-business models given for ready reference. The methology is specified in Situation Actor Process-Learning Action Performance (SAP-LAP) framework, so that any given firm can identify the related issues in evolving an integrated business model. Business environment and e-commerce trend are consedred in 'situation': e-business model developments team comprises the 'actor', and the 'process' part deals with evolving an integrated business model. The steps of flexible system methology are followed to combined the models in an intergrated manner. Learning issues are given based on SAP analysis; action items and performances metrics are given to evolve an intergrated business models. SAP-LAP issues addressed in the paper facilitate companies to enter the web with clear goals. A case study is developed to illustrate the various steps proposed by the methology.

Keyword: e-commerce, Internet business models, flexibility, SAP-LAP models

Introduction

Electronic commerce is doing business electronically (European Commission, 1997), and refers to the practice of selling real products for real money through online channels (Rayport. 1999) and execution of information-based transactions between two or more panics using electronic, inter-conncclcd networks. Electronic commerce comprises trading steps such as online marketing, ordering, payment, support and delivery. The advent of lnleniel and World Wide Web has created explosive operational developments in e-commerce.

Internet Business Model

A business model is a method of doing business by which a company can sustain itself, that is, generate revenue (Kappa, 2000). The business model spells-out how LI cqmpany can get profit, describes the sources of revenues and explains the potential benefits for the various business actors (Timmers, 1998). lnleniel Business models are business models evolved in the Internet environment {Bambury, 1998). Some business models are simple. [Lambda] company sells the products or services to its customers to realize profits, [fall goes in favour of the company, then the surplus revenue after meeting the bills result inio revenue IOr the company. This is a simple and typical business model. Besides such simple models, e-commerce gives rise to new kinds of business models.

Rappa (2000) gives the generic fonn of business models observable on the web. They are Brokerage. Advertising, fnfomediary, Merchant, Manufacturer, Affiliate, Community, Subscription, and Utility. A description about these models is given in the Appendix-I. A firm may implement any of these models or a combination of them. Before implementing the business model, the following questions are to be answered: Which models arc to be selected? In what manner are they to be combined? How should u firm evolve an integrated business model? These uncertainties need to be cleared by a Firm before rushing to Web to launch its web site.

The Need to Evolve an Integrated Internet Business Model

Each business model shown in the Appendix generates revenue in its own way. To generate more revenue, models are to be implemented in an integrated manner. Any given firm may combine different models as part of its Internet business strategy for profitability (Rappa, 2000). Internet enterprises employ a creative combination of various models. For example, an advertising model may be blended with a subscription model to yield an overall strategy that is profitable.

A company may find that its current business model is not sufficient for dynamically changing business environment: the current model may not be successful at handling the complexity of technology in today's global era. Moreover, the changing business environment renders the current mode! outdated and calls for continuous improvement. Because of the changing business environment some models seem viable only for a few minutes or hours; some may be for weeks or months: and for some companies may be for years (Rayport, 1999). Moreover, there is no single, comprehensive and cogent taxonomy of web business models one can point to. Only generic forms of business models are observed on the web. So to cupe up with new developments in Internet technology, the major challenge for every e-business manager is to develop appropriate and flexible business model for electronic interaction with the customer.

Objectives of the Evolved Business Model

Different stakeholder groups can define various categories of objectives. Core objectives of the evolved model could be: to create a net-center of attention in a novel way to attract and interact with customers, to provide directions to select state-of-the-art technology, to create market opportunities, to increase revenue, and to reduce cost (Bam bury, 1998). So the Internet business model has to offer better prices, better services and nimble responses to consumer demands, all al a lower operational cost.

Role of the Evolved Business Model

The specific roles of the evolved business model must build new capabilities to the business prospective. Callahan and Pasternaek (1999) give the expected nilL- ol tin.1 business model: Internet business model has to improve communication, enhance customer service, improve knowledge sharing, reduce costs, enter to new markets, support for globalization, create new products and services, foster innovation, reduce time to market, and increase revenue. John (19%) adds the following roles to the web business model: enhancing the corporate image, attracting prospective customers/ employees, marketing products, increasing employee productivity, and gathering and disseminating corporate data.

