Post#4 Supply Chain Management

Part A
FedEx Global Supply Chain Services offer various services turn supply chain management into a competitive strategy. Individual companies can outsource these services to resolve their logistic issues.

1) Critical Inventory Logistics
FedEx Critical Inventory Logistics is a comprehensive, end-to-end solution designed to optimize the management of your critical inventory and service parts distribution and returns process. It incorporates a hub-based central stocking location (CSL) and a global network of forwarding stocking locations (FSLs) integrated through extensive information capabilities.


2) Fulfillment Services
FedEx Fulfillment Services is a turnkey, modular, and scalable solution that, when integrated in your operations, provide you an end-to-end, supply chain offering designed and configured to meet your specific needs.


3) Transportation Management
FedEx Transportation Management is an outsourced solution that offers you end-to-end transportation management: optimized, multi-modal, and door-to-door. It leverages the FedEx family of companies (along with a select group of core carriers) to help you improve operational efficiencies and customer service.




4) Healthcare Shared Network
FedEx Healthcare Shared Network offers a premium, time-definite, temperature controlled delivery service to the pharmaceutical and diagnostics product industries. It operates within the US as a closed-loop network with chain of custody reporting processes and exclusive dock operators moving under a detailed schedule to and from strategically placed cross docks.

All the supply chain management programs are carefully selected matched to the requirements of individial business to gain improved supply chain performance. Services are designed to optimize availability and delivery of critical inventory and components through the network of forward stocking locations and central warehouses , to transportation management and dock services. FedEx Global Supply Chain Services supports to strengthen custodial control and optimize use of available transportation alternatives.


FedEx Global Supply Chain Services. 2009. Portfolio of Services. [Online] Available at: http://www.fedex.com/us/supplychain/services/
[Accessed 13 March 2009]


Part B
Fedex provides a numbers of systems which allows its customers to keep track on their orders.

1) Critical Inventory Logistics Login
To optimize the fulfillment and delivery of your time-sensitive parts and devices.

2) Transportation Management Order Administration
To enter, modify or cancel order information

3) Fulfillment Services Order Administration
To enter order information, view orders, inventory and shipment, status/details.

Its technology platform offers features such as:

Order administration – efficiently manage the processes associated with order fulfillment and transportation

Real time visibility – provides a view into inventory at rest and in motion throughout the supply chain

Connectivity – provides multiple access points to key members of your supply chain

FedEx Global Supply Chain Services. 2009. Online Tools. 2009. [Online]
http://www.fedex.com/us/supplychain/onlinetools/
[Accessed 13 March 2009]

Post # 5 Information Security & Ethical

Nowadays, more companies like the banks and telecommunication companies are violating privacy or ethical rights without realizing it.

First of all, we talk about why the bank may violate these. Recently, everyone is talking about Lehman Brothers. Some is wondering if this bank has violated customers’ privacy or not. The bank contains all the customers’ information, including their financial and personal one. Because of having this information, the bank uses these to cross sell the customers some investment product. In this circumstance, the bank may violate the privacy right.

To avoid violating the privacy, we have some suggestions. The bank can divide into two parts. One part is for the deposit, such as deposit or withdrawn money, exchange money etc. Another part is for the investment, including the shock or the fund. Each part is separated. The staff of the deposit department cannot see the record of investment. Another departments' staff cannot see the customers deposit record. And thus, the risk of violating the privacy can be minimized.

"六成中產指銀行侵私隱." Hong Kong Daily News 2009 22 Mar 2009 .

Moreover, the telecommunication company also may violate the privacy. There is a trend of selling products through telephone. By the considering of the customers, it may be disturbed. So customers can request opt-out service which will not get the phone selling again. But the staff of the telecommunication company will also call those having opt-out service customers. It will violate the privacy.

To prevent these, the company has to train their staff well. Before they have a phone selling, they need to check whether the customers having opt-out service or not. Let their staff know how important of the opt-out service.

