This report focuses on the review of a human activity system based within Amazon Australia, which is facing some kinds of problems within the sector. One of the affected sector, which is facing a huge form of problem is the Amazon Fulfillment Center. The Amazon Company has one of the vast form of fulfillment networks in the entire world (Gravina et al. 2017). With the help of Fulfillment procedure provided by Amazon, it has been very much useful for storing the different products within the Amazon Fulfillment Centers. These centers are mainly used for picking of the concerned products from the stores, packing them within the Amazon packets, shipping the products to the concerned destination and thus enriching the customer service based on the products. The Amazon Fulfillment Center is working on the technology of improvising several kinds of improvements based on the human-computer interaction within their fulfillment center (Welch 2015).
The various fulfillment centers that are located in Australia are working on the involvement of robotic form of interaction within the fulfillment centers. With the expanse of the company, it has been a concern for the people within the fulfillment center for taking the responsibilities of a vast number of orders and thus perform their jobs in an efficient manner. These fulfillment centers have hinted the possibility of the working of humans and computers together. This would be helpful in assisting the humans in performing the manual tasks in a quick and efficient manner (Liang 2015).
With the advent of the robot technology, it has become easy for the processes of automation within the sector. The robotic technology within Amazon Fulfillment Center help in understanding the various kinds of needs of the customer. These automated processes help in the stacking of the products and piling them as per the requirements (Smith and Anderson 2014). The collaboration of the humans and robots would be important for the continuation of the work within the fulfillment center. The automated systems within Amazon fulfillment center are controlled with the help of a central computer, which are able to automate the various processes that are performed within the fulfillment center. They help in exploring newer kinds of innovations within the sector and thus ease the accomplishment of the tasks that would require the finest form of manipulation or bring certain improvisations within the ease of the business operations (Varia and Mathew 2014).
An Analysis of the Business of Amazon, Australia
This part of the report focuses on the various aspects of the business of Amazon
Amazon is considered as the biggest form of e-commerce giant, which was primarily founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. The company was primarily originated in the form of bookstore. The website of the company that is based in Australia is mainly functional at www.amazon.com.au. The website of the company is mainly used for purchasing a wide range of products that could be mainly found in the retail stores. The business of Amazon is able to provide a broader form of services in various categories such as books, video CDs, toys, home improvement devices and other kinds of services (Dootson and Suzor 2015).
The main strategy of the company is to provide immense form of services in the various areas and thus satisfy the needs of the organization. The business of Amazon is mainly measured with the help of revenue and the capitalization within the market. Amazon implements a multi-level for =m of strategy based on e-commerce. They mainly focus on business-to-customer based relationships between the business process and the customer services (Terry-Armstrong 2013).
The main operations of the business of Amazon is based on providing various kinds of services such as the booking of the products, organizing the articles and thus providing the selected form of services to the customers.
The organizational form of Amazon, Australia as per the Mintzberg’s classification are described as per the five form of coordinating mechanisms:
Mutual Adjustment – With the help of the mutual form of adjustment within the processes of Amazon, it would be helpful for controlling the work within the organization. The company follows this structure for performing a negotiation with the employees within the organization in the areas of their work (Weill and Woerner 2013).
Direct Supervision – This form of mechanism is helpful within Amazon for coordinating the work of one employee and thus taking the responsibility of other employees. In the systems of Amazon, the supervisor of a certain department issues instructions and thus performs a monitor over the performance of that particular sector of the business unless it is accomplished fully (Lovelock and Patterson 2015).
Standardization of the Processes of Work – Amazon specifies the form of work to their employees. Hence they are able to schedule the work and perform the tasks in a procedural manner (Tregear 2015).
Standardization of Outputs – The Company sets a particular standard of work and specifies the dimension of the particular product that would be needed to be delivered. This helps the company to complete the scheduled work in an efficient manner (Jha, Jha and O’Brien 2016).
Standardization of Skills – Amazon provides a wide form of training to their employees in order to increase the level of their skills. This is highly useful for putting a high level of coordination within the various processes of work and gaining high level of outputs (Schall 2013).
