Article : Why E-Business Is Now Everyone's Business

The internet has completely reshaped customer relationships. The transformation began with the dot-com boom, which spawned a new type of company whose entire business model was predicated on Web acceptance and usage. These companies -- Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) -- took advantage of the Web in all aspects of their business. Soon, traditional "brick-and-mortar" enterprises realized that to survive, they too had to satisfy customer expectations to procure goods and services over the Internet.

Out of this, the traditional differentiation between B2C and B2B emerged. B2B sales models were complex. They needed to incorporate negotiated contracts, special pricing and distribution or channel partners and typically involved multiple buyers from the same company. B2C companies, on the other hand, were more consumer or end-user focused. They had to offer features such as ratings, reviews, communities of interest and promotions.

Converging Worlds

For some time, the differentiation existed. Today, however, in this new Internet world, the line between B2C and B2B e-Business is blurring. Influenced by the emergence of Web 2.0, where people collaborate and share information online in ways previously unavailable, B2B buyers increasingly expect B2C-like personalized experiences, creating a whole new challenge for B2B providers.

Faced with the demand for greater personalization, B2B e-Business initiatives must now offer features in their customer and partner transactions that were once the domain of B2C offerings.

At the same time B2B buyers want a new, more personal experience, B2C companies are looking to extend their sales models to new as well as existing markets. Like their B2B counterparts, they need to involve multiple suppliers. The net effect is that B2C initiatives require the complex guided selling, configuration and order management capabilities traditionally found in B2B business.

The convergence of B2C and B2B has created a new "Business-to-Everyone" or B2E paradigm where providing consumers with a unique and personalized experience with quick and easy access to the right products and services is the rule, not the exception. B2E recognizes that in an increasingly commoditized product world, more and more customers make buying choices based on a company's ability to satisfy their particular needs; provide complete solutions, which sometimes include multiple parties; and offer the right pricing.

The Buying Experience

Consider a leading wireless service provider. They recently launched an e-Business solution with enhanced guided selling and configuration based on business rules that drive product and service options. In an environment characteristic of the B2B world, both business and consumer customers can select equipment from a huge catalog of options and compare as many as five different packages that include phones, service agreements, pricing and the cost to add more lines. The "experience" also includes guidance on which plans best suit customers' needs and suggestions about accessories to buy immediately, at a later visit to the site or by contacting the call center. Integration between call center reps and the Web site visit provides a unified experience throughout the customer relationship.

In the B2E world of Web sales, self-service needs to enable potential buyers to quickly and easily find, configure and purchase the right products and services at the right price and be easily searchable and intuitive. It must be transactional, capturing, distributing and fulfilling orders promptly and accurately and providing status and details on demand as needed during the fulfillment process.

B2E initiatives also must integrate with traditional selling processes in order to fully satisfy customers' needs. Customers need to be confident that a Web self-service interaction will allow them to call the sales representative for help if necessary to complete the transaction and then check the status of an order any way they choose -- over the phone, via a call center or in person.

Equally important, if channel partners, distributors and resellers are part of the sales model, the automated sales experience must synchronize with them. In order to accomplish this, some companies establish personalized storefronts and catalogs with specific pricing for their partners to ensure their participation as the sales process becomes automated.

Furthermore, when a company has multiple products and services, they need a flexible platform that enables them to offer multi-divisional products/solutions. As such, the platform also must be able to integrate into multiple back-end systems.

Enabling Customers

A leading systems integrator that provides innovative technology and supply chain solutions to the commercial, government and telecom sectors needed an e-Business solution to provide major accounts with their own storefronts, where they purchase pre-approved, standardized products.

Customers find the products they need from the integrator's 600,000-item catalog and also generate quotes, place and change orders, and view their business transaction with the company. Also, because of its e-Business solution, the integrator has been able to expand its offering beyond IT products into selling office supplies and business equipment. Characteristic of the B2C world, the new e-Business solution enables customers to get rich product information, including reviews and comparisons, through an online interface.

While the merger of B2C and B2B will have a powerful impact on business, it will not erase the differences that exist among different markets. Consumer product companies, by their very nature, must be able to market to large audiences and have simplicity in their B2C offerings.