SAP-LAP Framework to Evolve Integrated Business Model

For a given firm, situation actor process-learning action performance (SAP-LAP) framework of management (Sushil 1997, 1999. 2000) is proposed Io evolve the integrated business model and a conceptual diagram is shown in Figure 1. For a given firm, the 'situation1 comprises of" its business environment and e-commerce trends, the 'actor' refers to the model development team and evolving an integrated business model is the 'process'. Tlve model development team forms a pan of the situation as well as process. The team (actor) understands and learns the ambiguous situation through deep involvement, and exercises freedom of choice by actions. Learning issues are the outcome of Situation-Actor-Process analysis and may be in the form of pros and cons of the problem attributes or do's and don'ts to guide (he action plan or positive and negative reinforcements for the future. Performance measures are used to appraise the process of evolving the Internet business model.

Situation

Business environment and e-commerce trends constitute the situation for evolving the e-business model. Companies today operate in an environment of enormous and irreversible continuous changes. Major forces driving this age of change lire information, markets, competitive pressure, the pace of business, technological innovations, capital markeis, iiiduslry structures and the regulating environment (Albert and Bruce, 1996).

Information: Worldwide availability of the information highway facilitates customers and competitors to have instant access to each other at a retord pace. The number of subscribers to on-line services is ever increasing.

Markets: Market boundaries are becoming global, as are the companies that compete in them. A major part of customer orders have started coming from outside the headquarters country.

Competitive pressure: Multi-line businesses competing in a variety of sectors and along a number of dimensions, such as speed, quality and service. Competition has been intensified and it becomes harder to achieve leadership.

The pace of business: Business velocity is taster with everrising customer expectations. Market is. becoming swamped with new products.

Technological innovation: Technology-created market opportunities require rapid adjustment. Processing cost of information has come down drastically. The processing cost per instruction bas reduced by half each year. Telecommunications costs have been steadily decreasing due to increased competition among Internet service providers.

Capital markets: Investors demand better organisational performance in tenus of financial parameters, Institutional investors are started owning the maximum percentage of-all equities. With the advent of Internet, funds are mobilized on a more global scale today, with the exploration of new sources.

Industry structures: More mergerS*fcnd restructuring of industries are emerging in the business arena.

Regulatory environment: More stringent environmental laws are enforced to protect the environment,

Electronic Commerce Trends

According to Forrester (1997), in business-to-business (B-to-D) electronic commerce the value of goods and services traded via the Internet will grow to $327 billion in the year 2002, Between 19% and 1997 electronic commerce has been growing at the rate of over 1000 percent per year, Dalamonitor (1997) expected by the year 2002, 630, 000 US companies and 245,000 European companies to be involved in full-fledged integrared B-to-B electronic commerce. The reports on electronic commerce expect that the bustness-to-busiiiess penetration rate will grow from 10% in 1997 to 90% in 2001. The number of consumers on the Net by now has crossed several 100 millions. The number of users from businesses and schools is growing steadily with more awareness about online shopping. Personal usage of Internet is beginning to skyrocket. Usage of employee Intranet, customer Extranet and supplier Extranet are ever increasing. International governmental policies are encouraging the Internet usage.

New ways of doing business using Internet are developing. New host sites per year is rapidly increasing because of cheaper and faster Internet access. As the number of host sites and Internet users increases, the number of online shoppers also increases. Callahan and Pasternack (1999) give the following Internet-enabled megatrends:

* Electronic networking nf customers, suppliers, and partners

* Elimination of 'middlemen' in e-business

* balance of power shift ID the customer: customers are equipped with unlimited access to information afforded by the Internet

* Web's 24 hours availability

* Handy PC based access

* Travel cost ami time saving

* Knowledge is becoming a key asset and source of competitive advantage.

Actor

The business model development team comprises top management, customer representatives. Internet business managers, e-commerce business analysts, c-commerce business modelers, system integrators, and other members of the web-site development technical team. The degree of involvement for each actor differs; some may play an advisory role, some select the model, some take the responsibility to implement die model and some may be representatively involved. The roles and responsibilities of each team member arc given in the following section.

Top management; The top management provides the team a clear focus and concise directions; facilitates to link strategic plans and e-business strategics to shareholder value; keeps pace with ever increasing functional/user demands for new or enhanced Internet based system.

Customer service representative: The purchase- requirements of online customers, order fulfillment process, provides data to forecast customer visits, advocating client issues, policies, procedures and market rules are identified by the customer service representative.

Internet - business manager: The internet-business manager works closely with functional managers and customers to provide the most seamless interface possible for communication. The manager creates, a strategy for c-Business expansion with an eye on sales growth and profitability. Managing web site activities is the major role and responsible for accomplishing Internet business model performance parameters.

E-commerce business analyst: Information inputs for the process of evolving the business model is provided by the e-commeree business analyst. Such information could be customer expectations for products offered, describing business goals and business requirements. The analyst is responsible for developing information architecture for e-commerce site features. After evolving a business model the analyst has to come out with a plan for web site content management in liaison willi web development team,

E-commerce business modeler: The major role is to develop business domain models (conceptual) in accordance with the existing mela model. E-commerce business requirements have to be converted into a conceptual business model. Selecting and integrating the appropriate business models are the major roles. The business modeler coordinates with the business analyst in developing the information architecture based on functional requirements,

Systems integrator: Basically a business modeler, the systems integrator is responsible for developing, updating and maintaining e-business processes, networks, and other communication models. The systems integrator wosks with business analysts to giitlicr and understand business/ data requirements to integrate the trading partners with the given firm.

Process

The steps of flexible systems methodology (Sushil, 1994) are followed to evolve an integrated business model. The steps are reworded to suit the context of evolving the business model. They are conceptualizing e-business objectives, fuzzy clustering, matching e-business objectives and model, selection of business models, integration and innovation, implementation and dynamic shift. These steps are dealt with in the following section.

i) Conceptualizing e-business objectives: The business model development team (actor) may get the e-business objectives by understanding the business environment and e-commercc trends. The objectives could be: possible revenue generation by the evolved business model, providing a better service to the customer, enhancing the corporate image, efficient market penetration, imparting information to educate the online customers, increasing web traffic for the site, increasing the number of on-line buyers, increasing customer satisfaction by fulfilling their requirements, and other situation specific characteristics like providing relevant links, easy to remember web address, incorporating the most likely used keywords and phrases. The objectives for a given company can be defined collectively by the development team.

ii) Fuzzy clustering: In view of e-husiness objectives, Internet business models need to be clustered. One or more business models may require accomplishing an objective. In other words, the objekives as well as a business model will have a membership value for the relevance. Each model can be assessed against each objective for the extent of applicability. Possibility values of applicability of a model fur an objective can be used as the relevance score. The models with high relevancy scores can be identified and considered lor the next step.

iii) Matching e-business objectives and models:A matrix of e-business objectives and models can be used for matching. The objectives versus models matrix is used for qualitative assessment of the suitability of each model against each e-bnsiness objective, A model may not have high applicability for all objectives. So each model needs to be critically appraised in overall manner. To what extent each model contributes to the achievement of each objective should be the focus of this critical appraisal.

iv) Selection of business models: Based on the critical appraisal, one or more sets of business models are selected. For this selection, the weighted average method can be used by giving suitable weights to the objectives. The selected models show high scores of applicability to accomplish the objectives. In what combination are the selected models to be used? This question emphasizes the aspect of integrating the selected business models.

v) Integration and innovation: Different schemes can be followed for integrating the business models. Possible types of integration are: integrating the models in succession, using different models for different objectives, both way integrating the models, using one model as a subset of other model maintaining its identity, and using amalgamation of models leading to a new model.

vi) Implementation :Once an integrated business model is evolved, the implementation scheme is to be developed. The integrated business model is the major input for web site design.

vii) Dynamic shift: As the problem situation is handled only by a set of business models, as long as the situation doesn't change these models are valid tor the situation. When the situation changes there is a need to reconsider the models for applicability.

Learning

The existing knowledge base of business models is to be continuously updated. As and when new models are introduced on lhe Internet, the applicability of the model for the given company should be tested. In case of suitability, the model may be combined with the already chosen models. The mlegraled model needs Io be upgraded in order to prevent obsoleteness created by environmental forces. Monitoring e-eommerce trends and the impact on the evolved business model, opportunities and threats leads to decisions on the revamping of e-business model.