The analysis of the Porter’s value chain model within Amazon is based on an analytical framework that would be helpful in assisting for the identification of the activities.
(Fig 1: Porter’s Value Chain Analysis of Amazon, Australia)
The core business processes of Amazon own the entire value chain within the industry. Extra form of investment is required within the various forms of perishable goods. Amazon does not support long-term forms of contracts with their various vendors. The Fulfillment Centers of Amazon, Australia are the heart of the inbound logistics (DaSilva and Trkman 2014).
In this context, it could be discussed that the company performs the full form of responsibility based on logistics, product returns and customer service. Amazon makes use of their logistics beyond their limits for the purpose of serving within the Amazon Marketplace. Amazon leverages the scalability power for the purpose of accessing millions of customers who were new within the internet platform (Weill and Woerner 2015). The primary activities based within the analysis of Porter’s Value Chain model includes the Amazon Inbound Logistics, Outbound Logistics, Operations, Sales and Marketing and Amazon Service.
The Amazon Inbound Logistics takes the full responsibility of the customer service, logistics and the returns of products. They take the help of long-term contracts for gaining information about the availability of merchandise, terms of particular kinds of payment methods and the extension limits of credits.
The Amazon Outbound Logistics integrates the functionalities of their fulfillment centers, digital form of delivery of ordered items and the physical stores, which are linked with the company for delivery of products.
The operations performed within Amazon are based within international domain and Amazon Web Services. They also offer several forms of computing resources, networking and other forms of computing services.
The marketing by Amazon helps in conveying the promises based on the large form of selection of their services and products, faster methods of delivery and maintaining the reputation of the company based on customer services. Some of the components of sales and marketing also includes promotion of products, public relations and direct marketing.
Exceptional form off customer service is a wide form of aspect that is maintained by the organization. They have kept their ratings at the top by providing a rich form of customer experience by dealing with the faced challenges and thus mitigating them by keeping them at the topmost priority.
The retail industry of Amazon has grown at a fast rate in the recent years. The business model of Amazon could be depicted in the form of Porter’s Competitive Forces Model.
Bargaining Power of Suppliers of Amazon – The bargaining power of the suppliers of the various services within Amazon varies from low to medium. Although there is a big form of suppliers of the various products of Amazon, hence these suppliers would have to perform the activities of the business as per the rules that are being set by Amazon. These form of suppliers follow the various code of conducts that have been set by Amazon. The company follows the standards set within the supply chain. Amazon can also switch between various suppliers of their products (Kim and Henderson 2015).
Bargaining Power of Buyers of Amazon – The power of the buyers within Amazon ranges from medium to high. The company mainly pouts focus on the satisfaction of their customers and thus improves the various quality of their products (Laudon and Traver 2013). The costs of switching for the customers are particularly low. As the company faces a stiff form of competition within the market from their various rival companies, hence the retention of the existing customers is a major challenge for Amazon. Hence the bargaining power of the various buyers within Amazon is high (Haucap et al. 2013).
Threat of Substitute Products – Although several brands have made their presence within the online market, there is always a possibility that people would purchase products from the offline retail stores. The only form of competitive advantage within the business of Amazon is that they should have an excellent form of customer service, which would be helpful for impressing the customers and thus retaining them. Hence, the threat of the substitute products of the company is always high (Raphan and Friedman 2014).
Threat of New Entrants – The severity of the threats from the new entrance of products within the market is low for Amazon. The growth in the form of digital technology has helped in reducing the form of barriers from entering within the market. This is due to the reason that Amazon has a very high marketing strategy as they invest more within the business (Van Alstyne, Parker and Choudary 2016).
Rivalry within the Industry – There is an extreme high level of rivalry within the industry. This is due to the reason that there is a high number of rise within the growth of many dominant players within the market. The rivalry within the retail sector has intensified due to several kinds of factors. Each company plans to improve their services and thus offer better services to their customers in order to become the best player within the market. Hence the level of competition within the market has increased to a higher level (Ellram, Tate and Feitzinger 2013).
There are some forms of problems, which are being faced by Amazon, Australia. The following part of the report discusses about the faced issues in details.
