VALUE-CHAIN MODELING IN E-COMMERCE SYSTEMS
VALUE-CHAIN MODELING IN E-COMMERCE SYSTEMS

Summary/Abstract: Currently, e-business and e-commerce systems became standard tools in the business environment. As we can see in practice and literature, current trend in e-business and e-commerce, is to develop systems enabled to manage and coordinate (and help the managers to manage) the business and production operations. Companies' managers increasingly need new methods and tools that can help them in their decision-making. In general, managements can make right decisions only in case they have current and adequate information. In addition, managers have to get all information in time, and decision-making processes should be realized quickly and under the strong thumb of a competitive environment. It also applies in the context of management of e-business and e-commerce systems. One of basic features of efficient e-commerce is correct definitions and descriptions of all internal and external processes of the supplier. All of them are targeted to customers´ needs and requirements. The optimal and most exact way how to obtain and find optimal solution of e-commerce system and its process structure is modeling and simulation. Contrarily to most approaches using process-oriented modeling, this paper presents the value-chain-oriented modeling approach. Value chain model and its transformation into control loop is shortly presented as a base for simulation. The closing discussion outlines next research directions. The aim of this paper is to outline value chain approach to modeling in e-commerce systems. First, we present an e-commerce system as a subject of our research. Next the role of modeling at the design level and its’ role in the decision support is discussed. After that, we shortly characterize the two main business modeling perspectives, namely the process-oriented and value-chain-oriented approach. Section 4 deals with an outline of generic e-commerce model based on value chain modeling. The last sections include simulation model, model results, and closing remarks.

• Details
• Contents