In the process of evolving business model, constant vigilance of customer feedback is to be enabled to redefine e-business objectives; lnlemel based cost saving models are to be explored to make profit. The integrated model provides guidelines to develop commercial web sites to maximize profit and hence provide a web-methodology. The contents of the weh site can be derived from ihe integrated model. A blueprint for the basic functions such as providing information ID the visitors, enabling commercial transactions, and entertaining visitors can be prepared based on the evolved model.

Including customer-focused models strengthens customer relationships. To satisfy customer requirements, information that is useful to customers may be provided, but this need not make them to buy from the site.

Action

Based on Situation-Actor-Process analysis and learning issues, an action plan may be developed. The aclion plan gives guidelines to implement business models evolved in the 'process' pan of SAP-LAP analysis. The action items suggest the issues to be considered before designing a cotnniercial web-site. A sample of action items are given below:

* Identify target customers/visitors for the e-commcrce web site

* Consider the web site content and design issues based on the evolved business model

* Specify business process design for the evolved model

* Derive information requirements to implement the web site

* Decide on what commercial inibrmatkin is Io be included in the websile. I1Or example, company background, mission statement, financial statements, overview of completed projects, major customers, and product information, prices and delivery terms.

* Choose non-commercial information such as information about sponsored events, geographical location (e.g. a hotel web site providing information about nearby tourist spots) to go into the web site

* Decide on the kind of transactions such as online

* purchases, customer-seller interactions for price negotiations, customer services and e-paymenl thai the web site should support.

* Determine web site features like virtual catalogues, screen order forms, questionnaires to elicit customer feedback

* Design web navigation structure for the web pages

* Decide on graphical user interfaces, database designs, network servers, and business process designs

* Plan the entertain ment features such as animation, voice, video clips, cartoons, pictures, games (if necessary) for web visitors.

* Create an interactive, informative;, entertaining, challenging, and unique web site Io attract attention and interest

* Explore the possibility to collaborate with allied sites

* Create value added services like price comparison of products with different suppliers

* Categorize web content and customize according to the type of web surfers

* Implement policies for information protection

* Decide on information presentation such as layout, colours, font sizu, and mix of text and graphics,

* Develop mechanisms to get easterner feedback to improve and new product development

Performance

After implementing the evolved business model in firm's website, metrics are to be developed in order to assess the impact of the implemented business model. A sample of performance parameters are given below:

* Achievement level for e-business objectives

* Site page level usability

* Number of visitors visiting the e-commerce web site

* Revenue by on-line sales

* Reduction in intermediary cost

* Number of subscribed on-line customers

* Number of on-line customers who used free services provided by the site

* Number of complaints and grievances from online customers

* Number of value added customer services

* Extent Iu which the evolved business model copes with the business environment

* (Easiness to find and navigate through the site

* Length of visitor sessions (domestic and inlernationa] visitors)

* Number of repeat visitors

* Conversion rales from visitor to shopper, shopper to huyer as well aa the number of visitors that abandoned their carts or failed to complete the check out process.

* Web traffic analysis, search engine effectiveness, activity statistics.

* Easy access to web site, user friendliness, easy navigation

* Usefulness of the web site to the visitor

Case Study

A case study on a courier service company is given to illustrate the steps. The case study illustration is given in Situation Actor Process-Learning Act ion-Performance (SAP-LAP) framework.

Situation

Business environment and c-commerce opportunities for the courier service company comprise the "situation". E-commerce opportunities are discussed in "Electronic Commerce Trends" sections, which are applicable for the courier service company under consideration. The impact of business environmental forces for the case is given below.

Information: Worldwide availability of information highway enables the customers to access the services provided by the courier company. The kind of information services available to customers could be package tracking, nearest available pick-up points and delivery locations and service tee rates. Besides these transaction services, availability of noncommercial information like corporate policies, financial reports may interest lhc potential investors. Encouraging customers to sign in for a subscribed service facilitates customised transactions. From the customer profile, the company can identify potential customers for a given global service. Online information focusing on customer requirements can he used for building more profitable customer relationships.

