E-commerce program unveiled.

Course to be delivered entirely online this fall

Re-engineering your company to manage business relationships and your supply chain online is the aim of a fledgling e-commerce program being unveiled at Sudbury's Cambrian College this fall.

A first of its kind in Northern Ontario and geared to working professionals and distance education students, the aim of the post- diploma program is to arm enrollees with the skills to develop e-commerce solutions.

Beginning in September on a part-time basis, the four courses of the 16-week program will be delivered entirely online.

Betty Freelandt, Cambrian's dean of business, media and information technology, says much of the program's content is business-to-business (B2B) focused, rather than business-to-consumer, in providing the basics of how to automate functions in order-taking, customer service, payment and security, project management, developing networks, data warehousing and shipping out product.

The course is open to those holding either a university degree or college diploma or having extensive business experience. Proficiency in application software and an understanding of how operating systems work is also a must.

Students will log on through the course Web site either at home or work and download material. Much of the course work involves Internet research and analysis.

"Most of the courses have a major project related to it, so there's a real measurable outcome at the end of the course," Freelandt says.

Some course material centres around consumer behaviour, understanding what kind of person conducts business transaction over the Web and how one markets and services to that segment of the market.

"It's a different consumer that you're appealing to when you're doing e-commerce and that's where our (B2B) focus would be very different," says Freelandt.

Instructors and support faculty will be available to field questions via chat lines or standard class time at least four hours a week.

The origins of the program sprang out of public demand, says Freelandt, especially inquiries from recently graduating students coming out of Cambrian's business administration program who were asking for an additional specialty.

The program also falls in line with the City of Greater Sudbury's knowledge-based technology mission to create a local skill set and a generation of businesses ready to reach out to global markets.

Freelandt says the beauty of online learning is being able to cultivate the best teaching talent from practically anywhere in the world to deliver the course.

"When we went out to develop these courses, we went shopping for people who had expertise already. We have already contacted several people in Toronto Who were very interested in it."

Maximum class size is about 40 and queries are already flowing in from as far away as Africa and India.

Next year, Cambrian has plans to institute the program on a full-time, two-semester basis with graduates being fully qualified to step into positions as Web site developers, e-commerce project and marketing managers and e-commerce consultants.

The final "capstone" project will involve students working with an actual business client interested in an e-commerce solution and mapping out a strategy to bring that concept to fruition by defining what is needed by way of infrastructure and developing a fully functional Web site.