E-Commerce at Ford Australia

E-Commerce at Ford
Australia
E-Commerce Management
Venkata Allagadda-30066555
Submitted: May 31,2011
ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 1

E-Commerce at Ford Australia
Table of Contents
Table of Contents...................................................................................................................2
Abstract:.................................................................................................................................2
Introduction.............................................................................................................................3
Business Model, Marketplace Analysis, Revenue Model Tutorial 2:...................................5
Ford Infrastructure (About Website, Intranet, Online adaptation) Tutorial 3:.......................7
E-Environment of Ford Tutorial 4......................................................................................13
E-business Strategy Tutorial 5..........................................................................................17
E-SCM (Value chain flows) Tutorial 6:..............................................................................20
E-Procurement at Ford (Tutorial-7)...................................................................................22
E-Marketing and CRM at Ford (Tutorial-8)........................................................................23
Change Management at Ford (Tutorial-9).........................................................................26
Analysis and Design in Ford WebsiteTutorial 10...............................................................27
Conclusion:...........................................................................................................................29
References: .........................................................................................................................30
Books...................................................................................................................................30
Abstract:
The Cast study about the Electronic Commerce management at Ford Motor Company
Australia website and as well as the areas in the Ford Australia organisation where E-
Commerce is adopted. The organisation in this case study is one of the leading multinational
automotive organisations in Australia that are famous for their products such as Ford Falcon
which regarded as a great car all around the world that is manufactured in Australia. The
organisation also uses Internet for marketing its products by various marketing methods. This
report also explains about the history of Ford and its adaptation of Internet in its Company’s
infrastructures and how it how it sustained various trends in the company’s progress. The

report also explores about various E-Commerce applications used in the Ford Australia, its
success and failures in adopting these applications in the Ford IT infrastructure.
Introduction
Ford motor company was an American company which is founded by Michigan
native Henry Ford with a great history with its first introduction of model-T. Ford Motor
Company was incorporated in the year 1903 by Henry Ford with some investors forming the
company. Ford Motor Company’s model-T was first sold in Australia in the year 1904. Ever
since that Ford motor company has a huge place in the history of Automobile industry in
Australia. Years later Ford Canada opened a sales branch in Australia. It wasn’t until 1925
that the country became official Ford nation, when the Ford Motor Company established the
company’s assembly line merely after three months after the company opened its

headquarters in Geelong, Australia. This assembly line measured just over 40 feet in length
and was installed by Canadian engineers working for the company. Quickly after this line
began running and successfully producing Ford’s Model T, more assembly lines began
popping up all over the country. The first year of production, these assembly lines (including
those in an unused meatworks in Sydney, a produce warehouse in Fremantle, and an old
brewery in Tasmania) produced an astounding 12,679 vehicles. Today, the Ford
manufacturing facilities in Australia are still going strong and still producing Ford vehicles.
These all-Australian vehicles are exported to New Zealand, South America, and some Asian
markets. Ford was one of the few companies that adopted e-Commerce in the early years.
Some of the areas that Ford Australia is very strong are the in e-Commerce are the Customer
relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) and few others. In a
recent case study, Ford Australia use Leadtec platform where Ford can directly interface with
its suppliers, reducing the need for manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors or delays
occurring which is one of the key characteristic of e-SCM. Ford Australia is a major national
automotive manufacturer. It has extensive design, engineering and manufacturing facilities
directly employing nearly 5000 people. It has responded strongly and positively to the
challenges inherent in the government’s automotive policy plan with a strong focus on
people, process and product. Its new product investments and workplace skill levels are at
record levels. It has remained committed to this response despite a difficult commercial
environment over the past four years. (Anonymous, 2011)
The following report elaborates some of the e-commerce technologies the Ford Motor
Company successfully implemented in its early years and the use of its internet technology to
advantage the company. The report also outlines the use if internet technologies in the use of
company’s current actives and future prospects in endeavour.

Business Model, Marketplace Analysis, Revenue Model Tutorial 2:
Ford management controls possibly the most famous automobile brand in the world.
Over many years the Ford business structure has had to adapt to changing markets, trends and
economic conditions. Ford is also notable for its combination of three technology tools to sell
the right car with the right mix of features to the right customer at the right price. It uses one
tool to determine the car with the optimum package of features most likely to appeal to
consumers in a specific market. Another tool, pricing software technology from Manugistics,
determines which sales-promotion campaign should be offered on each car in each market. A
third tool puts Ford dealers in the driver's seat to order the inventory most likely to wheel off
their lots. With this knowledge in hand, Ford can gear its production, sales, and marketing to
get the biggest bang for the buck. "There is a clear link between what customers want and
what we build," says Lloyd Hansen, the spear head behind the project. "The problem has
been finding it.” For example, one of Ford's lowest-margin businesses is the rental-car
market, where it sells primarily Ford Escorts.
Business Model of Ford Motor Company:
According to Timmers, Business Model can be defined as architecture for product,
service and information flows, including a description of the various business actors and their
roles; and a description of the potential benefits for the various business actors; and a
description of the sources of revenue (Timmers, 1999). Business model for Ford can also be
defined as technique used by the Company to get its revenues, i.e. through sales and also on
business practice used to spend its finances in terms of procurements of raw materials for
manufacturing and marketing its products.

Revenue Model:
The major source of revenue for the Ford Motor Company accumulates from
its percentage sales of automobiles from company recognised dealers that are operating in
over 200 countries. These dealer operated showrooms also pay loyalties to the Ford
Company. The following figure indicated the total sales occurred for ford in the financial
year of 2009 which is sub-categorised in by regions (Unknown, 2011).
Adopted from (Chandrakanth.D, N.d.)
The major part of revenues for Ford Motor Company comes from the North America,
although the most of these sales are in United States where the Company is born. The below
table shows the increase in demand of the Ford vehicles from the past 10 year and forecasted
for the next 10 years (until 2020).

Adopted from (Chandrakanth.D, n.d.)
Ford Infrastructure (About Website, Intranet, Online adaptation) Tutorial 3:
In today’s world e-Commerce has a great impact on any organisation. The rate of
utilising internet resources for consumers is at its peak. In a recent research, one of the major
online activities is to research websites before purchasing new car. Ford Motor Company is
one of the few e-Commerce companies that utilised this opportunity to advertise their
products over internet to attract customers. Below figure demonstrated the some of the
activities done over internet.

Adopted from http://www.joehallock.com/edu/COM498/online-activities.html
Ford launched business plan known as “Ford 2000” in the year 1999 to re-engineer
the whole organization to reinstate the company’s infrastructure. The main aim of the whole
process was to reduce the Vehicle center (VC) to only five places which overlooks the
operation in over 200 countries where Ford had its operations running at that time which
meant the Information Technology (IT) as a driving force to link Ford centers worldwide.
Throughout the 1990′s, Ford developed a cost effective Global Enterprise Network
Integration (GENI) process to link all its locations compromising on the type of the
connection and the cabling in favor of full coverage. In the path towards service cost
reduction and bringing more business through the web, Ford worked closely with its
competitors in the U.S. market GM and Chrysler to establish a common network what came
to be known as “Automotive Network Exchange” (ANX) certificate. The protocols aimed at
providing a unified communications standard through the Internet to enable suppliers to
provide common technology for all manufacturers. Moreover, Ford focused on making
information on its web site more accessible and useful by deploying a team to manage the
process of adding and updating information based on an analysis of how humans deal with

information. One final aspect of Fords endeavor was to try to build a model through its
infrastructure that benefited from the model implemented by Dell computers to improve their
supply chain and delivery process. (Sally.A, 2008)
Ford IT Infrastructure:
In the year 1991, internet was open for commercial usage which attracted many companies to
utilize the opportunity. In the same year, Ford had launched its plan to update its
infrastructure, and seized the opportunity brought by the global movement of integrating the
voice, fax transmission network with data transmission and expanded its WAN to include its
offices in Europe and elsewhere. The financial benefits also came from the fact that Ford
adapted the TCP/IP protocol which is a standard protocol from the beginning and made sure
that all its technical infrastructure upgrades adhere to the standards. This made the transition
of its system to the Internet as cost effective as it could be. (Sally.A, 2008)
Web Technologies at Ford Company:
Prior to invention of web, most applications used standard languages such as C and
C++ to create the desktop software which are dependent on the platform on which they are
developed. For example, application developed on UNIX cannot run on windows platform.
After Tim burners-Lee invented web, a common standard (HTML) used for all platforms to
run the application which are called as web browsers. The technical department at Ford used
web languages such as HTML to build its initial Ford’s web site in 1995. In 1996, the same
technical team started to develop new applications making use of the unified “Netscape”
browser that help them to deploy all machines at the company. This helped the Ford
Company to reduce its training cost at substantial levels because of the friendly user interface
in the form of web applications that can be accessed at different locations. Furthermore, the

speed of development made vital applications available to different individuals across the
company. For example, the B2B site allowed suppliers remote and secured access to various
sections of Ford’s Intranet where they can share their latest developments and information. In
addition, the development team created an application as a virtual break up on Ford’s website
where Ford’s engineers could examine parts of competitors’ cars and evaluate any new
technologies thus by avoiding an actual trip to a physical location where Ford engineers have
to teardown actual cars to examine the parts. (Sally.A, 2008)
Ford Website Infrastructure:
Availability: (WWW.FORD.COM.AU)
This website is always active 24 * 7. As till now this website never had maintenance
problems or shut down because of any problem.

Usage Statistics for ford.com.au:
1. Using site: http://www.ipaddresslocation.org/ to find the IP address of Ford’s
web site
IP address for ford.com.au is 136.1.29.63

2. Ownership information for Ford organization
DETAILS FROM http://whois.ausregistry.net/
Whois response for ford.com.au:
Domain Name ford.com.au

Last Modified 12-Oct-2009 16:08:36 UTC
Registrar ID TPP Internet
Registrar Name TPP Internet
Status ok
Registrant Ford Motor Company of Australia Limited.
Registrant ID OTHER 004 116 223
Eligibility Type Other
Registrant Contact ID TPP185375-R
Registrant Contact Name Domain Admin
Registrant Contact Email dnsmgr@ford.com
Tech Contact ID TPP185376-C
Tech Contact Name Domain Admin
Tech Contact Email dnsmgr@ford.com
Name Server dns005.ford.com
Name Server dns006.ford.com
Name Server extdns001.ford.com
Name Server extdns002.ford.com
DETAILS FROM http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp
Registrant:
DNS MGR
Ford Motor Company
20600 Rotunda Drive ECC Building
Dearborn MI 48121
US
dnsmgr@FORD.COM +1.3133903476 Fax: +1.3133905011
Domain Name: ford.com
Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com

Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com
Administrative Contact:
DNS MGR
Ford Motor Company

Dearborn MI 48121
US
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
DNS MGR
Ford Motor Company
Dearborn MI 48121
US
Created on..............: 1988-08-31.

