Amdeb stands for Automatic Marketing Driven E-Business. The Amdev document project includes all design and development documents. As the name shows, Amdeb integrates two ideas: e-business and marketing driven.
E-business refers to the information technology-based business automation. Compared to traditional management information systems (MIS), e-business represents an advanced level of management automation. Most business operations, including manufacturing, warehousing, supply chain, order processing, accounting , human resource, web site and customer relationship management, should be fully integrated and operated with digital intelligence. In information system development, we know that there is no silver bullet. The availability of open source software such as Odoo business management system and many usage-priced high quality big data services make the e-business a reachable goal.
Marketing-driven reflects the growing importance of online marketing and e-commerce. Businesses depend more and more on e-commerce and online marketing to promote their brands and conduct business. The goal of Amdeb is to develop a highly integrated, highly automated business management software that combines online marketing and backend operations. In the near term, Amdeb focuses on three online marketing channels:
- Online marketplace Integration. Online marketplace include online marketpalces such as Amazon, eBay, Rakuten and Taobao. Amdeb fully integrates backend ERP system with these marketplaces. Though working as an important sales channel, an online marketplace has big limitations such as the lack of direct costumer interaction, big sales cost (30% or more), and weak control.
- Company e-commerce Integration. A business can own many e-commerce sites including a company B2C web site, a B2B web site, and multiple social media web sites such as Facebook and WeChat.
- Intelligent online advertisement. In an idea way, Amdeb should be able to read the product description and automatically generate online marketing campaigns such as Google Adwords, Bing Ads or mass mailing campaigns. Due to the integration with backend operation system, Amdeb should be automatically manage marketing campaigns based on sales and inventory information.
Honestly, there is nothing new in the above vision. The key point is that the mature of open source software and the availability of economy business intelligence make the vision a reality in the near future. It is like the introducing of the first generation of iPad -- nothing really new compared with the previous tablet computers, but the integration and improvement in all components made it a great product.
In two or three years, Amdeb will provides three features soon or later.
- e-commerce integration: fully integrates business operation with online marketpalces and its own e-commerce sites in terms of product listing, order processing, accounting, and warehousing etc.
- Automatic marketing: automatically creates and manages online marketing compaigns.
- Business intelligence: automatically makes routine business decisions and provides support for strategic decsions.