E-commerce at Taylor University

Rod Ide and Rob Leniham came and spoke to us about the current E-commerce utilizations at Taylor University. It was an interesting discussion about the issues that come with E-commerce and why Taylor has been reluctant to implement this technology.

We started off our discussion by listing some of the reasons we as students use E-commerce in our every day lives. Some of these reasons included ease, efficiency, speed, and convenience. Convenience is the main reason. We find it much more convenient to get on the Internet and purchase a product than travel to the store for the same item.

Companies have different reasons for implementing E-commerce technology. Some of these reasons include organization, low overhead, can reach more people, track customer information, and less risk of chasing bad debt. All these characteristics come into play when deciding how, or even if, E-commerce should be used.

Taylor University has been slow to adopt E-commerce into its economic infrastructure. There are various reasons why this has occurred. Below is a list of the reasons and a short description of each:

• Discount Rates - Money taken from credit card payments is not necessarily the amount the University will receive. Credit card processors take a percentage of the money as a handling fee for processing the transaction.
• Credit card data storage - Storing credit card data would require an exponential increase in the security implementation at Taylor University. The security standard provided by the credit card industry, know as PCIDSS, is very detailed and specific on how the data is to be managed.
• Background complexity - Each department that has a store-front is required to have their own custom background implementation in order to hand to transactions. This increase of complexity cannot be handled by the current IT staff at Taylor University.

Rob and Rod tied all these issues together in simplified terms in order to define the current state of E-commerce at Taylor University. Although small steps are being taken around the campus, it will be some time before E-commerce becomes a prominent technology at Taylor.