Augmented reality (AR) is an exciting concept which can help companies improve their customer experience. It is best explained through examples:
1 Glasses Direct created its ‘Video Mirror’ app which enabled site visitors to model pairs of glasses using their webcam.
2 BMW used AR within a campaign launching their Z4 model on a ‘virtual’ test drive around the desk!
3 Layar demonstrated an estate agent application using the camera on a mobile phone while overlaying property information in a similar form to Google Street View.
Mini- case study 3.2 gives a futuristic example.
Augmented reality (AR)
Blends real- world digital data captured typically with a digital camera in a webcam or mobile phone to create a browser- based digital representation or experience mimicking that of the real world.
Mini Case Study 3.2
In South Korea, Tesco Home plus has significantly fewer stores than the market leader E-mart. Based on research which showed that many Koreans tend to shop in stores near their homes for convenience, Tesco trialled a virtual store to reach these shoppers.
Virtual displays were implemented in a similar way to actual stores – from the display to merchandise, but with smartphone QR code readers used to shop and after checkout the goods are delivered to the cus- tomer’s home (Figure 3.2).
Tesco Homeplus opens subway virtual store in South Korea
Digital business infrastructure components
Figure 3.3 summarises how the different components of digital business architecture relate to each other. The different components can be conceived of as layers with defined inter- faces between each layer. The different layers can best be understood in relation to a typical task performed by a user of a digital business system. For example, an employee who needs to book a holiday will access a specific human resources application or program that has been created to enable the holiday to be booked (Level I in Figure 3.3 ). This application will enable a holiday request to be entered and will forward the application to the employee’s manager and the human resources department for approval. To access the application, the employee will use a web browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome using an operating system such as Microsoft Windows or Apple OS X (Level II). This systems software will then request transfer of the information about the holiday request across a network or transport layer (Level III). The information will then be stored in computer memory (RAM) or in long- term magnetic storage on a web server (Level IV). The information itself, which makes up the web pages or content viewed by the employee, and the data about their holiday request are shown as a separate layer (Level V in Figure 3.3 ), although it could be argued that this is the first or second level in an e-business architecture.
Digital business infrastructure components
Figure 3.2 Tesco virtual store
Source : adapted from South Korea subway virtual store, http://www.tescoplc.com/index.
asp?pageid=69&mediacategory=27, Tesco PLC.
Kampas (2000) describes an alternative five- level infrastructure model of what he refers to as ‘the information system function chain’:
1 Storage/physical. Memory and disk hardware components (equivalent to Level IV in Figure 3.3 ).
2 Processing. Computation and logic provided by the processor (processing occurs at Levels I and II).
3 Infrastructure. This refers to the human and external interfaces and also the network, referred to as ‘extrastructure’. (This is Level III, although the human or external inter- faces are not shown there.)
4 Application/content. This is the data processed by the application into information.
(This is Level V.)
5 Intelligence. Additional computer- based logic that transforms information to knowl- edge (Level I).
Each of these elements of infrastructure presents separate management issues which we will consider separately.
A short introduction to Internet technology
As you will know, the Internet enables communication between millions of connected com- puters worldwide, but how does the seamless transfer of data happen? Requests for informa- tion are transmitted from client computers and mobile devices whose users request services from server computers that hold information and host business applications that deliver the services in response to requests. Thus, the Internet is a large- scale client– server system.
Figure 3.4 shows how the client computers within homes and businesses are connected to the Internet via local Internet service providers (ISPs) which, in turn, are linked to larger ISPs with connection to the major national and international infrastructure or backbones
A short introduction to Internet technology
Client– server The client– server architecture consists of client computers, such as PCs, sharing resources such as a database stored on more powerful server computers.
Figure 3.3 A fi ve- layer model of digital business infrastructure I
Digital business services – applications
layer II
Systems software layer
III Transport or network layer
IV Storage/physical
layer
CRM, supply chain management, data mining, content management systems Web browser and server software and standards, networking software and database management systems
Physical network and transport standards (TCP/IP)
Permanent magnetic storage on web servers or optical backup or temporary storage in memory (RAM)
V Content and
data layer
Web content for intranet, extranet and Internet sites, customers’ data, transaction data, clickstream data Examples
which are managed by commercial organisations. These high- speed links can be thought of as the motorways on the ‘information superhighway’, while the links provided from ISPs to consumers are equivalent to slow country roads.
Globally, many submarine cables form the backbone between countries, and these cables are susceptible to damage. For example, in January 2008 a ship’s anchor severed a cable in the Mediterranean, resulting in a dramatic slowdown in Internet access for people in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and the Middle East!
Management issues in creating a new customer- facing digital service
In this section we consider some of the issues that managers introducing new services need to be aware of, including: