Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)is basically an application of IT in enterprises to maximize utility. To cover a large market or to expand business, most of the enterprises are offering online solutions or online sales facility to their customers. In that way they puts their business to a higher level of competition. Before enterprises bring the business operation into the new environment, the organization requires a detailed e-business plan to prepare itself fully in order to cope with the new challenge (Hohpe & Woolf, 2004). To achieve e-business, enterprise needs the help of technology to support its e-business operations. Enterprises will need to use some e-business applications to build such required information system framework. The decision to use such complex enterprise software is due to e-business architecture requirements which constitute implementation of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) to its vast network of information system.
Discussion
In the traditional business environment, business operating is a manual, time-consuming and labor-intensive process involving requests for quotation, purchase order submissions, order approval and confirmation, shipping, invoicing and payment. But with the help of Enterprise Application Integration, business can gather information more quickly at a relatively low cost. For example, 1800-flower Company provides a broad range of give products. The company’s information system collects and stores data on birthday and invitations, as well as a record of gifts send to specific recipients (Conrad, Hasselbring, Koschel & Tritsch, 2005). It maintains a customer information file holding all such data which alerts them of forthcoming events. at the appropriate times the company sends customized message to the customers with suggestion for flowers and presents. The company gains a world-wide reputation. Therefore, good Enterprise Application Integration fast the business operation and use resource more effective. Basket Company also involves similar business actives we discussed above, by equipping the Enterprise Application Integration, will greatly support business operation. Now the competition of basket market is very furious, it is not enough to improve only the product, we should impress the customers as a person who cares them more than their selves. To achieve the goal, we have to identify the trend of customer needs.
Enterprise Application Integration records all of the information on sales, purchases, and other financial processes that the business partakes in. The accounting information system keeps track of the costs associated with production and services. This data allows the enterprises to track resources and it shows the company how it is performing. The management department of the organization relies heavily on the Enterprise Application Integration. This system allows managers to achieve more production in less time. When the management information system is used properly, it can make an organization more productive. The management information system collects, processes, stores and disseminates data in the form of information needed to carry out the functions of management (Conrad, Hasselbring, Koschel & Tritsch, 2005). a Enterprise Application Integration breaks down and records data so that managers can learn from the material. This helps the managers makes sale forecasts and helps them to make better decisions. Enterprise Application Integration also allows the marketing department to improve their effectiveness. The main goal of marketing is to encourage customers to purchase the organization’s products and services by delivering value.
The Internet has shown a lot of people the power of distributed computing, and the organizations have put much investment into harnessing the power of network. although HTTP and HTML make it easier to access remote web pages for consumers, they do not simply the integration of business systems (Conrad, Hasselbring, Koschel & Tritsch, 2005). What was required was a way to share data and software services across the Internet.
The sharing of data is presented by XML (Extensive Markup Language), which is a sophisticated and general-purpose version of HTML. This allows any kinds of data to be presented in an easy and portable way. By surrounding data with tags that indicate its meaning, XML text is self-describing and can be easily manipulated and transformed (Ruh, Maginnis & Brown, 2001). Organization implements Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) within its e-Business to share data and link applications to support the flow of information across multiple business units and IT systems. Services provide a solution to B2B integration issues. Before integrating was difficult, it required both a compatible invocation and compatible data. Web services use SOaP, XML, XSLT to provide an invocation and data interchange framework.
Enterprise application Model in E-commerce
Enterprise’s business model is categorized as click and mortar model. Basically it is dealing with business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) markets. It has both online and offline presence to distribute the products. Enterprise’s main website (like www.enterprise.com) has interface content and it is both informative and transactional-enabled.
Customers can obtain all kinds of information online regarding enterprise’s product and services. It is equipped with online computer knowledge databases and online customer service central to assist customers in troubleshooting certain computer products or acquiring basic knowledge on computing (Miller, Vandome & McBrewster, 2009).
B2C Market
There are two ways where customers are able to purchase enterprise’s product. Enterprises allows customers to purchase product online and then pick up at the nearest authorized store or request for direct delivery to the customer’s door step with extra delivery fee charges. another way of purchasing is to approach the dealer’s physical store to make the purchase directly for a desired customized product via web orders by dealers (Miller, Vandome & McBrewster, 2009). all of the ordered products which are made this way are then distributed to the authorized dealer and the purchasing process will be handled by them on behalf of the customer while enterprise is only responsible for product installation. Enterprise also establishes logistic and distribution alliances which assist enterprise in delivering the finished product to the customers.
B2B Market
Basically, the B2B market is very similar with the B2C market. The major difference is that the target markets are made up of business corporations and services acquired includes network design solutions which is done through contracting. The payment method used for B2B is also slightly different from that of B2C. after adopting the EAI for e-commerce, the existing authorized distributors are retained to avoid channel conflict without the need of disintermediation (Banaszak & Matuszek, 2007). Enterprise aims to achieve the No.1 worth in customers’ mind. Images and brand position should be centered in offering the lowest price with the good quality products. By adopting and implementing appropriate application such as Enterprise Application Integration and other applications like SCM and ERP, these applications help to streamline enterprises activities and reduce cost.
In competitive electronic and global market, enterprises aims to provide superior customer services with its fast, convenience, reliable and comprehensive customer services. Strategic short customer service training courses are provided to their customer service staff to ensure that they treat customers with respect, courtesy and friendliness. We have online and offline customer service centers to provide equal and easy access to our services at a time, place and channel that suits the customer.
When customers have any enquiry regarding the product or services, they can approach us at 24 hour on-site service central for online diagnostics, remedial, troubleshooting and preventive maintenance (Conrad, Hasselbring, Koschel & Tritsch, 2005).
Web-Services and EAI In The Future
Web Services have spread rapidly and globally. according to “Web Service Market 2004-2008”, fifty-two percent of web services deployments have been done in United States, thirty-nine percent in Europe, six percent in asia Pacific and three percent for the rest of the world (Miller, Vandome & McBrewster, 2009). a technology market firm Radicati shows the growing popularity of web services. Researcher in the firm expects that sales would reach to 6.2 billion US dollars in 2008. Radicati has defined the market which includes software tools, and products related to management, security. The main software vendors, such as IBM, Microsoft Corp, Sun, have developed products in supporting web services, which have been a key to driving adoption.
In particular, Web Services deployments have been involved in two major fields: EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) B2B – Business partner integration and secure exchange information with particular partner without using a proprietary wayFor example, the world top auction web site eBay, has been able to use web service to grow both acquisition and third party development efforts, transforming a web site into a web platform (Conrad, Hasselbring, Koschel & Tritsch, 2005). Over a billion web services requests served per month and approximately 40% of eBay’s listings are generated by web services requests.
Web services are self-contained, modular applications that can be described, published, located, and invoked over a network, generally, the World Wide Web (Miller, Vandome & McBrewster, 2009). a web service is programmable application logic, accessible using standard Internet protocols.”In this paper, first a brief overview of web service will be discussed. Then all technologies and security within web services are concerned. Next part will be web services adoption. Two examples will be discussed which are eBay and Paypal. Finally, future development and conclusion will be presented.
Conclusion
Over the past a few years, web services have become more and more popular with application developers. This technology provides a significant way for business to communicate with each other. Web services are different from the traditional Server-Client model, such as a web page system web server, they do not provide the user with GUI (Graphic User Interface). However, web services use a programmatic interface to share business logic, data and processes across a network. Then application developers can be able to add the web services to a GUI e.g. web page, which will provide some specific functions to users (Banaszak & Matuszek, 2007).
Web services means that distributed applications will be assembled from a web of HTML pages. Most of distributed applications will be built out of web services; no matter they are developed to a single machine, a organization intranet or the Internet.
Distributed computing model is one of web services’ main features. This allows a communication between two different applications. For instance, one purchasing system might need to communicate with an inventory application, in order to check stock availability. Because of this functionality, web services have grown in popularity and being used to improve business processes. It is also called as the next evolution of the web (Conrad, Hasselbring, Koschel & Tritsch, 2005). In current competitive world, customers want form enterprises to treat them like they are very important person so they avoid telling their information which they already provided. So business starts from anticipating their needs to their final satisfaction. During this process, enterprises needs customer’s information many times so Enterprise Application Integration technology helps to maintain their information and helps enterprises in many ways to grow their business. Many times customer has to contact different departments for their work and they do not like to provide their required information that they have already provided to previous departments. So by proper Enterprise Application Integration, customer doesn’t need to provide their information many times. It saves customer’s and enterprise’s time and this is one of the best ways to overcome the dislikes of customer.
Due to Enterprise Application Integration, enterprises enjoy advantages of information which they already know. When customer comes back, the sales agent has all information about customer like which product he has bought, so sales agent treats him in the same way. Enterprise Application Integration also helps a lot to bankers, for example, if a customer requests bank to lease a car. Sales agent can retrieve its all past data about previous payments. They can track that either particular customer paid on time or not so they can easily treat customer.