Impact of E-Commerce on Operations Management Essay

Words: 2262
Pages: 10

Operations management has had to deal with a new type of business management in a business world that is vastly changing with new technology. Operations managers have had to adjust and retool how business is done since the inception of e-commerce. The impact that e-commerce has had on how an operations manager address a situation can vary from extreme to barely noticeable. Management has also had to learn how to adopt new technology with the growing e-commerce world. This has brought obstacles and resolutions within a business. E-commerce has also allowed businesses to grow where before the business would be limited to the area that surrounded the business. E-commerce has helped shape the operations management field over the last few …show more content…
Operations management also needs to look at how to improve inventory management even when they have no inventory. Just because a business does not have a physical inventory they still need to ensure that their customers will be able to purchase the products they have available for sale. Managing vendors is a good way to help maintain a good relationship and allow the business to negotiate the terms and conditions that will favor the business (Tan, 2010). If the business does have an inventory then using an inventory management system will help to integrate the products to new technology that lets customers compare prices and shop using a mobile phone (Tan, 2010). A good inventory management system can improve audit trails and lead to better stock management. This will allow a business that keeps an inventory to reduce the amount of stock that is handled by not over ordering which in turn saves money. Inventory will always be based on the type of business and now with the growth of e-commerce inventory management and control is much easier. The last key element is quality management. One of the easiest ways for a company to lose business is from poor quality items and with e-commerce this is a very important area. Quality is defined as consistent conformance to customer expectations (Slack, 2010). In an e-commerce world quality management is an important part of the operations management’s job. If the quality is lacking then