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 One Wild Ride! SideBar- Pioneering 101 Chico's Radical Past SideBar- Where Are They Now? E-Commerce SideBar- E-Education A New Kind of Gym Class SideBar- I Want to Be First! |
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The e-commerce explosion is changing the way we live and work. From the expansion of on-line consumer shopping to the even larger growth in business-to-business commerce, companies increasingly rely on the Internet. “Every company will have some component of e-commerce in the future,” says Heikki Rinne, dean of the College of Business. “People are looking for a way to use electronic commerce to benefit their companies, reduce costs, and expand markets.” The Internet is even changing the way we learn: many schools are adapting their programs to changes in the digital age and demands in the marketplace. CSU, Chico is preparing students for jobs in the expanding e-commerce industry by developing partnerships with corporate leaders and offering specialized programs and research opportunities. Kent Sandoe, Accounting and Management Information Systems (ACMS), is working with others in the department and CSU, Chico’s College of Business to develop an e-commerce track. Sandoe defines e-commerce as “a new way of doing business that involves intense use of networking technologies, primarily focused on reducing the distance between businesses and their customers and their suppliers.” The key to making it all work is the technology of advanced networking. “The network is at the core of e-commerce,” says Sandoe. The Internet is a series of routers and switches (rectangular boxes about the size of a VCR), and miles of cable. These create many small networks that combine into larger networks. Last year, the Department of Accounting and Management Information Systems added an advanced networking class to train students to use wide area networks, or WANs, which carry Internet messages. The department and the college increased their ability to provide students with important e-commerce experience when they received $360,000 worth of networking equipment and technology—routers, switches, hubs, software, and support materials—from Cisco Systems, a leader in networking solutions for the Internet. Most Internet transmissions travel through Cisco Systems equipment. This advanced networking lab gives CSU, Chico students training on the most advanced Internet technology systems in commercial use. Sandoe believes students with a solid e-commerce education will be “the hottest graduates around. Companies are looking for people who know anything about this.” ACMS chair Valerie Milliron agrees. She summarizes a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report: “They’re talking about growth of over 100 percent in this area, an astronomical job demand for these students.”Milliron also found that previous BLS predictions tended to underestimate labor demand. The amount of growth in e-commerce is staggering. In January 2000, Forrester Research reported the growth of on-line holiday shopping (between Thanksgiving and New Year’s) from $1.5 billion in 1998 to $4 billion for the same period in 1999. Forrester Research predicts that on-line business trade will also increase dramatically, from $43 billion in 1998 to $1.3 trillion in 2003. 
CSU, Chico’s new lab is one important part of the way our students will gain experience in the growing e-commerce economy. Another is the emerging integration of curriculum as Sandoe, Ray Boykin (also in ACMS), and other faculty members work on a series of related courses. In two of Boykin’s classes—procurement and supply chain management—discussion of business-to-business e-commerce has grown from one lecture per semester to its own unit. These courses and others lead into Sandoe’s e-commerce course. Boykin is also involved in a research project that will explore the possibilities of building an agricultural products marketplace via the Internet. The College of Business and the College of Agriculture are working together on the project under the Agricultural Research Initiative. Boykin and Lal Singh of the College of Agriculture are working with a team of faculty and students on the two-phase project. The first phase is a feasibility study exploring the technological and cultural aspects of establishing an electronic marketplace for the exchange of agricultural products such as dried fruit, nuts, olives, or rice. Electronic marketplaces are relatively new, so there are several business models and many software options to evaluate. Many agriculturally based businesses are relatively new to computer use, so there are cultural issues. Boykin realizes that for some small farming operations, “the jump from learning to log on to a computer to letting an electronic marketplace manage and sell their product may be too much of a cultural change.” The second phase of the project will take the information gathered in the first phase and use it to guide the development of an e-commerce marketplace prototype. Boykin expects the project to stay fluid and flexible, given the rapid rate of change in technology.
A student organization called E-Commerce Society gives students another way to be involved in the field. Mauricio Prado, an ACMS student, first got interested in computers when he was working in the Bay Area. A computer consultant took Prado under his wing, teaching him how to effectively use the Internet. When he arrived in Chico for the fall 1997 semester, he took an introductory management information systems class. One of the assignments was to develop a Web page. Prado was hooked. “That’s where my passion really started,” he says. “That initial taste of what it would be like to develop Web sites is what got me started in e-commerce.” Prado, who spent many hours developing a small business on the Internet, thought there must be other students with the same interests. He asked Sandoe to be the faculty adviser for the E-Commerce Society. They gathered interested students and formed the society in spring 1999. Prado went on to provide consultation to businesses interested in selling over the Internet. While the excitement of selling over the Internet is appealing, Prado recommends careful consideration for anyone thinking of entering the e-commerce world. For example, manufacturers need to think about how to sell over the Internet without destroying their current distribution chain. Retail businesses need to think about whether they have the inventory and people necessary to handle the increased business. The biggest mistake people new to e-commerce make is giving the design of their site to someone with minimal technical knowledge and no business knowledge, says Prado. “Would they ever have their 15-year-old nephew manage a store in a new city?” he asks. “Putting their electronic storefront in the hands of somebody who doesn’t have a business perspective is setting themselves up for failure.” When Prado wanted to start a business, he thought he could combine his interests in business and the Internet by designing Web sites for local businesses. However, he couldn’t really see the value of a Web site for businesses such as a hairdresser, automotive shop, or local restaurant. Prado could offer these very localized businesses only an information site that probably would not generate much, if any, business. He thought, “What can I do that involves these local businesses, gets them on the Internet, but actually gives them some value, so I can have some integrity when I go and talk to them?” He came up with a site where businesses post coupons that customers can print and then redeem at the store or restaurant. He developed an alliance with Matson & Isom Technology Consulting’s Web site and became part of the development team that launched iGumbo in November 1999. An e-commerce academic program is designed with students like Prado in mind. As Sandoe notes, “The beauty of e-commerce is that it’s a highly integrated kind of discipline. It has a lot of interesting technical issues and a lot of interesting organizational issues. So for someone interested in marketing and technology, e-commerce is perfect.”
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