Amazon employs various suppliers who are responsible for supplying the goods to the customers who make use of the website of the company in order to book for the selected products. These sellers ship the products from their personal warehouses. This ensures the responsibility of the supplier to ship the booked products to the designated customers. This might create problems with their personalized courier service as they might have the risk that the products might not be able to reach to the buying customers at the proper time. This would incur a bad name for the company and they might lose the trust of their customers.
The stakeholders within this human activity system are the third-party suppliers, manufacturers and buyers.
The third-party suppliers are able to receive the order of the products from the Amazon website based on which they would pack the products and thus pass them on to the courier department in order to make them readily available to the customers.
The manufacturers are solely responsible for designing, developing and bringing the end products to the market for the buyers to view them and then purchase the products.
The buyers would view the products from the Amazon website based on their selected choices. These items are displayed before the buyers in a customized manner as per their provided requirements. The customers hence are able to choose their selected products and then purchase them.
(Fig 2: Issues and Concerns of Stakeholders within Amazon, Australia)
(Fig 3: Process Model of Existing Human Activity System)
The use of DeLone-McLean Model of Information Systems Success is being used for reviewing the existing faults within the human activity system and to determine the unsuccessful areas. The areas in which the systems of Amazon are unsuccessful according to the model are:
Service Quality – The Information Systems within Amazon are mainly evaluated according to the quality of services that are being provided by the company. The quality of the service that are being delivered would be able to directly impact the mind of the customers. The systems within Amazon totally relies on the third party sellers who would deliver the products to the customers. Putting the entire responsibility on to the third party sellers would lead to some problems as they sometimes might not be able to deliver the products to the buyers. This would hence impact the quality of service, which would eventually bring a bad name to the company (Demirkan and Delen 2013).
User Satisfaction – The satisfaction of the customers is the ultimate goal of any company. The satisfaction of the user would be helpful for influencing the net incurred benefits for the organization. Amazon should take proper measures to deliver the products directly from their personalized warehouses in order to take the full responsibility onto themselves, which would hence be useful for ensuring the direct communication between all the stakeholders involved within the company (Xu, Benbasat and Cenfetelli 2013).
On placing of the delivery of a certain product, the customers would generally expect an efficient method of the delivery of their products. Based on the current human activity systems, it is quite possible to ship the products right from the warehouse of the third party sellers. The factors of success in which the human activity system would mainly lack is the proper delivery of the products in a proper time frame and also with the proper form of packing.
With the various kinds of problems based within the human activity systems of Amazon, a proper form of Management Information System would be suggested for the improvement of the business processes within Amazon (Bharadwaj et al. 2013). This form of system would be able to aid the organization and the various internal systems to integrate and perform the tasks in a diligent manner. The management information systems within Amazon helps in certain processes within the business of Amazon such as browsing, accounts management and the final step in the shopping process (Gandomi and Haider 2015). The management information systems within Amazon helps in bringing the ease of buying experience for the customers as they would be able to buy specific products based on their previous search histories. They would be able to view their previous products and thus the MIS would be able to provide better form of suggestion based on the selected purchase history (Manning and Bucher 2013). The users are provided with several forms of recommendation systems, which are able to manage the types of buying intentions of the customers and the improved form of suggestions for the people. This new form of MIS systems would also include the Amazon Fulfillment Center, which would be able to bring innovation within the concerned sector. This system would ensure the timely delivery of products by collecting the product from the third party seller and storing them in their personal warehouses. On a particular buying request, the item would be packed and shipped by Amazon itself. This would put the entire responsibility on the company, which would lead to better efficiency within the processes of work and ensure timely and effectiveness within the system of delivery.
According to the Porter’s Value Model, the new MIS systems could be classified under the Primary Form of Activities.
The likely stakeholders who would be involved with the new information systems are the sellers, buyers, the Amazon Fulfillment Center authorities and the management systems within the company. Based on the new form of information centers, the definition of the roles of the individual stakeholders could be defined as follows:
Sellers – They would be mainly responsible to make their products to get listed within the website of the organization. They would also be able to make the proper availability of the products such that there should not be an acute shortage of products for which the buyers might face a problem during the phase of purchase.