"Complaint & Enquiry Cases." Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data 17jan2007 22 Mar 2009 .

As Gmail of Google, they just facing virus problem resulting their user data sharing to the public without user agreement. As a matter of fact , company really necessary to well protect their computer system with proper software to avoid violating privacy.

information from the 543th of Hitech magazine

Post #3 part 2 & 3 - OpenBravo ERP

Answer of post #3 : part 2 & 3
Different modules within OpenBravo ERP
Accept/Enter order and Order Acknowledgement : we can find these process from Sales Management module.

Purcahse Material & Receipt Material : we can find these process from Production Management module.

Production : we can find this process from Production Management module.

Packing & Shipping : we can find these process from Sales Management.

Invocing and Collection : we can also find these 2 process from Sales Management/transactions module.

Answer of post #3 : part 3

Sales, Merchanising and Account departments are requested to coordinate from start to finish of the Order-to-Cash business process. OpenBravo software makes each department working together from same platform, both departments have real-time information to benift company more efficient. According to an analysis of different module from OpenBravo, it is easier for the senior management level has clear report on each process stage, OpenBravo can serve as the foundation for decision support systems.

Post #3 Part 1 Decision Support System

Answer of question 1 : Decision Support System

Sample A : Break-even Calculator

Break-even Calculator is a very good supporting system for company easily to find out their break even unit price. You are only requested to input an variable unit cost, fixed cost, expected unit sales and price per unit, the calculator will be showed to you the tatl variable costs, all cost, total revenue and profit immediately. Also, a clear break-even unit and chart will be presented in front of you. This complement will help the Managerial Level on Budget preparation, break even analysis, setting price levels, targeting optimal variable/fixed cost combinations and determing the finanical attractiveness of different strategic options.

Sample B : Hong Kong Yellow Pages Online Map
There is a page call "Census Map", it is a very useful page for a user who would like to form a new company or shop while their product or service to be applied for specific customers. You just requested to click your ideal community demographics, the web already gather the data of the community population, age, households, marital status, income, education level and living quarters. Strategic planner has these useful data, it can help them to make more proper decision (such as company location, product or service price setting or service schedule etc) for their business.

Post #2 - Grid Reports

Grid Report #1

Grid Report #2

Grid Report #3

Post #2 Online analytical processing (OLAP)

Answer of post #2

Grid Report #1 : Internet Sales Amount by Product by Date by Customer

Content of grid report : it shows the internet sales amount of Bikes, Accessories and Clothing from the Customers in United States from year 2002 to 2005.

Insights of report : from the report, we can find the product category of Accessories and Clothing has been added from year 2003. Also, their Internet Sales Amount has been sharply increased from in year 2004. Although the sales was deeply dropped in year 2005, but from the report, we can easily find out that all categories are falling in same direction, it means that there is an normal economic status.

Grid Report #2 : Internet Gross Profit Margin and Reseller Gross Profit Margin by Date by Product by Customer

Content of grid report : it shows the profit margin comprison between different sales channel of Accessories and Clothing between year 2004 to 2005 from France and Canada customer. It is cleary showing that internet gross profit margin of accessories and clothing from both customer is 40.97% higher than reseller gross profit in these 2 years.
On the other hand, both profit margin of accessoreis is higher than clothing.

Insights of report : according to the report, we can find out 2 important issues which company has more clear direction for their business development and investment. Internet selling really save much cost and overhead resulting very good gross profit margin when compare with sales channel of resller. An other issue is that category of Accessories is more profitable than clothing, company may consider to develop and invest more similar categories in future business.

Grid Report #3 : Internet Sales Amount by Date by Product by Customer

Content of grid report : US$2,140,388.50 is the total internet sales amount from United Kingdom customer in year 2004. The report showing us a sales amount breakdown by 7 different colors, it does not difficult to find that colour Black is the most favorable color for UK customer and the 2nd priority is col Yellow, sales amount of these 2 cols already over 50% from the total while col white only sold US$548.39 (less than 0.1%)

Insights of report : according to the figure of report, not only find out which are the favorable colors of UK customer, but also knowing their buying behavior through internet. It's help company to do their further decision or forecast of purchasing for next seaons.