Manufacturers typically need to support customer-specific purchasing processes and negotiated pricing agreements, and manufacturers and high technology companies have complex sales processes. They not only offer configure-to-order products and services as well as replacement parts, they often sell to both business and consumer users.

Still, the key is that sameness exists in the need for companies to provide their customers with product and service catalogs and offerings, pricing, promotions, order management, fulfillment and service. A B2E e-Business solution must support all these capabilities.

The Internet has raised the bar on consumer expectations. Companies who understand this will succeed, and in turn, provide a Web experience that meets the unique preferences of each of their customers whether they are B2C or B2B.


resources :  http://www.technewsworld.com/story/54230.html?welcome=1218322741

Article : Why is Wireless Security Important in the Home?

Wireless security is important in the home for the same reasons why it is important in corporations. If you have an unsecured wireless network in your home, anyone in close proximity can spy on your online activities. Depending on how your home network is configured, someone could even gain full access to your computer’s hard drive over an unsecured wireless network.

Even if no one is around that wants to spy on you or perform some malicious action against you, your neighbors could sponge off of your Internet connection. This would not only deprive you of bandwidth that you are paying for, but if your neighbor conducted some illegal activity while online, it could be traced back to your network.

Right now you might be wondering what the odds are of any of these things ever happening. If you have an unsecured wireless connection, the odds of it being exploited are pretty good.

About four years ago, I was asked by one of the companies that I was writing for at the time to do an experiment to see how many wireless networks I could detect and how many of those networks were insecure. To perform the experiment, I loaded a copy of Net Stumbler onto my laptop and had my wife drive me around while I tried to detect wireless networks. During my experiment I managed to detect seven networks and none of them were secure.

Seven wireless networks certainly aren’t many, but there are several things to keep in mind. First, I live in the middle of nowhere in a rural part of South Carolina, not in a densely populated place like New York City. Second, I was using a stock Wi-Fi card without any type of external antenna. Third, I was attempting to detect wireless networks from a moving vehicle, using a Wi-Fi card that had a relatively short range. Fourth, this was four years ago.

If I detected that many wireless networks, four years ago, in the middle of nowhere, under conditions that would give me poor reception, can you imagine how many wireless networks are in use today? Wireless networks are everywhere, and the vast majority of them are insecure. In fact, as of December 2004, an estimated 60 to 70 percent of all wireless networks did not use any type of encryption. My point is that wireless networks are everywhere and the majority of them are insecure, and the bad guys know this.

Hackers routinely engage in a practice called war walking. War walking is similar to my little experiment. It’s basically a trip on foot, by car, by airplane, or what ever to try to locate wireless networks.

At first it might not seem like a big deal if a hacker knows that you have a wireless network. After all, most of your neighbors probably have wireless networks too. Besides, wireless networks have a relatively short range and it would be easy to spot someone sitting in front of your house with a laptop. The problem is that although your wireless access point may have a short range, it is possible to make a homemade antenna that can receive your network’s signal from many miles away. In fact, if a direct line of sight is available, it is possible to make a Wi-Fi antenna out of a Pringles can that can intercept a Wi-Fi signal from up to ten miles away. Hackers no longer need to sit in a car in front of your house to hack your wireless network.

Securing Your Wireless Network

Now that I have explained why it is so important to secure your wireless network, I want to spend the rest of this article explaining the steps that you should take in doing so. Unfortunately, I can’t give you the exact step-by-step procedure because every manufacturer of wireless hardware uses a different interface for configuring the device. Even so, the things that I will be discussing are nearly universal and will be valid for almost all Wi-Fi networks.

Use Encryption
By far the most important thing that you can do to secure your wireless network is to use encryption. Almost every wireless access point has some type of encryption mechanism built in. Most older access points offer WEP encryption, and newer access points offer a choice between WEP and WPA.
You are much better off using WPA than WEP. The WEP encryption method is flawed because if someone is able to capture enough data, it is possible to decipher WEP. Even so, it takes most home users weeks to do enough Web surfing to produce enough traffic for WEP to be compromised.
My advice would be that if your wireless hardware doesn’t support WPA, then you should upgrade to hardware that does offer WPA support. If an upgrade just isn’t in the budget, then you should go ahead and turn on WEP encryption. Sure, WEP is flawed, but flawed encryption is better than no encryption. Besides, there are enough people with insecure wireless networks that most of the time if a hacker sees that your network is encrypted with WEP, they will move on to an easier target than spending weeks trying to capture enough data to decrypt WEP.
The only other drawback to using encryption on your access point is that it can be a little complicated to set up if you aren’t the technical type. If you can’t figure out how to set up wireless encryption, then invite the neighborhood nerd over for dinner and have them enable encryption. Do what ever you have to do, but get encryption enabled.

Don’t Announce Yourself
Wi-Fi access points use a mechanism called identifier broadcasting to announce themselves. The problem with identifier broadcasting is that you already know that you have a wireless network, so there is no need in announcing it to you. The only people that the broadcast really benefits is hackers. Not all wireless access points allow you to disable identifier broadcasting, but if yours does allow you to disable it, then you should.
While you are at it, you should also change your SSID or ESSID. The SSID or ESSID is basically just a name that’s assigned to the wireless access point. The reason why it is important to change the SSID or ESSID is because you don’t want your access point to have an out of the box name. Think about it for a minute. Wireless hardware manufacturers assign the same SSID or ESSID to every access point that rolls off of the assembly line. Even if you aren’t broadcasting your access point’s identification to the world, it isn’t that hard to figure out that you have an access point in your house. If the access point isn’t broadcasting an SSID or an ESSID then the first thing that a hacker will usually try is to attach to the access point by using common default SSID or ESSID names.
It is also important that you change your access point’s default password for the same reason. You don’t want a hacker to be able to take control of your access point just because it still has the default password assigned to it. If a hacker were to take control of the access point, they could actually lock you out of your own network.

Limit Access To Your Access Point
Another thing that you can do to help secure your wireless access point is to limit which computers are allowed to use it. Every network interface card (including wireless cards) has what’s known as a Media Access Control (MAC) address associated with it. Most wireless access points contain a mechanism that you can use to tell the access point that only network cards with these specific MAC addresses are allowed to use the network.
You can determine a machine’s MAC address by opening a command prompt window on the workstation and entering the command IPCONFIG /ALL. This command is designed to display the machine’s TCP/IP configuration. However, it will list the machine’s MAC address under the Physical Address heading.
Limiting access to the access point by MAC address isn’t a perfect security mechanism. A hacker can use a protocol analyzer to determine which MAC addresses are in use on your network. They can then spoof a valid address and bypass your address filter. Even so, it is important to use address filtering. The reason is because none of the wireless security mechanisms that I’ve shown you are perfect, but all of the mechanisms that I’ve shown you provide relatively good security.

sources : http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/wireless-network-security-home.html

Article : What People Want From Work: Motivation

Every person has different motivations for working. The reasons for working are as individual as the person. But, we all work because we obtain something that we need from work. The something we obtain from work impacts our morale and motivation and the quality of our lives. Here is the most recent thinking about motivation, what people want from work.

Work IS About the Money

Some people work for love; others work for personal fulfillment. Others like to accomplish goals and feel as if they are contributing to something larger than themselves, something important. Some people have personal missions they accomplish through meaningful work. Others truly love what they do or the clients they serve. Some like the camaraderie and interaction with customers and coworkers. Other people like to fill their time with activity. Some workers like change, challenge, and diverse problems to solve. Motivation is individual and diverse.
Whatever your personal reasons for working, the bottom line, however, is that almost everyone works for money. Whatever you call it: compensation, salary, bonuses, benefits or remuneration, money pays the bills. Money provides housing, gives children clothing and food, sends teens to college, and allows leisure activities, and eventually, retirement. To underplay the importance of money and benefits as motivation for people who work is a mistake.
Fair benefits and pay are the cornerstone of a successful company that recruits and retains committed workers. If you provide a living wage for your employees, you can then work on additional motivation issues. Without the fair, living wage, however, you risk losing your best people to a better-paying employer.
In fact, recent research from Watson Wyatt Worldwide in The Human Capital Edge: 21 People Management Practices Your Company Must Implement (or Avoid) to Maximize Shareholder Value, (Compare Prices) recommends, that to attract the best employees, you need to pay more than your average-paying counterparts in the marketplace. Money provides basic motivation.

Got Money? What's Next for Motivation?

I've read the surveys and studies dating back to the early 1980s that demonstrate people want more from work than money. An early study of thousands of workers and managers by the American Psychological Association clearly demonstrated this. While managers predicted the most important motivational aspect of work for people would be money, personal time and attention from the supervisor was cited by workers as most rewarding and motivational for them at work.
In a recent Workforce article, "The Ten Ironies of Motivation," reward and recognition guru, Bob Nelson, says, "More than anything else, employees want to be valued for a job well done by those they hold in high esteem." He adds that people want to be treated as if they are adult human beings.
While what people want from work is situational, depending on the person, his needs and the rewards that are meaningful to him, giving people what they want from work is really quite straight forward. People want:

• Control of their work inspires motivation: including such components as the ability to impact decisions; setting clear and measurable goals; clear responsibility for a complete, or at least defined, task; job enrichment; tasks performed in the work itself; and recognition for achievement.
• To belong to the in-crowd creates motivation: including items such as receiving timely information and communication; understanding management's formulas for decision making; team and meeting participation opportunities; and visual documentation and posting of work progress and accomplishments.
• The opportunity for growth and development is motivational: and includes education and training; career paths; team participation; succession planning; cross-training; and field trips to successful workplaces.
• Leadership is key in motivation. People want clear expectations that provide a picture of the outcomes desired with goal setting and feedback and an appropriate structure or framework.

Recognition for Performance Creates Motivation

In The Human Capital Edge, authors Bruce Pfau and Ira Kay say that people want recognition for their individual performance with pay tied to their performance. Employees want people who don't perform fired; in fact, failure to discipline and fire non-performers is one of the most demotivating actions an organization can take - or fail to take. It ranks on the top of the list next to paying poor performers the same wage as non-performers in deflating motivation.
Additionally, the authors found that a disconnect continues to exist between what employers think people want at work and what people say they want for motivation. "Employers far underrate the importance to employees of such things as flexible work schedules or opportunities for advancement in their decision to join or leave a company.
"That means that many companies are working very hard (and using scarce resources) on the wrong tools," say Pfau and Kay. (p. 32) People want employers to pay them above market rates. They seek flexible work schedules. They want stock options, a chance to learn, and the increased sharing of rationale behind management decisions and direction.

What You Can Do for Motivation and Positive Morale

You have much information about what people want from work. Key to creating a work environment that fosters motivation are the wants and needs of the individual. I recommend that you ask your employees what they want from work and whether they are getting it. With this information in hand, I predict you'll be surprised at how many simple and inexpensive opportunities you have to create a motivational, desirable work environment. Pay attention to what is important to the people you employ for high motivation and positive morale. You'll achieve awesome business success.



sources : http://humanresources.about.com/od/rewardrecognition/a/needs_work.htm

.Things That I'm so Interested!.

assalamualaikum

Hey guys! This time, I want to share with you about things that I'm so interested. Suggest what it is? COOLBLOG! Yes, Coolblog. Everyone know and love Coolblog right? err, I suggested. But, to me, Coolblog is the most delicious drink that I have ever taste especially Oreo Coolblog with Vanilla flavor. Yummy! Okay, actually I am so interested to open one Coolblog kiosk at my place since there are no one do Coolblog business. So, this is an opportunities to me to start a small business at a young age. Then, lets me introduce what is Coolblog about. First launched in Singapore in 2005, Coolblog is an international business license specializing tea tasted dessert and beverages. Coolblog aims to marry the natural taste of tea leaf with natural fruit taste in take-away kiosk concept. The company is the first to break new ground in Singapore and Malaysia food scene by introducing Tea tasted beverages with 25 different flavours. Coolblog will sell ‘Tea Taste Beverages and Dessert - Tea Blog’ as their primary product in addition to dessert such as Smoothies Blog, Ice Blended Blog, Italian Soda Blog, Yoghurt Blog, Milk Shake Blog, Coffee
Blog, Chocolate Blog, and Oreo Blog. Sounds interesting right? Why I choose Coolblog? This is because, compared to other food service products, coolblog dessert and beverage kiosk will be relatively simple  business to operate. Other than that, Coolblog has a low food cost and is easy to prepare, which keeps speed-of-services at optimum level to keep up with high traffic volumes. Coolblog also offer the freedom of being a business owner and there are some business license advantages that I would like to share with you. First, comprehensive business system. Coolblog offers a proven business model and comprehensive business system that cover site selection, outlet design, training programmes and others. Second, full support provided by Coolblog company. They provide comprehensive in-field and business training, first rate support and advice as we start and build our business. Third, established buying power which means partnership with Coolblog means we are able to tap into the bulk purchasing power negotiating capacity made available while operating our own business. Lastly, who to owning Coolblog kiosk? There are nine steps. First, telephone screen. Second, business license application form. Third, approval process. Fourth, site evaluation. Fifth, business license agreements. Sixth, training. Seventh, equipment and store fit-up. Eight, store preparation and for the last steps is store opening. Simple right? This is Coolblog website that can help you to learn and know more about business in Coolblog : COOLBLOG  So, that all about things that I am so intereted. Enjoy my entry and enjoy your COOLBLOG! :)

