Introduction

In the field of online hotel and travel booking websites, Expedia.co.in is a well-known name. Expedia is an American based company providing several online travel brands like Expedia.com, Hotels.com, trivago, Hotwire.com etc. This assignment illustrates the implementation of e-commerce or ERP integrated with ICT in the company Expedia (Besson & Bourdon, 2015).

Challenges in Managing Global Team

Description of the Organisation

Expedia is an online travel company that was launched on October 22, 1996. It was the first internet property of Microsoft. It has its headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, USA. This company also operates in many other countries all around the world. This online travel company helps in booking online air tickets, car rentals, hotel reservations, cruises, vacation packages and several other services via the internet and travel agents. This site uses various global distribution systems such as Sabre reservation system or Amadeus for hotels and flights, Pegasus and Worldspan along with several other hotel reservation systems for the bulk rate of reservations (Chen et al., 2013). Expedia understands the risks and issues involved with making online purchases and thus aim at gaining the trust and confidence of the customers by ensuring security. Expedia gives the highest priority to safeguarding the confidential information that is given by the customers while booking services. Expedia provides the customers vast selection of travel and hotel services in order to meet every kind of budget. It also provides different holiday activities at competitive rates. It has thousands of hotel partners all around the world (Eames et al., 2014). It is one of the fastest-growing travel portals in Asia.

International Marketing

Implementation of ERP with integrated ICT in Expedia

The implementation of ERP with ICT in the online travel portal Expedia is developed to provide assistance for carrying out the major activities of the portal. E-commerce encompasses the several procedures of products, services, sales, marketing, information and purchasing that helps in the distribution of a product or services.  These processes under e-commerce are carried out through the use of electronic systems like computers and the internet. The Internet provides the platform which facilitates activities like online business communication and financial transactions (Fosso, 2012). The practice of e-commerce through the website of Expedia is able to attract huge customers as well as reduce the cost and time in the advertisement and promotion of Expedia. ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning is a type of business management practice that involves several integrated applications, is used by organisations to store, manage, interpret and collect the data from several other business activities including service delivery, manufacturing, purchase and product planning. ERP helps in gaining a competitive advantage other the competitors of a company (Mata & Quesada, 2014). ERP involves the transformation of business activities from the real world into the field of computers and the internet. The major factors facilitating e-commerce activities in Expedia is the growing accessibility of internet facilities in developed and developing countries and the residence of its customers in urban areas. Internet technology is the major domain of e-commerce. Thus, all the important activities needed for the implementation of ERP requires to be integrated with ICT i.e. Internet and Communication Technology for achieving success (Schumacher et al, 2013).

Information and Communication technology is highly essential for an organisation to gain a competitive advantage in the market over its rivals. Consumers are informed about the business and its services by the digitalisation of procedures which also helps in simplifying the business activities. ICT is also accompanied by the development in the cell phone industry that accelerates the process of e-commerce (Victor, Chen & Capistrano, 2013). Data mining is an application of ICT which involves the use of warehouses and the internet, where data is evaluated to identify its patterns and understand future opportunities.  E-commerce includes the use of business intelligence to understand the strategies developed by the competitors. Other systems like RFID and Electronic Data Interchange are used in e-commerce to provide more fruitful outcomes.

Human Resources Management

Issues faced during implementation of ERP in Expedia

The implementation of ERP leads to the rising of many issues like the infrastructure of ICT, number of buyers and sellers, cost of internet, high expenses, inefficient skills, justification of costs etc. Justification of cost indicates high expenses incurred while implementing ERP. Sometimes improper planning and inefficient employees can put the organisation in an odd situation. Cost justification involves recognition of brand, competitive advantage and increased customer service.

There are also issues arising due to improper security in the implementation of ERP. There is a considerable risk of increasing attacks over the websites that leads to increasing concern among the consumers regarding the security of their confidential personal information (Wang, Wang & Liu, 2016). This confidential information also includes information on customers’ bank balances and accounts. Data of the consumers can be tampered with by hackers which can reduce the trust of the customers in the company. This issue can be avoided by regular maintenance of the website and by improving the security facilities to handle the customer data carefully (Zhou, Zhang & Zimmermann, 2013).

Advantages of implementing ERP with the integration of ICT

Different perks of implementing ERP with the integration of ICT in Expedia are:

The implementation of ERP in Expedia has to lead to huge success in the field of online travel and hotel booking portals. Implementation of ERP allows the usage of several advanced information systems that helps the customers in finding proper hotels and other services within their budget in any part of the world (Wang, Wang & Liu, 2016). The website provides the user with several choices customers can consider fitting their budgets and requirements. The integration of information systems or ITC helps the website to enable several options that support online booking of hotels, cars, trips etc. It also helps in accessing different information and properly managing and planning the portal (Mata & Quesada, 2014). ERP also reduces the business risks by helping in enhanced security to the data of the consumers.

Essay – Four Marco Environment Changes

Conclusion

This assignment concludes that the implementation of ERP with integrated ICT lead to smooth business operations of the portal Expedia. The implementation of e-commerce benefits both customers and the company. ERP has enhanced the features and efficiency of the given portal Expedia to facilitate better services to people from all over the world.

References

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