Markets: As the market boundary of a courier service company is based on pick-up points and delivery locations, assume the given company has local pick-up points and international delivery locations. Global customers are served through alliance companies in delivery locations. Customers may need to find the nearest pick-up and delivery points by an online search facility.

Competitive pressure: Competitive forces urge the company to provide competitive services such as quick delivery, package tracking, providing software toots such as currency converter, providing real lime information on movement of delivery vans, online signature services after delivery and so on.

The pace of business: Trends in the courier service business are introducing online signature services, online tracking through web site, providing specialized software tools to tlie customers, and making the entire business process transparent by providing online help information. The customer expects a guaranteed delivery for a reasonable price.

Industry structures: The industry encourages alliances with other courier companies to serve the global customers; these alliances help to overcome the barriers in global delivery. Also, alliances help for optimized delivery schedule by sharing the resources of the alliance company.

Capital markets: The given courier company can publicize its financial performance on the web site to attract potential investors. This facilitates the investors to make online buying and selling of the company's shares. The Internet enables to identify the potential investors globally in the process of exploring the new sources of fund.

Actor

Actors are the business model development members including lop management, customer representatives. Internet business managers, e-eommerce business analysts, e-commcrce business, modelers and system integrators. The rules and responsibilities of each team member are given in the "Actor" section of the methodology.

Process

Conceptualizing e-Business Objectives

Fur the given situation, the actors may set the following business objectives: Io provide quick and guaranteed service for the customers, on-line (racking of shipments, to generate more revenue. To create customer profile for better service, and to update the customers aboul new services. The description about these objectives is given in Table 1.

Each objective is mapped in continua of extreme options as shown in Hgure 2. This is useful to consider the eligible business niudels required accomplishing each ohjcaive.

Fuzzy Clustering

The business models given in the Appendix are considered for applicability to each of the business objectives. The following models arc identified with high possibility values: (i) buy-sell fulfillment model; (ii) business trading community; (iii) rnetamediary; (iv) search agent; (v) personalized portal; (vi) free model; (vii) rceeommender system; (viii) registration model; (ix) manufacturer; and (x) affiliate model.

Matching e-Business Objectives and Models

Each business model is critically examined to find how far it accomplishes each objective. Some models may partially achieve an objective and some are not. A model is selected only if it achieves the objective fully or partially. The qualitative remarks for matching and critical appraisal of each model arc given in Table 2. Some of the remarks indicate the extent to which the model helps to achieve the objectives and some of them indicate the focus of each model in view of the objective.

Selection of Business Models

Based on critical analysis of each model with each business objective the following business models are selected: (i) buysell fulfillment mode]; (U) business trading community; (iii) mctami-diary; (iv) search agent; (v) reccommender system; (vi) registration model; (vii) manufacturer; and (viii) affiliate model. Personalized portal and free models are dropped from the list because they show low applicability for the given objectives.

Integration and Innovation

To provide quick and guaranteed service to customers, the company can encourage the customers to hook online through affiliated sites. The affiliated sites provide service opportunities to customers wherever they are surfing. Services like online hooking, down loading of information/ software will be much quicker. These sites can provide value added services like order tracking, billing, and collection services to ensure customer satisfaction. This is achieved by metamediary model, which protects customer satisfaction.

Implementing the search model can facilitate order tracking. Online tracking of shipment can be searched by several criteria; using shipment number or weigh bill number may result into exact matches; whereas criteria such as sender's last name, date etc. may result in many hits. In the web site, provisions can be made to give a range of possible keywords and phrases so that the customer can try one or the other.

Revenue may be generated by contacting the customers directly without middlemen. Compressing the distribution channel may give a price advantage to the customer. Direct sale of services follows the combined model of 'Manufacturer' and "Brokerage'. For fulfilling the customer requirements, the company charges a transaction tee. Direct contact with customers enables understanding customer preferences. First hand information about the customer requirements can also be obtained.

Customer profile and the requirements can be collected from various sources. Encouraging the customers to register with the site is one such source. Analyzing their shopping carts and online order forms are other sources. The e-customer profile can be used to categorize the customers based on the volume of transactions and nature of operations (local or global). These categories are useful to target the customers for a new type of service.