Expires on..............: 2012-08-30.
Record last updated on..: 2010-09-17.
Domain servers in listed order:
dns005.ford.com
extdns002.ford.com
extdns001.ford.com
dns006.ford.com
E-Environment of Ford Tutorial 4
Ford has emerged as an successful company that implemented E-commerce strategy
not only in the external environment but also inside the organisation (intranet) as well. Some
of the factors that determine the efficiency of any organisations internet usage are its drivers,
barriers and benefits. Below are the list of top three drivers, barriers, and benefits.
Drivers:
a) Communication: One of the main reasons for Ford motor company to establish internet is
to improve the communication between the organisation and the customers. Communication
services used over internet to contact customers for resolving issues, updating latest news
about their product are some the reasons that Ford uses internet for.
b) Knowledge Management: Ford created a “Knowledge Domain Team” to build complete
information in nine areas that were identified as vital to the business. The process Ford took

was based on surveys and specialists input in how people perceive information, and what is
considered vital and what is distracting in the structure of Ford’s website. The aim behind the
initiative was to reduce the time individuals spent in searching for information through proper
indexing of the website content, and making sure that what was important could be accessed
in due time, and what is trivial did not overwhelm the researcher with thousands of results.
c) Recommendations: Based on the browsing that customer does on the product
(automobile) over the internet using Ford’s website, the website can recommend product to
user that is more suitable. For example if the user is browsing for car which comes under the
class of sedans, the Ford website can recommend Ford Falcon car which is popular sedan that
the company offers. A recommendation feature is one the major driver for the business
strategy of the Ford Motor company’s internet website.
Barriers:
a) Security: Sometimes user are concerned over their information that is stored in the website
such as their Name, Address and other details being misused by the company or being
distributed third party organisations for promotional use.
b) Skills: People who use internet must have some knowledge on how to use the computer
and applications (browsers) in it. So, user who needs to use the Ford company website needs
some computer skills to use the company’s website.
c) Costs: Even though many people now days have computers or smart phones that are used
to access the Ford company website, it is still an requirement that consumers need to have
these electronic devices which costs the user in order to use the website.
Benefits:

a) Business opportunities: The organisation has an advantage over its competitors to
conduct business. They can promote their new and existing products using internet as
medium reach the consumers efficiently.
b) Customer service: Internet can also help Ford Company to provide services such as
answer their questions, resolve any issues and informing regularly about anything to its
customers effectively and efficiently.
c) Cost Reduction: Costs are largely reduced because of the organisations online
availability. For example the company can respond to its customers via mail, chat services
which can significantly reduce their costs in the human resources since one person can handle
at least five to six customers efficiently.
Micro Environment at Ford Motor Company through website:
Customers – Consumers can browse the website to enquire or learn about their product (cars,
services) by using Ford website. Ford Company provides many online services such customer
services, product catalogues, special offers etc.,
Competitors – Since the company is one of the few organisations that utilises its online
services to over 200 countries, internet can be measured an competitive edge over its
competitors such as Toyota, General Motors, Honda etc., to its customer base.
Intermediaries – The organisation has many intermediaries also known as dealers who
offer internet services via their websites. Ford Motor Company is one of the few companies
that have a large base of intermediaries that offer many services through their online media.
For example in Australia, Ford Company has over 50 dealers (intermediaries) who offer
services using their online services.
Suppliers – Major parts of the product is manufactured by the Ford Motor company itself.
But, Ford Company buys some parts from its suppliers. For example motor insurance is one

of the services which the organisation relies on its suppliers and Ford Customers can buy
their insurance for Ford product through its suppliers. Ford has representatives of St George
Bank, Australia on site to provide competitive finance facilities (Jarvisford.com.au, 2011).
Macro-environment
Society – Ford.com.au collects personal information only when the customers
• Request quotes, services, support, or information;
• Pay through credit card;
• Participate in surveys, sweepstakes, or other promotional activities;
• Subscribe to newsletters, promotional emails, or other materials;
• Contact Ford executives through website;(About Ford, 2011)
Country specific, international legal – Ford respect towards its customers' privacy is
paramount. They have policies and procedures to ensure that all personal information is
handled in accordance with the National Privacy Principles that is collected online.
Country specific, international economic – Some of the economic constraints for Ford
Company when operating globally are country specific taxes and laws. For example when
Ford Australia import/export its vehicles in Australia, its pays the duty taxes according to the
country’s tax policies.
Technology – The growth in technology has provided more diverse opportunities to Ford
with the growing usage of mobile and hand held devices such as Smart phones. Ford has
developed applications that are compatible with these devices and are more easily accessible
by the customers. For example, mobile applications developed for Ford Company in Apple
and Android devices.

E-business Strategy Tutorial 5
A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Strategy also
defines the future direction and actions of a company defined as approaches to achieve
specific objectives. These directions are achieved by analysing the current strategy and
deriving its future strategy by using some techniques such as SWOT analysis, PORTER’s
five forces etc.
Figure e-business adaptation, Chaffey 2007
The above figure illustrates steps of e-business adoption. Analysing the above figure,
Ford Company does not have an online payment system in the Company’s website as main
reason for its online service to Communicate with customers, marketing its products whereas
the remaining steps are observed internally through the organisations online channel to
monitor the payments and tracking the orders of its consumers.

Competitive threats affecting Ford Motor Company
Competitive threats can arise from different areas in an organisation. An organisation’s e-
business mainly comprises of buy-side and sell-side. Below figure illustrates the areas
where competitive threats can occur in e-business environment.
Figure Competitive threats acting on the e-business, Chaffey 2007:220
Porter's five forces analysis is a framework for the industry analysis and business strategy
development developed by Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School in 1979. It uses
concepts developed in Industrial Organization (IO) economics to derive five forces which
determine the competitive intensity. So, we can use this framework to analyse the threats in

order to achieve overall profitability of the organisation. Below figure illustrates the areas
where threats can arise from competitors.
Source – The Business Environment by Worthington & Britton, Sixth edition.
Threat of new entrants – Threat of new entrants will be low for the ford because the ford is
one of automobile company which provides the best services in online environment with low
cost servicing; Ford also provides customers to choose their vehicles to be test drive before
purchased. Ford is having cost advantage because it is providing the vehicles with low cost
when compared to the other competitors such as hot deals/offers advertised through online.
Bargaining power of suppliers – Ford motor company enhances the relations with sixteen
new suppliers to gain the bargaining power of suppliers. Ford is having good relations with
suppliers for the output of quality cars.

Bargaining Power of customers – Customers of Ford are comfortable with ford way of
providing the vehicles customization in their online website and way of delivering the
products within the specified time. The bargaining power of customer is low when compared
to the other automobile.
Threat of substitute – Substitutes for ford motor company are less but there are some
substitutes which the cars are running on the electricity and other bio fuels. Example, Riva
one small car which runs on electricity can be a threat to Ford.
Rivalry among existing companies - The important competitors of Ford motor company is
General motors, Toyota, Honda and BMW. All the above mentioned forces will lead to the
rivalry among these companies to provide the customer with competitive advantage and
provide the customer with quality cars and commercial vehicles.
E-SCM (Value chain flows) Tutorial 6:
Global supply networks are becoming increasingly important in the auto industry.
Assemblers and suppliers develop parallel networks across the world. These changes are
represented in Figure, which presents a model of how relationships would develop if follow
design and follow sourcing were applied extensively. For simplicity, this shows just a single
product being supplied to one assembler operating in three different countries: the country of

the assembler’s core operations, and operations in two other locations.
Figure Value Chain model, (Unknown, 2011)
Supply chain management (SCM) is an e-commerce application in order to coordinate
between suppliers, manufactures, distributors, retailers, and customers. The central theme for
an SCM application is to provide information to all those who are involved in making
decisions about the product and also to manage delivery from the supplier to the consumer.
Effective way to manage SCM is to reduce errors in supply chain distribution, increases

revenue which automatically enhances productivity, and reduces the order-to-fulfillment
period.
Vehicle Dealers
Centre
Ford supply chain process can often be compared to that of Dell. The difference in
distribution model between Dell and Ford lies in the middle link of using distributors and
retailers. Since Ford cannot skip retail as it is crucial distribution point, it worked on
establishing a network of retail shops also known as Ford dealers by successfully connecting
all the Ford dealers under a single network also known as Distributor . Ford made sure shops
are not affecting each other in terms of sales, and gave them all a standard look and feel to
establish itself in the consumer’s market as a prestigious cars sales retail company.
Furthermore, extensive re-engineering initiatives were undertaken to enhance Ford external
network by eliminating the association with smaller suppliers. In that way, Ford made sure
that key suppliers have access to forecasting data from customers’ purchasing trends and
production information to enable a faster order-to-delivery cycle. Ford vision was to create a
model that allowed flexibility, predicable processes and delivered the product at the right
time to the right consumer.
E-Procurement at Ford (Tutorial-7)
E-procurement refers to the electronic integration and management of all Procurement
activities including purchase, request, authorization, ordering, delivery and payment between

a purchaser and supplier. According to Ford, Procurement is seen as an activity at the end of
a supply chain and is very reactive, but with e-procurement there is the opportunity for the
department to become much more strategic without wasting its resources. (Joanne Collins,
2000)
Ford believed that using the Internet improved the efficiency of its supply chain. In
mid 1999, the company created AutoXchange, a joint venture with Oracle that allowed online
business-to-business (B2B) transactions with its suppliers. (Ford’s e-buss., 2011)Ford was
able to reduce suppliers' inventories and eliminate billions of dollars in excess stock by
getting accurate information to suppliers about short-term demand, with the help of the real-
time orders entering its system. Ford also utilises an e-procurement solution for its everyday
operations such as purchasing its office supplies and filing expenditure reports from the
employees helped the organisation to reduce its spending and transactions costs by 30
percent. (Paul.T.K, 2001)
E-Marketing and CRM at Ford (Tutorial-8)
Ford Online Marketing:
E-commerce at Ford is mostly about marketing online.
The website
Ford’s website is like an online "showroom". For potential customers, the web experience is
more similar to visiting a physical showroom.
“Revealed Secrets” campaign
The “Revealed Secrets” campaign helped launch Ford’s most recent Falcon range of cars.
This campaign was centred on the Internet. The marketing team took this approach based on
research that showed that 73% of car buyers start online. The campaign aimed to gather a list
of email contacts in order to build relationships with potential customers. Unlike ‘junk’ email
we often get, Ford took a highly personalised approach, based on the philosophy "give a lot,

get a little". E-commerce allowed Ford to target their marketing to the different types of
customers they identified.
Ford dealers and e-commerce
Ford dealers are important in e-commerce. Cars are never purchased online, but the Internet
is used to direct customers to their local dealer. Information gathered already about customers
can be used by the dealer to continue an ongoing relationship. The Internet is also important
for business to business contact between head office and national dealers.
Keeping it all going
Ford employs approximately 100 IT staff at national head office but only about 5 of those are
directly involved in e-commerce. All major website development is outsourced to companies
specialising in web development.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) at Ford:
CRM is the process of creating and maintain the relationships with business
customers or consumers. The key element of any e-business is building long-term
relationships with customers and is essential for any sustainable business. At Ford, CRM
plays a huge role in its online strategy. Ford Motor Company is one of the very few global
organizations that have garnered significant accomplishments in CRM by listening, engaging
and refining products with their social consumers on a large scale. This has afforded them
many new market opportunities including brand expansion beyond a mustang / truck
company to a car, utility and truck company, penetration into a more diversified customer
base and cutting edge products that are customized by the consumer’s social voice. For
Example, “http://www.thefordstory.com/” is a website that aggregates Ford’s social web
participation along with what others are saying about Ford’s brands.