Benefits of users to query a data warehouse in the form of an OLAP cube through their Web browser :
1. User can interact with OLAP cubes through a Web or desktop user interface, so they can run queries and print reports interactively.
2. Easily for different department to take their useful data by OLAP cubes for data analysis.
3. Easy for management to have clearly direction to make further decision, such as above grid report #2, management can take away the unprofitable category to avoid company loss and reallocate their resource for other profitable category with proper way of development.
4. Save manpower to process different complicated grid report.
5. Easy handling.
6. Simply layout from large amounts of data.

Post #1 Internet Marketing tools and technologies

ANSWER OF POST #1

All of the following articles are internet marketing tools and technologies. Internet marketing has been described simply as 'the application of the Internet and related digital technologies to achieve marketing objectives'. Using digital technologies to help sell your goods or services. 24-hour global reach, lower cost, trakable and measurable results, personalizd/one-to-one marketing, more interesting campaigns, seamless experience. In practice, internet-based marketing will include the use of a company website in conjunction with promotional techniques such as banner advertising, direct e-mail and links or services from other websites to acquire new customers and prodide services to exisiting customers that help develop the customer relationship. Here are the good examples which using those marketing tools and technologies with more effectiveness for their company business.

Blog :
A blog is a website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. extract from -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Recently many organisations also make good use of this tool to create a platform for viewers to discuss and share thoughts and ideas. They may also invites some critics, experts, celerities or politicans to write on their blog in order to make "noise".
Example -
http://blog.mingpao.com/cfm/index.cfm
http://artiste.tvb.com/?tab=blog&gender=all

Interactive advertisement :
Nowadays it is not difficult to find examples of interactive advertisement with the aid of fast growing information technology.
There are various types of interactive advertising Via Internet ~ Banner ads ~ Pop-up ads ~ Online sponsorship/ Affiliates
The web can be distinguished by the potential user interactivity. The Internet enables advertisers to track responses which can serve as direct advertising and communciation channels with their existing/ potential customers through editing their web content.
Via cell phone ~ SMS ~ MMS
The distinctive characteristics of mobile media make them in some ways more interactive that the Internet. The small size of mobile devices represents that customers carry them all the times. Owing to their personl identity, mobile media are potentially well suited to provide service that are personalised based on the user's preference.
Such as ADIDAS, we can find their Banner ads from http://www.yahoo.com.hk/

Search engine : http://www.yahoo.com/
(Yahoo! is one of the famous search engine in the world. The two founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, were Ph.D. candidates in lectrical Engineering at Stanford University when they began building their guide to the web in February 1994. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Jerry and David insist they selected it because they liked the genera definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth."
Jerry and David soon found that they weren't alone in wanting a single place to find usful websites. Soon hundreds of people were accessing their guide from well beyond their Stanford trailer. World Internet community. Yahoo! celebrated its first million-hit day in the fall of 1994, translating to almost 100,000 unique visitors.
From these humble beginnings, Yahoo! has grown into the world's most essential Internet service for consumers and businesses. A leading provider of comprehensive online products and services worldwide, Yahoo! is the number one Internet brand and the most trafficked online destination. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Yahoo!'s global network includes 25 world properties and is available in 13 languages. They provides free website service, free blogger set up and e-mail set up to attract worldwide user registration. Have huge amount of users, Yahoo! attracts many different customers putting their on-line advertising through Yahoo! search engine.
Yahoo! is well-positioned for the future with innovative thinking, growing revenues, nearly ten thousand talented employees worldwide and new opportunities every day.)

