Building an Infrastructure to Manage Electronic Services

For an organization to be able to deliver electronic services efficiently and professionally requires a “service infrastructure” including organizational solutions for logistics and customer (citizen) interactions. This chapter reviews a study covering three years of efforts by nine cities in eight European countries in developing such solutions. Generally, Web projects were seen as technical projects; though in fact issues pertaining to users and organization were most important, they were largely neglected. We found 12 distinct “challenges,” situations where the setting changed and the process was found in a stage of improvisation until new stability was achieved. The challenges fall into four categories, concerning users (4 challenges), organization (6), economy (1) and technology (1). We found that the overall process was largely unstructured and improvised. Stabilizing factors were central government policies (national, European Union), the general technical development, market demands and a cadre of Web agents” fostered within the organizations over years of Web projects. There was typically a missing infrastructure link, a body competent of managing the whole process of bundling services from different service providers and publishing them in a coherent fashion, providing support to service providers during the process of inventing, refining and evaluating services, improving operations and conducting the necessary but typically ignored activities of analysis of service quality and policy making. Our conclusion is that there is a great lack of strategic leadership in the field of electronic services in local governments in Europe. This is a big problem considering the importance of that sector and the challenges it is facing.

Service Qualtiy in the Virtual World

The Internet has taken globalization of the marketplace from hyperbole to present-day reality. In this marketplace, information technology can be used to create and sustain market share. One such technology is the extranet. Extranets are increasingly being used to add value through business-to-business information sharing and transaction handling in a secure environment. Yet there is limited research into perceptions of service quality in Web-based Internet environments such as extranets. In this chapter we relate the literature on services and service quality to the developing literature on extranets. Five dimensions of service quality from the physical world are applied to the virtual world of commerce. It is concluded that dimensions of quality in human-to-human interactions may also apply to human-to-computer interactions, but that the factors which contribute to each dimension may differ.

Organizational Intranets

This chapter highlights some key implementation challenges associated with the introduction of intranet technology. Based on the case we will argue for a different managerial mindset, given the nature of intranet technology itself and context-specific issues. In light of this mindset, we offer intranet managers a way forward and compare our advice against some recent intranet research findings. Finally we will examine some current trends and also discuss avenues that we believe warrant further research attention.

M-Commerce

In the next few years, we are likely to see dramatically improved wireless communication technologies and small handheld access devices (HADs) such as Internet-enabled cellphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). These converging trends open new possibilities for electronic commerce. These new possibilities often are discussed under the banner of m-commerce or mobile electronic commerce. This chapter looks at device trends, wireless communication trends, potential applications and potential problems in m-commerce.

ERP + E-Business = A New Vision of Enterprise System

E-business has changed the definition of enterprise systems. Beyond the core business functions that ERP has traditionally focused on, e-business pushes the ERP from the inside core of the companies to the network edge. Companies are realizing that the most challenging part of e-business initiatives is not in developing a Web storefront but in extending ERP to accomplish business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) solutions. A new extended enterprise system emerges by integrating ERP with e-business, which creates business that is more agile, more focused and more competitive than traditionally structured business and tight B2B connections. With the help of the componentization concept, a seamless, end-to-end flow of information and process across the value chain of companies becomes realistic.

Security

Security is one of the fastest-growing concerns in e-commerce and intranets. This chapter describes a number of attacks that hackers may attempt against companies and the methods used to combat each attack. The chapter also describes integrated security systems (ISSs), which automatically secure communication between two parties, protecting them from a variety of network attacks. Finally, the chapter describes potential risks from lawsuits if a company fails to adequately secure its systems and losses result.

Effect of Hypertext and Animation on Learning

The availability of hypertext and animation has a promising impact on education. With an increasing number of online courses and degrees offered through the Internet and a rapidly increasing enrollment in such courses, it is important to assess and understand how the use of Web-based features can affect or contribute toward learning. In this research, we propose a model to study the effect of hypertext and animation on online learning.

Web-based Instruction in Organizations

Many organizations are currently implementing Web-based instruction (WBI). Approaches to WBI vary according to the type of organization as well as the objectives to be accomplished. Companies interested in retraining the workforce and teaching employees new skills are mostly concerned with effective information-delivery approaches. Organizations focusing on the implementation of lifelong learning and education—such as educational institutions—are increasingly moving away from mere information-delivery approaches (posting on-line syllabi and lecture notes) to incorporating effective interaction-based approaches (utilizing discussions and virtual rooms). Both approaches to WBI are important to accomplish long-term versus short-term goals, as well as conceptualization versus task-oriented outcomes. This chapter provides an overview of teaching methods focusing primarily on strategies adopted by educational institutions implementing WBI.

From Web Log to Data Warehouse

Data warehousing is an emerging technology that greatly extends the capabilities of relational databases specifically in the analysis of very large sets of time-oriented data. The emergence of data warehousing has been somewhat eclipsed by the simultaneous emergence of Web technologies. However, Web technologies and data warehousing have some natural synergies that are just now being recognized. First, Web technologies make data warehouse data more easily available to a much wider variety of users both internally and externally. Since the value of data is directly related to its availability for exploitation, Internets and intranets help increase the value of the data in the warehouse. Second, data warehouse technologies can be used to analyze traffic to a Web site in a wide variety of ways in order to make the Web site more effective. This chapter will focus on the latter of these synergies and show, through an evolving example, how a simple data set from the Web log can be enhanced, in a step-wise fashion, into a full-fledged market research data warehouse.

Managing Web Site Performance and Reliability

An organization’s e-commerce strategies either represent their entire existence for an Internet-only business or a significant investment by a traditional business. Competition on the Internet has resulted in many sites where a shopper can find the same goods and services. The differentiator for the market leader in a particular e-business is a positive shopping experience for the customer, which includes providing a reliable and high-performance Web site. This chapter describes a number of approaches to building reliable and high-performance Web sites.