Buyers – The buyers would see the final products, which automatically gets listed on the website of the company after the seller has registered for providing the particular service. They would then be able to choose their desired products from a wide number of provided options.
Amazon Fulfillment Center – This center would mainly be responsible for collecting the concerned products from the seller and thus be able to store them in their personal warehouses. They would keep a huge storage and maintain the stock of their products such that they would be able to provide immediate service to their customers whenever they would get a request.
Management Systems – The internal management systems sort out the various request from customers and thus place them under topmost priority. They are responsible for controlling the entire systems within the company. They help in the entire process management of the company.
The Amazon Fulfillment Center collects data from a vast number of sources based on the lists of products that are ordered by the customers. The information gathered is used for making several kinds of decisions and thus fulfilling them. The expansion of the network of Amazon helps in the proper form of processing of the order of delivery. The Amazon Fulfillment Center ships the items to the consumers within 2.8 days (Kim, Trimi and Chung 2014).
The knowledge collected from the delivery experience gained by the customer helps in tracking the delivery by monitoring the consumer behavior and notifications of shipment.
(Fig : Process Model of Amazon Fulfillment Center)
The new form of Management Information System that are mainly supported by the Amazon Fulfillment Center could mainly be classified as back-end and customer-facing.
The fulfillment center performs the basic operations of listing the products that are being ordered by the customers. They would then search for the particular product within their warehouses based on which they would be able to sort put the exact item and bring it out from the shelf. The center would then pack the item and then perform the operations of shipping the product to the customer.
The Amazon Fulfillment Center also intakes the responsibility of collecting and thus assessing the data gained from the experience of the customers. This data is collected within a single form of supported group based on an IT framework and is customer facing. With the help of this system, the fulfillment center is able to save money, protect the customer from annoying and redundant solicitations. They would then permit the direct form of comparison of the customers based on their location, choices of products and various other criteria (Decman and Vintar 2013).
Based on the implementation of the new system, it could be defined that the new system would be able to incur various positive effects on the customers as well as the company. The new form of MIS would be able to provide better experience to the customers as they would be able to get their products within the shortest possible time. Moreover the company would be able to track the entire process of the delivery information of the products to their customers (Wamba et al. 2015).
With the implementation of the new MIS it would be extremely helpful for the Amazon Fulfillment Center for distributing the products to their customers within a shorter span of time and with proper care. It would reduce the burden of the third party sellers of packing the products and distributing them. Amazon takes the entire responsibility of packing and shipping of products. Hence this could be seen as a measure of success for the company.
Based on the discussion from the above report, it would be recommended that the systems of the delivery processes within Amazon should be much more improved in order to handle the various pitfalls within the human activity systems. They should implement newer forms of strategies, which would be helpful for improving the conditions within the delivery processes. Satisfaction of the customers should be the utmost priority of the company and hence a proper form of management system is extremely vital for handling the various processes within the system (Jones and Jones 2013).
The discussion from the above report helps in focusing on some of the major aspects that should be improvised within the system. Based on the understanding from the discussion it could be focused that the satisfaction of the customers should be at the topmost priority. A proper form of Management Information System would be able to schedule each of the processes within the system and thus ensures proper delivery of each of the ordered items. With the advent of the Amazon Fulfillment Center, the company would be able to own the inventory and thus be able to fulfill the concerned orders without the involvement of any third party. The control over the inventory and the manufacturing processes would reside under a single roof. Amazon should intensify and expand their warehouses, which would act as a space for the distribution hub where the shipment pickers and the product packers would be able to ship their products to the concerned customer (Holtgrewe, U., 2014).
Conclusion
Based on the above discussion it could be concluded that the distribution of products based by the Amazon platform is a major area where customers order for several kinds of products. Amazon mainly hire third party sellers who list their products on the website, based on which the company is able to deliver the items. The implementation of a proper form of delivery system by the company would be helpful in ensuring timely delivery of products and satisfaction of customers.
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