Online partnerships or affiliate marketing : http://www.ebay.com.hk/
(eBay was born over Labor Day weekend in 1995, when Pierre Omidyar, a computer programmer, wrote the code for an auction website that he ran from his home computer. eBay provides an open trading platform where the market determines the value of items that are sold. Since its initial public offering in 1998, the company has continued to innovate and connect people - and not just through its marketplaces. Two critical acquisitions have made eBay Inc. a global leader in online payments and communications as well.
PayPal enables any individual or business with an email address to securely, easily and quickly send and receive payments online
eBay has online partners covering 39 markets and including 20 categories on their website, including U.S., and approximately 84 million active users worldwide. eBay not only set up a platform to let her worldwide partners for "free trading" but also has eBay Feedback to let her partners posting their needs and wants for further satisfaction. eBay feedback is each user's reputation on eBay. 2-way communication can glow up relationship between e-bay and all of her online partners. Besides eBay feedback, e-Bay also concerns users' Protection and Safety during online trading, e-Bay protection, e-Bay Toolbar with Account Guard and eBay Security Centre are also the main issues for e-Bay becomes the world's largest online marketplace.
In 2007, the total value of sold items on eBay's trading platforms was nearly US$60 billion. This means that eBa users worldwide trade more than $1900 worth of goods on the site every second. Has a hugh data from eBay online arketplace, analysis market trend and customer behavior by the measure of each visitor clicks on a link, this is also a very important and valuable assess for e-bay to develop their future internet business.)

RSS feeds :

RSS means Really Simple Syndication. It provides a standard way for content publishers to distribute updates on their web sites through a list of notifications. It is a convenient way to contact between a company and the customers. Through the RSS feeds, you can update from multiple websites without having to go from one site to another. When you add the RSS feeds, it will send the news to you without going to their site. It becomes more and more popular for not only many company but also the Government. http://www.gov.hk/tc/about/rss.htm
After you added this RSS feeds to your blog or site, you can know the update news of the government. Nowadays, there are many types of RSS feeds in the internet e.g. news, weather, ever the Mark Six.

For the company, it is a good communication with the customers. Throguh the RSS feeds, customers can know what new product or new promotion the company provided.

Social networking : http://www.facebook.com/

In the pass, content of webs are only built by the owners of the webs themselves. But nowadays, most of the popular webs are with content built by the users.

People can share their opinions, photos, video, games, and then make friends, or even bid buy transactions. It won’t restricted by time & place by using the web. All these are reflecting the new way of their social networking. One of a good examples is Facebook.

“Facebook is a social networking website that allows people to communicate with their friends and exchange information. Launched on February 4, 2004. Initially the membership was restricted to students of Harvard College. It was subsequently expanded to other Boston area schools within two months. Many individual universities were added in rapid succession over the next year. Eventually, people with a university email address from institutions across the globe were eligible to join. Networks were then initiated for high schools and some large companies. Since September 11, 2006, it has been made available to any email address user who inputs a certain age range. Users can select to join one or more participating networks, such as a high school, place of employment, or geographic region. As of July 2007, the website had the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites with over 34 million active members worldwide (also from non-collegiate networks)."

Ref : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

Gadgets : www.google.com/ig/directory
https://www.hsbc.com.hk/1/2/special/gadget/igoogle

Gadgets is a mini-application, it can apply to all web-page and enrich it’s content. It is helpful no matter to work (schedule, exchange rate, calendar), to work (calendar, translation), or kill time (news, blogs, games)...etc. You might add gadgets to your home-page, or add to your desk top.

By using gadgets, users will find the web-page more interesting, more user-friendly & more personal. E.g. you can create weather gadgets, calculator and horoscope….

To company, by providing gadgets can keep customers in touch with real time information. HKBS has launched a desktop gadget, it provides exchange rate, Heng Seng Index, stock prices and personal account details… all these are helping them to provide a more convenience & efficiency service, to their wider business target. Customers do not have to come in person but can operate these transactions on net It is saving customers’ time, and saving bank cost in opening branch & hiring staffs.