Coolblog kiosk

Coolblog menu

.what is MGT 417 about.

assalamualaikum

Hey hey! Before this I have share with you about UiTM and HRS. Today, I would like to talk about MGT 417. This subject discuss more about management in IT. One of the topic that have been discuss in MGT 417 is Information Systems and the Modern Organization. So, why are information systems so important to organization and society? Firstly, IT will reduce the number of middle managers because IT makes managers more productive, and it increases the number of employees who can report to a single manager. In these ways, IT ultimately decreases the number of managers and experts. It is reasonable to assume then that fewer managerial levels will exist in many organizations and there will be fewer staff and line managers. Secondly, IT will changes the manager's job. This means, with IT managers can gather information for decision making much more quickly by using engines and intranets. Besides that, IT tends to reduces the time necessary to complete any step in the decision making process. By using IT properly then, managers today can complete tasks more efficiently and effectively. Thirdly, IT impacts employees at work. Lets discuss that IT provides opportunities for people with disabilities. But how? This is because computer can create new employment opportunities for people with disabilities by integrating speech and vision recognition capabilities. For the example, individuals who cannot type are able to use a voice-operated keyboard, and individuals who cannot travel can work at home. IT also impacts employee's health ans safety. With ergonomics, which means the science of adapting machines and work environments to people, focuses on creating an environment that is safe, well lit, and comfortable. For example, antiglare screens have helped alleviate problems of fatigued or damaged eyesight. Also, chairs that contour the human body have helped decrease backaches. For the last point is IT provides quality of life improvements. What we can see now, robot revolution is on the way. Once restricted largely to science fiction movies, robots that can do practical tasks are becoming more common. For the example of precision agriculture, Carniegie Mellon University has developed self-directing tractors that harvest hundreds of acres of cros around the clock in California. These robot tractors use global positioning systems (GPSs) combined with the video image processing that identifies rows of uncut crops. Besides that, IT also give an improvements in health care. Medical personnel use IT to make better and faster diagnoses and to monitor critically ill patients more accurately. Other than that, expert systems now help doctors diagnose diseases, and machine vision is enhancing the work of radiologists. Surgeons use virtual relity to plan complex surgeries and they have also used a surgical robot to perform long-distance surgery by controlling the robot's movements. So for the conclusion, in this new era, IT was very important in our life to let it more easy and comfortable. There are some pictures that I have been provided to make you more understands about what we have discuss before.

Enabling people with disabilities to work with computers

Ergonomic products

The da Vinci robots in use

.Let's Talk About UiTM.