Adapted from http://www.thefordstory.com/
The Customer is Job 1 at Ford. SAS (Statistical Analysis Software) fuels CRM
Programs for Global Auto Maker. At Ford, the drive to meet customer needs began
nearly 100 years ago with one man's dream to put America on wheels. While the needs
of automotive customers have evolved dramatically since the Model T, Henry Ford's
vision continues on a grand, global scale in an industry where automotive ingenuity and
customer loyalty fuel success. Today, a new SAS platform that supports customer
relationship management (CRM) applications helps ensure high customer satisfaction
levels for the more than 30 million drivers of Ford brand automobiles around the world.
The reliable SAS solution augments Ford's existing Teradata database and provides a
flexible, powerful platform for data mining, predictive modelling and information
analysis. Executives with Australia's oldest Ford dealership, Harrigan Ford say they are

set to achieve savings of close to $400,000 in the first year of implementing a
Revolution Dealer Management System (DMS).
Figure: Feedback CRM mechanism
(Source: http://www.slideshare.net/harshlee/crm-final-presentation)
This advanced CRM capabilities in the Ford website have drastically improved efficiency and
provided a more targeted advertising spend and marketing campaigns. (Sandra.R, 2007)
Change Management at Ford (Tutorial-9)
The continuous growth of technology and competitiveness makes change inevitable in an
organisation. They are different approaches of managing change are by the involvement of
the senior management. Change management is conducted by change agents who are
managers responsible for controlling change. Based on Ford Company’s business strategy
full-scale electronic commerce initiative is not an efficient approach. Since the online website
is mainly used for marketing and CRM as the customer needs to see and try the product when

buying a product in auto-industry. But still change management is necessary in Ford Motor
Company in special cases such as acquisition of small companies, automation of departments
(Payroll, employee monitoring). The most common approach of dealing change at Ford is
with the involvement of senior management are:
Collaborative – change is done by the widespread participation of the employees and by
providing necessary training.
Consultative – change is implemented by the management after taking valuable inputs from
some of its employees.
Directive- The management takes the decisions just by informing the employees formally.
Depending on the sensitivity of the change many particular approaches can be
monitored to achieve change management at Ford. For example, re-engineering Ford’s
business process for building the IT infrastructure shows how it adapts changes according to
changing trends in the management processes. (Prosci, 2007)
Analysis and Design in Ford Website Tutorial 10
Ford Australia website (ford.com.au) can be analyzed on four stages.
The four stages of Rosenfeld & Morville’s analysis are:
1. Identify different audiences
2. Rank importance of each to business
3. List the three most important information needs of audience.
4. Ask representatives of each audience type to develop their own wish lists.
Site design Issues:
1. Style and personality + design

 Support the brand: The overall design and style of Ford.com.au website
promotes the brand Ford.
2. Site organisation
 Fits audience’s information needs: Audience main purpose to visit
ford.com.au website is get information about Ford’s product. The website
fulfils this requirement to the fullest.
3. Site navigation
 Clear, simple, consistent: The site navigation is simple and easy to navigate as
the website navigation is indicated by graphics and text so it is easy for user to
understand the navigation of the pages.
4. Page design
 Clear, simple, consistent: The pages are designed in a consistent way with
interactive graphics and video demo of the product.
5. Content
 Engaging and relevant: The content on the Ford website is purely relevant the
products that we are browsing and user can expect appealing (interactive) and
consistent data throughout the site.

