外文翻譯構(gòu)建中小型企業(yè)電子商務(wù)
II-文獻(xiàn)綜述外文原文一Building an e-business foundation for a small-to-medium business作者:Christopher L Merrill.國(guó)籍:USA出處:0p.htm原文正文:Abstract:As the 21st century has came,the modern net an telecommunication technologies based on the Internet has been uesd widely in many areas.The eonomic globalization and infromation have became the most obvious features and tends of the new century.We human beings would enter a new age which is based on advanced Internet economy,which is the trend of society development.Economic Internets birth shows the life of Internet based virtual market.This is a new,powerful,fast-growing and digital market.Under this circumstance,Chines enterprises started to enter E-market,setting up their websites.Some companies made breakthoughs on capital and scale limitations and aquiring acceesses for international market.Especially for those small companies who really did a good job on the use of Internet.Facing this trend, Chongqing Yiwoke Technolege Developoment Itd Corporation began to settle Z,which is the third platform for business and other ideas.Even the competition in this area is extremely fierece,and the living environment for it was changing everyday,but the they made very good marketing strateyies,which really benefit them a lot.And this essay has a good academic research and practical significance.相關(guān)理論;Different scholars define electronic commerce in different way. Marilyn Greentein and Todd M. Feinman define electronic commerce as: The use of electronic transmission mediums (telecommunications) to engage in the exchange, including buying and selling, of products and services requiring transportation, either physically or digitally, from location to location. They think electronic commerce is different from electronic business in that the former is restricting, however, and does not fully encompass the true nature of the many types of information exchanges occurring via telecommunication devices. Whereas, the term electronic business also includes the exchange of information not directly related to the actual buying and selling of goods. Increasingly, businesses are u-sing electronic mechanisms to distribute information and provide customer support. These activities are not "commerce" activities; they are "business" activities. Thus, the term electronic business is broader and may eventually replace the term electronic commerce. Although the term electronic commerce is used throughout this text, many of the activities described are more accurately classified as electronic business.Kalakota and Whinston (1997) define EC from these perspectives:From a communications perspective, EC is the delivery of information, products/ services, or payments over telephone lines, computer networks, or any other electronic means.From a business process perspective, EC is the application of technology toward the automation of business transactions and work flow.From a service perspective, EC is a tool that addresses the desire of firms, consumers, and management to cut service costs while improving the quality of goods and increasing the speed of service delivery.From an online perspective, EC provides the capability of buying and selling products and information on the Internet and other online services.Lou Gerstner, IBMs CEO: "E-business is all about cycle time, speed, globalization, enhanced productivity, reaching new customers and sharing knowledge across institutions for competitive advantage.”Li Qi, a professor and expert in this field, defines EC from the perspective of productive force. He thinks there should be two definitions. The broader definition is that electronic commerce is the use of electronic tools in commercial activities. These electronic tools range from telegram, telephone of early times to Nil, Gil and INTERNET of modern times. The commercial activities here refer to all lawful activities of demand and consumption except for typical production process. The narrower definition is that electronic commerce is the whole process in which people ,who master information technology and business regulations and rules, systematically use electronic tools and efficiently and low-costly engage in all kinds of activities centering on the exchange of commodities and services in a highly technically and economically advanced society. The first definition can be simplified as commercial electronic application; the second can be shortened as electronic commercial system.EDI is a subset of electronic commerce. A primary difference between the two is that electronic commerce encompasses a broader commerce environment than EDI. Traditional EDI systems allow pre-established trading partners to electronically exchange business data. The vast majority of traditional EDI systems are centered around the purchasing function. These EDI systems are generally costly to implement. The high entry cost precluded many small and mid-sized businesses from engaging in EDI. Electronic commerce allows a marketplace to exist where buyers and sellers can "meet" and transact with one another.Classification of the EC Field by the Nature of the TransactionsA common classification of EC is by the nature of transaction. The following types are distinguished :Business-to- business (B2B). Most of EC today is of this type. It includes the IOS transactions and electronic market transactions between organizations. Business-to-consumer (B2C). These are retailing transactions with individual shop-pers. The typical shopper at Amazon, com is a consumer ,or customer.Consumer-to-consumer (C2C). In this category consumer sells directly to consumers. Ex-amples are individuals selling in classified ads (e. g., www. classified 2000 . com ) and selling residential property ,cars, and so on . Advertising personal services on the Inter-net and selling the knowledge and expertise is another example of C2C. Several auction sites allow individuals to put items up for auctions finally, many individuals are using in-tranets and other organizational internal networks to advertise items for sale or services.Consumer-to-business (C2B). This category includes individuals who sell products or services to organizations, as well as individuals who seek sellers, interact with them , and conclude a transaction .Nonbusiness EC. An increased number of nonbusiness institutions such as academic institutions, not-for-profit organizations, religious organizations, social organizations, and government agencies are using various types of EC to reduce their expenses (e. g., improve purchasing) or to improve their operations and customer service.Intrabusiness (organizational)EC. In this category we include all internal organiza-tional activities, usually performed on intranets, which involve exchange of goods serv-ices, or information. Activities can range from selling corporate products to employees to online training and cost-reduction activities.Note that what we described as IOS is a part of B2B. Electronic markets, on the other hand, can be associated either with B2B or with B2C.Introduction and overviewThis article explains how a solution provider can help a small or medium business become an e-business. A fictional company serves as a case study of extending a simple Web presence to enable commerce, real-time collaboration, and partner exchange for small and medium businesses. The solution features products from the IBM Express Portfolio.IntroductionNo business, big or small, can ignore the Web these days. The decision to become an e-business can result from any number of challenges, including the need to adopt new technologies imposed by large customers who drive the companys business. In increasing numbers, small- and medium- sized companies find that they must meet the IT requirements of the bigger companies they supply, or lose business to competitors who have evolved into e-businesses. For example, some large retail firms (sometimes referred to as "gorillas") require their suppliers to comply with specific standards to meet or improve the retailers IT requirements. Other smaller businesses create their own challenges in their quest to wrest market share from their competitors.Regardless of the driving force, small and medium businesses must become e-businesses to remain competitive in spite of a unique set of technical challenges and demands. To meet these challenges, these businesses often look to solution providers and business partners to assist in the transformation. This, in turn, creates many market opportunities for service providers and business partners as more businesses join the ranks in the march toward acquiring e-business capability.This article is for solution developers of small-to-medium businesses, who could be in-house IT shops, services providers or business partners. It explains what you as a solution provider can do to help a small or medium business meet its goal of becoming an e-business. Our IBM Software Group System House eExchange team has developed a solution based on this scenario. Based on our market research, weve defined a hypothetical company called the Swish Swash Windshield Wiper Company. Using our services as a solution provider, well show how this company can establish an Internet presence and progressively extend its reach in the marketplace to serve its customers more effectively. This article and subsequent articles in this series illustrate how IBM products and solutions, in particular the IBM Express Portfolio of products, can help you create and evolve such a solution. Each subsequent article in this series will expand on the concepts discussed in this introduction to explain how you can enable a small or medium company for e-business.Small-to-medium business descriptionWhat are the characteristics of a small-to-medium business? We define a mid-market, small-to-medium business as a company with fewer than 1,000 employees. The typical company has been in business for 17 years and has between six and ten branch offices. It is located in a suburban office park and uses local solution providers to build and maintain its IT solutions.The number of IT staff for any business scales with the size of the company. On average, companies between 100 and 249 employees dedicate five staff members to IT-related projects. This number sometimes exceeds 20 in companies between 500 and 999 employees.Business valuesCompared to large enterprises, a smaller business may have a limited budget for building adaptive, information technology infrastructures. With fewer resources, it needs tools and solutions that work out of the box, with minimal additional services.The most important business objectives are reducing operating costs, improving process efficiency, and demonstrating quick return on investment. Solution development, customization, and deployment must be rapid, lowering the cost of services. Ease of installation and upgrade are important too, and unwanted features must be avoided to keep cost and complexity in check. The time required to implement such a solution should be measured in weeks and days, not months. At the same time, the solution needs to represent a competitive advantage.To help smaller companies attain these goals, solution providers look for features that enable easy installation and administration of their solutions. Products must be self-diagnosing and self-correcting in response to user, environmental, and internal errors. They must also provide simple upgrade paths for increasing functions and migrating to new releases. All of these attributes reduce the training, technical expertise, and time commitments required of the end users in the SMB.Business contextFor this article, weve chosen a fictional automobile windshield wiper company as a case study. Our company, the Swish Swash Windshield Wiper Company, is a medium-sized business with seven branch offices and 800 employees, including 19 IT staff members. Swish Swash has been in business for 15 years, selling products through mail-order catalog and at retail locations through a network of resellers who are business partners. Customers can obtain product information from the companys printed catalog and can purchase products from the business partners or place direct orders by mail, telephone, or fax. Several staff members maintain or interact with the IT system: An office manager, who administers information systems A business analyst, who maintains product information and monitors business results An order clerk, who enters customers orders A customer support representative, who takes telephone calls and responds to customers questions and concerns Figure 1 illustrates the interaction between the roles in the broader business context.Figure 1. Business context diagramThe Swish Swash Windshield Wiper Company wants to extend its business, enabling customers to browse catalogs and order online, while still maintaining a high level of customer service and interaction. At the same time, it want to connect with its suppliers and resellers electronically, integrating its back-end processes and sharing data with these business partners. Once this is accomplished, it wants to continually improve its site and capabilities to provide the best user experience for both customers and partners, and a competitive advantage for itself.Solution overviewAn infrastructure is the foundation of a business or organization, serving as the framework for internal and external communication, processes, and transactions. The infrastructures architecture determines how functional and extensible the system will be in meeting future requirements. Using a solid system infrastructure ensures a trusted, high-performance solution.Small business infrastructures must provide reliable, efficient communications with business partners, suppliers, and customers. They must also guarantee performance for critical, internal applications. Figure 2 represents the scenario topology for our e-business infrastructure. See Implementing the solution for definitions of each component.Figure 2. Solution topologyYou can benefit from a solution based on this topology if your business: Wants to extend its catalog presence to the Web Needs a scalable, highly available, secure environment for e-business Needs to integrate existing and new applications Wants to advertise retail products and information on the Web Needs innovation in electronic communication to facilitate faster response times and lower costs The scenario has four stages: Web presence Commerce Live chat Business-to-business partner In the first stage of the scenario, Web presence, we build the infrastructure for e-business. We assume the business has a limited Web presence or needs to make its existing presence dynamic to attract more customers. This stage lets customers easily find information about the business and contact it through a postal address, e-mail address, or telephone number. The infrastructure provides a strong, secure, reliable foundation on the path to becoming an e-business. It supports key industry standards such as HTML, HTTP, J2EE, XML, and Web services.In the second stage, commerce, we add e-commerce capability to the existing Web site, providing the buying experience expected by online customers. Customers can browse a catalog and view detailed product information, use a personalized, virtual shopping cart, and pay for purchases electronically. This stage provides a secure, reliable platform for conducting e-commerce, supports industry standards, and seamlessly integrates with existing back-end systems like inventory databases.In stage three, live chat, we extend the e-business with human interaction to give it more responsive, personal contact with its customers. When a customer has a question about a product or about how to complete a purchase, they can simply communicate with a customer support agent through an applet. Agents can immediately contact internal product experts or accounting personnel and give quick answers to customers. This instant messaging fulfills stringent security and availability requirements, and is easy for both customers and agents to use.Smaller businesses can also benefit by electronically connecting to suppliers and resellers. In stage four, business-to-business partner, we implement business process integration and data sharing among trading partners. This stage helps reduce integration costs and enables faster deployment of new processes and services. It assures reliable message delivery and provides heterogeneous, any-to-any connectivity through a standard API.Implementing the solutionEach stage in the solution requires a sequence of development activities to implement the Swish Swash solution. These development activities are described in this section. Web presenceTo enable the e-business Web site, we: Define and create a database used by the Web site to serve dynamically rendered content and graphics. Develop graphics such as page banners, business logos, buttons, animations or other special effects. Develop page content such as company, product, news, contact, and employment information. Develop the Web site by combining static text, graphics, and navigation and rendering dynamic content served from the database. Test and deploy the site. CommerceTo extend the Web site to support on-line transactions, we: Create the page layout and shopping flow based on a store sample. Create the catalog structure and add product information, including name, category, stock keeping unit (SKU) number, and image. Create a user directory for customer data and authentication. Configure the store for offline payments. The company processes payments through POS devices. Publish the store so that it can be viewed using a browser. Test and deploy the store. Live chatTo provide live chat capability and integrate real-time communication into the Web site, we: Modify the existing Web pages to add a feature (button, link, or "awareness" applet) that lets a customer request help from a customer service representative. Add a real-time collaboration server to the existing infrastructure. Test and deploy the collaboration application. Business-to-business partnerTo create a business-to-business gateway between the company and its resellers, and implement the required protocols, we: Install and configure the gateway. Establish business partner profiles. Set up document exchange protocols and security protocols. Optionally set up an audit log for viewing and tracking documents. Integrate existing applications to submit and receive catalogs and purchase orders via the gateway. Test and deploy the business-to-business gateway. We assume that the IT staff at Swish Swash Windshield Wiper is small in number, has no Java platform knowledge, and therefore hires a solution provider to build the company Web site. Our solution provider team performs the steps listed above and involves the IT staff at Swish Swash Windshield Wiper in deploying the solution to a production system and managing the deployed solution.The Swish Swash Windshield Wiper Companys existing IT infrastructure includes an intranet, e-mail, and Internet access for conducting company business. It uses packaged applications for HR management, order fulfillment, and inventory. The sales organization developed a simple database to maintain customer information.The solution includes components described in the following table. Refer to "Solution overview" for a diagram that shows relationships between these components.ComponentDescriptionWeb serverProvides a Web server (HTTP server) with a servlet redirector. Separating the Web server from the application serv