Mary Kay EC Systems Essay

Founded in 1962, bloody shame Kay (marykay.com) has about 1.8 million consultants selling its cosmetics and bouquet in 34 countries. In 2008, the attach to had about $2.4 billion in in large quantities sales. As a company that has ground its reputation on personal contacts in door-to-door visits and home gatherings, one susceptibility think that bloody shame Kay would not gain from EC. Actually, the opposite is true. Currently, more than 95 per centum of bloody shame Kays independent salespeople manoeuver orders via the internet.The ProblemThe cosmetics market is very competitive, yet it is growing rapidly, especially in development countries. Mary Kay is trying to capitalize on this trend. The My Kay business model enables rapid growing into new markets. By the early 2000s, consultants lay down that more and more customers wanted to storehouse online. With a long and global make out chain and the need to manage approximately 2 million consultants, it was clear that a utomation was needed, but Mary Kays subsisting computer system was old and lacked meshing or e-commerce applications. Therefore, a major travel by of the information systems was needed. Finally, it became clear that the emergence of cordial computing might provide a golden opportunity for Internet market by the company.The SolutionMary Kays IT department is instantaneously split into terce divisions e-commerce, supply chain, and back-office support. Because of pressure from the consultants, the restructuring focused on e-commerce.The companys goals and objectives were set base on industry best practices and this volition determine what, how, and when the company is operated, and these overly put through to EC initiatives. Mary Kays EC solution included the creation of an electronic service desk that supports consultants in 30 countries in a standardized way. Mary Kay also introduced a global electronic club system, called Atlas, that allows the consultants to communi cate with company wargonhouses. An intelligent selective information repository that dynamically maintains a analytic model of the EC environment that go off be accessed by Mary Kay IT staff.Mary Kay and its consultants ar also making colossal use of neighborly computing. The following are some representative examples of how Mary Kay uses social computingThe company posts job commencement announcements on several sites, including MySpace Jobs (jobs.myspace.com).Movies and videotapes are functional on YouTube (youtube.com) and on movies.go.com.Several blogs are available, both for and against the company (e.g., marykayandrews.com/blog)Auctions and fixed toll items are available for sale on eBay.Mary Kay provides a consultant locator on the Internet (marykay.com/locator).All of these developments are supported by an extensive hardware and software infrastructure, including a wireless unconnected management system at the 760,000 square-foot merged headquarters, an extensiv e unspecific area network, and a large data center. Some of the EC systems are used enterprise wide (e.g., service desk, ticketing system for consultants for events, and service requests do by consultants). Others are functional (e.g., accounting, finance, marketing, and memorial control). The company uses an intranet for internal communications as well as dozens of new(prenominal) EC applications.In addition to providing weaken support to consultants, the EC initiatives produced other benefits, such as greater efficiency, reduced be and downtime, and improved service. In terms of gracious resources, it enabled the company to handle its rapid harvesting without a substantial increase in staffing. The changes also have allowed EC personnel to focus on strategic tasks. Mary Kay found that its engineers and technical people now have time to spend on new innovations.