Conclusion:
Ford is a paradigm of how traditional organizations can mature to adapt current trends that
increased its business significance in terms of revenues and profits. The business model that
Ford Motor Company followed demonstrates the continuous support from management in
adapting changes. The association was not only limited to internal staff of the organization
but also extended to external bodies such as Ford dealers who analyzed current trends to
overcome their competitors such as the “Revealed Secrets” campaign which helped the
dealers to reduced unnecessary cost spend towards marketing thus by improving the
accountability of the revenues spent. Ford technical management of improving its IT
infrastructure came at a period where the Internet is was not even in its full potential. This
shows how Ford has the competitive edge over its competitors by being early adapters of the
technology in Internet age. The introduction of Ford adaptation towards technologies intranet
and TCP/IP protocols in the late 90′s helped Ford cut most of its costs in order to connect its
own offices. Furthermore, the ISP services that provided hosting servers were limited to only
few players, which explained why Ford preferred to manage its own web server.
From this case study, I understood the level of commitment large firms have to
maintaining their position in the market. These companies know the revolving nature of
business in the sense of how easy it is to fall back if they did not keep up with the change.
The Ford process also shows the need for quick and resourceful thinking when faced with
situations that might seem to be unfavorable. The way Ford ventured into the foreign market
by acquiring local manufacturers was a strategic decision that did not only enabled Ford to
merge with different technologies, but it also saved it the additional cost of establishing
production centers in Asia-Pacific and Europe.

References:
Books
1. Chaffey, Dave, E-Business and E-Commerce management (3 rd Edn), Prentice Hall,
2007, 2009.
2. Timmers P (1999) Electronic Commerce Strategies and Models for Business-to-Business
Trading. Series on Information Systems, Wiley, Chichester.
Electronic books:
3. About Ford. retrieved on 28th Apr 2011 from http://www.ford.com.au/servlet/Satellite?
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E-Commerce at Ford Australia

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E-Commerce at Ford

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 1

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 2

success and failures in adopting these applications in the Ford IT infrastructure.

Ford motor company was an American company which is founded by Michigan

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 3

those in an unused meatworks in Sydney, a produce warehouse in Fremantle, and an old

brewery in Tasmania) produced an astounding 12,679 vehicles. Today, the Ford

automotive manufacturer. It has extensive design, engineering and manufacturing facilities

environment over the past four years. (Anonymous, 2011)

company’s current actives and future prospects in endeavour.

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 4

Business Model, Marketplace Analysis, Revenue Model Tutorial 2:

market, where it sells primarily Ford Escorts.

Business Model of Ford Motor Company:

According to Timmers, Business Model can be defined as architecture for product,

manufacturing and marketing its products.

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 5

year of 2009 which is sub-categorised in by regions (Unknown, 2011).

Adopted from (Chandrakanth.D, N.d.)

for the next 10 years (until 2020).

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 6

Adopted from (Chandrakanth.D, n.d.)

Ford Infrastructure (About Website, Intranet, Online adaptation) Tutorial 3:

activities done over internet.

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 7

Adopted from http://www.joehallock.com/edu/COM498/online-activities.html

to be known as “Automotive Network Exchange” (ANX) certificate. The protocols aimed at

providing a unified communications standard through the Internet to enable suppliers to

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 8

supply chain and delivery process. (Sally.A, 2008)

Web Technologies at Ford Company:

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 9

to teardown actual cars to examine the parts. (Sally.A, 2008)

Ford Website Infrastructure:

problems or shut down because of any problem.

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 10

Usage Statistics for ford.com.au:

1. Using site: http://www.ipaddresslocation.org/ to find the IP address of Ford’s

IP address for ford.com.au is 136.1.29.63

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 11

2. Ownership information for Ford organization

DETAILS FROM http://whois.ausregistry.net/

Whois response for ford.com.au:

Domain Name ford.com.au

DETAILS FROM http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp

Domain Name: ford.com

Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 12

Created on..............: 1988-08-31.

Domain servers in listed order:

E-Environment of Ford Tutorial 4

Ford has emerged as an successful company that implemented E-commerce strategy

b) Knowledge Management: Ford created a “Knowledge Domain Team” to build complete

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 13

c) Recommendations: Based on the browsing that customer does on the product

strategy of the Ford Motor company’s internet website.

distributed third party organisations for promotional use.

some computer skills to use the company’s website.

ITECH7606 – ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MANAGEMENT Page 14

a) Business opportunities: The organisation has an advantage over its competitors to

medium reach the consumers efficiently.