Amazon: A Narrative Business Description

Organizational Overview:

Amazon is a leading global internet company that directly sells products or serves as a platform for the sale of a wide variety of products. It does so by the usage of warehousing and distribution centers. The majority of Amazon's sales are products sold directly by Amazon although many are through third-party sellers.

Amazon was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Amazon began life as an online bookstore but then quickly diversified its portfolio to include other up and coming electronic products. Amazon hit its stride in 2004 when it began to expand on its web service offerings.

The company serves consumers through its retail websites and focuses on selection, price, and convenience. It also enables sellers to sell their products on company websites, and their own branded websites. In addition, Amazon serves developers through Amazon Web Services, which provides access to technology infrastructure that developers can use to enable virtually various type of business. Amazon now manufactures its own popular product in the Kindle E-Reader.

Amazon has become a leading player in the Internet retail sector. It currently has 56,200 full time employees and annual revenue of 57.26 billion dollars for 2012. The estimated revenue of Amazon for 2011 was 48.1 billion dollars. This shows that Amazon is at a point of rapid growth and expansion. Amazon has 21 distribution fulfillment centers totaling 9 million square feet of warehouse space across the globe.

Amazon is a company that focuses on the customer experience and tries to be a personal shopper for its customers. It tracks profile information through the usage of cookies and other sources. The company's strongest point of differentiation from any other web service is its multi-level e-commerce strategy.

Process Overview:

The sales and distribution process of the standard internet sales of Amazon involves several parties that are illustrated in the top half of the diagram above. These include most notably the customers, web servers, the data warehouse, financial analysts, supply chain and the fulfillment center.

The general process begins with the customer creating a profile of information and connecting to the web server. The web server interacts with the customer using a customer tracker and finds products that match the customer's needs.

The data warehouse then transfers information to several other parties. However, for the general sales process the data is sent to a financial analyst and a planning applications sector. Once data is recorded from the planning applications server the data is passed through to the supply chain. The suppliers then deliver products to Amazon's fulfillment center and the products are delivered to the customers.

This process seems long but typically the fulfillment center already has the product stored that the customer is requesting and the process tends to be shorter for the actual purchase. Because of the power of the data warehouse, information at Amazon is sent very quickly and efficiently and that is how product orders are delivered so quickly.

Detailed Process Description:

Customer Creates Amazon Profile: Before a customer can make a purchase on Amazon, they create a profile and are tracked by the web server through the usage of computer cookies. After the customer creates the profile he/she becomes connected with the data warehouse and Amazon serves as a customer service representative.

Enter Sales Order: The customer then puts in an order after he/she has been matched with a product that matches what he/she was looking for. The customer has already entered their information including billing into their profile. The information from the order includes quantity, product number, price, tax, shipping, and a total cost.

Transfer Information: The web server transfers the information from the purchase