assalamualaikum

 For the first task, I would like to talk about a place that I have been choose to continued my study in degree namely, Universiti Teknologi Mara Kampus Bandaraya Melaka. For your information, UiTM is a coeducational public university with its main campus located in Shah Alam, Selangor. It is the main institution of the Universiti Teknologi MARA System, the largest university in Malaysia in terms of size and student enrollment and the only public university carrying out intakes twice a year. For the beginning, UiTM is known as Dewan Latehan RIDA (Rural and Industrial Development Authority Training Center) in Petaling Jaya, Selangor in November 1956. The institutions became known as Maktab MARA (MARA College) in 1965. The name change meant that the college no longer operated under RIDA and instead became the most important unit of the MARA Training Division. MARA stands for Majlis Amanah Rakyat (Council of Trust for the People) under the charismatic and dynamic leadership of Tan Sri Arshad Ayub. In 1967, the institutions was renamed as Institusi Teknologi MARA. Its establishment came as a response to a need in Malaysia for trained professionals, especially among Bumiputeras.Then, on 26 August 1999, Prime Minister of Malaysia Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad has announced that Institusi Teknologi Mara will be called as Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM). According to the new amendments after the announcement , there is a section that states that the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Malaysia automatically appointed as Chancellor of Universiti Teknologi MARA and Pro-Chancellor also set out below him. Besides that, the office of the Rector has been changed to Vice-Chancellor. Most of this changed is to label the name of institute to the university and after almost half a century has passed, these institutions made ​​it through many challenges and some change in name from Dewan Latehan RIDA,College of MARA, MARA Institute of Technology and finally Universiti Teknologi MARA,  but its objective remains to this day is to enhance and ensure the integrity of socio-economic status of the natives. Nowadays, UiTM is now expanding its branches to all states in Malaysia and the fundamental goals of the branch campus is intended to facilitate indigenous students around the country to jointly take the opportunity to enjoy the level of higher education in this country. End of history about UiTM. Now I would like to introduce more about UiTM Kampus Bandaraya Melaka (KBM). UiTM Kampus Bandaraya Melaka commenced operations on 15 December 2006, with 11 administrative staff. Academic session beginning on 3 January 2007, led by UiTM Melaka Campus Director of Prof Madya Dr Mizan bin Hj. Hitam and assisted by the Deputy Director of the City Campus, Prof Madya Mohd Zainud-Din bin Hassan. UiTM KBM is a national agenda partnership within Melaka Chief Minister and Vice Chancellor of UiTM to realize the objective Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister and 200 000 students in UiTM. On 26 March 2007, citizens take pride in opening KBM UiTM by YAB Chief Minister of Melaka, Datuk Seri Mohd Ali Mohd Rustam. KBM made ​​history "City Campus" UiTM in Malaysia with a total student population is 3,500 people. Finally, as a student in UiTM Kampus Bandaraya Melaka, I am proud to have a chance to study in universities that protect the rights of bumiputera children to improve themselves and take the opportunity to develop and lead the country one day. Thank you for your reading. :)

.the end.

.i'm the owner.

assalamualaikum

hey yaw!! My name is Nadia Farhana Bt. Desa from group BM2231B. This is my new blog for assignment subject MGT417. Okay, let me introduce more about myself. You can call me as Nadia or Nad as my nickname. I am from Negeri Sembilan and was born on 5 July 1992. Now, I like to share with you about my previous studies. When at the primary level, I was school at Sek. Keb. Pengkalan Tentera Darat, Sungai Besi, Sek. Keb. Batu Kikir and Sek. Keb. Tunku Muda Serting, Negeri Sembilan. Err, it is weird that I have many primary school? :) I think some of you also same like me right? Alright, at the secondary school, I school at Sek. Men. Keb. Batu Kikir from Form 1 to Form 3. You know what, I 'm so naughty at this age and always not attend the class. So, that why my PMR result are not so good. But, start Form 4 to Form 5, I went to Sek. Men. Teknik Juasseh in Accounting course. How can I wonder that I can be a good girl at there. hee~ And for SPM result, a little bit increases then PMR. After that, I continued my studies at Kolej Matrikulasi Johor and now I am here, UiTM Kampus Bandaraya Melaka. Okay, finish about my previous studies. In my family, I have four siblings which is I am the first. My father, Desa bin Usak worked as a driver, and my mother, Norafifah bt. Danial is a housewife. I think enough about me. If you want know more, add my facebook pages : naddysF Lastly, I want to presented to you my blog for assignment in subject MGT 417. Later I will post more entry about UiTM, something that I am interested and also about topic in MGT 417 subject. Hope you will enjoy it. see ya! :)

this is me! :)

parents :)

siblings :)