The traditional scheme of planning resources of the enterprises is currently becoming a thing of the past, with the new model – so-called collaborative commerce (c-commerce). The systems of planning the resources of the enterprise (enterprise resource planning – ERP) were the original center of the universe of automating business processes, around which there were control systems of interaction with customers (customer relationship management – CRM) and control systems of logistical chains (supply chain management – SCM). However, with the advent of new electronic market space, SCM and CRM will get rid of the subordinated role and will act on equal with ERP. In the traditional model of business where the system of planning the resources of the enterprise had the central role, the basic emphasis is put on the productivity of users. Henceforth, a more mobile interactive market where the companies can co-operate with employees, consumers, shareholders, supply chains, and suppliers within the limits of the global information environment is created.
Another approach of facilitating the interactions within the business, the framework is corporate portals, or Enterprise Information Portal – EIP. A corporate portal is a set of applications that allows the company to open and offer the information stored which allow the companies to open the information stored within and outside of the organization, and to give each user a uniform point of access to the information intended only for himher, which is necessary for making administrative decisions, i.e. direct use of the acquired technologies of public information portals in the corporate purposes. In outlining the relation between corporate portal and c-commerce, the main point of interaction that should be mentioned is the way the corporate portal can be used in collaborative commerce.
In that sense, the most effective classifications of a corporate portal for collaborative commerce are Enterprise Collaboration Portal, Enterprise Application Portal, and Enterprise Knowledge Portal. The classification based on purpose would be Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Employee (B2E).
Being focused on the company, corporate portals supply employees with the mechanism of maintaining the records of their own official duties and administrative relations with the employer. Modern corporate portals allow employees to manage teamwork and to get access to the information of the status by using a uniform interface. This data is possible to be received, using the usual desktop computer, a remote computer, portable devices, and, potentially, interactive voice response.
The companies should provide the initiations ofc-commerce in tandem with the portal developers. In that sense, the spectrum of issues that commercial projects are solving, e.g. the integration with existent systems of control, are not limited to representative integration. At the same time, the purposes, technical questions, and c-commerce should be considered together in order to minimize integration issues and maximize the interaction between them.
Accordingly, the integration of corporate portal and c-commerce can reduce costs providing a more efficient workplace avoiding the main shortcomings ofc-commerce, i.e. technical limitations and security concerns.
References
FIRESTONE, J. M. (2005) DEFINING THE ENTERPRISE INFORMATION PORTAL. DStar. Web.
HEISTERBERG, R. (2002) C-Commerce: Strategies, Architectures, & Implementation Roadmaps. Rod Heisterberg Associates, LLC. Web.
TURBAN, E., KING, D., VIEHLAND, D. & LEE, J. K. (2007) Electronic Commerce 2008: A Managerial Perspective, Pearson Prentice Hall.