Implementation

This section deals with the ways of implementing the selected business models.

Affiliated model: Instead of having high volume traffic at one site, affiliated sites could be launched to distribute the availability of services. Also, customers may gain services through y Hied partner sites (for transportation and courier) thereby global service is provided.

Metamediary: In the company's web site, services such as online tracking of shipments, online billing, online payment, online signature services can be implemented.

Search agent: An intelligent software agent may be used to search out shipments from the database using keywords ranging from weigh bill number to last name.

Manufacturer: The company's web site may be launched to aim the customer services without any middleman.

Brokerage- buy/sell fulfillment: In the web site, online transactions such as online booking and online-payment can be activated.

Registration; Sign in facility for customer profile form, customer database in the client-server architecture may be implemented.

Recommender system: Data mining techniques can be applied to identify the pattern of services required by the customers,

Business trading community: Customer guides and directories may be periodically updated for new services.

Dynamic Shift

One or several models may be used to accomplish each business objective. When the business objective changes, the business models arc also changed accordingly. When the company focuses on "quick and guaranteed service", the vnlue-added services are provided by metamediary model and the quick services are offered at affiliated sites. For "online tracking of shipments" objective, the company makes use of search model to search out the shipping. The revenue is generated by direct sale of services as well as by being an intermediary broker; so, manufacturer model and brokerage models are combined here. Data collection to create customer profile is done by registration and brokerage model. Finally, to update the customers about nevv services recommender system and business trading community are to be used.

Learning

The web-site may he expanded by including more features. For instance features I ike free downloading of software, online signature facility can be added. The integrated model explores the possible sources of revenue generation other than brokerage commission and fee based transactions.

Customer data on courier services requirements, shipping address and credit card details can be collected. The data can be converted into knowledge for building more profitable customer relationships: new product ideas or new promotion campaigns can be developed with more customer focus. The company can learn the type of services required particularly for each customer.

The web page contents can be decided on the basis of selected business models. Ways of redesigning the business processes to increase tbe efficiency of transactions can be unearthed from the integrated model.

Action

The following action plan is developed based on SAP (situation-actor-process) analysis. These action items can be considered before designing the web site.

* Create the web site contents for online booking, online payment and online tracking

* Decide the financial mtbnnalion contents tor Lhe interest of potential investors

* Design and develop the information architecture (inpul design, output design, interface design, process design, and the database design)

* Design the web navigation structure to access the contents

* Design an interactive and dynamic web site

* Explore the possibility to collaborate with other courier and transporting companies

* Categorize the customers and lheir service usage patterns

* Identify the ways of updating the categorized customers about new services

Performance

The following parameters are suggested to measure the performance of the evolved business model:

* Delivery time for the focal and global services

* Number of missing shipments

* Amount of revenue generated by online services

* Statistics on number of visitors, page views, length of visitor sessions, repeated visitors, search engine effectiveness

* Visitor-shopper-buyer conversion rate

* Number of value added services

* Easy to find and navigate through the site

Concluding Remarks

Each business model creates revenue opportunity in its own way. An e-commerce company lias to understand its core strength before applying 'Flexible Systems Methodology' to integrate the models. Innovative companies continuously introduce innovative business models over the web, A constant vigil over new models helps a company to identify appropriate models to its business context. Continuous efforts are to be made in revamping the business model as mid when ltie situation demands.

The integrated business model discussed in this paper is the first level of design, and it provides guidelines for web site contents and design. The information requirements and architecture can he derived based on the evolved model. To provide better services Io customers at the least cost, the company has to explore innovative online business strategies.

To have more flexibility to the process of evolving the integrated business model, a company can develop its own steps. So (situation-actor-process-learning-action-perfonnance) analysis will be unique for each company since the business situation and the strategic intent are different.

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Ramaraj Palanisamy

Assistant Professur

Department of lnfummtiun Systems

St. Francis Xaviar University

Antigoriisli. Nova Scotia

Canada B2G 2W5.

Copyright Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management (GIFT) Jul-Sep 2001
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