Unit 29 Internet and E-Business Assignment Help

Introduction

Internet and e-business have become essential part of business these days. Every business organization look to implement e-business solutions in order to consolidate the statistics and increase the customer base. In this Unit 29 Internet and E-Business Assignment Help we would details about e-business by doing case study on some scenarios. In first section, we would detail the basic things related to e-business by the help of a study on Ideal DIY stores. We would study about the environments and business transaction type of e-business. We would also look at the barriers in front of an organization towards going online. Then, we would move towards security and legislative issues in e-business. Studying modes of communications and importance of e-business to an organization would help us complete the first task. In second task, we would give a demonstration of e-business models using the case study on Don’s Lumber Company. We would justify which e-business model should be best suited for the above said company. We would analyse the modes based on their capabilities to generate revenue for the Don’s Lumber Company. We would also deduce the future possible developments in the e-business models for the same. In the last section, we would do a case study on amazon website and will try to study and analyse the e-business models. We would first walk through the roles of client servers, browsers and search engines. We would demonstrate the difference between intranet and extranet. Then, using the example of amazon website, we would study the key elements of website design. We would also evaluate the impact of well-designed website to e-business. In the end, we would also deduce some issues that a business organization may face related to website usability.

TASK 1

1- e-business Solution

E-business is a very effective tool of electronically simulating the business. Using e-business, the business organization not only has a complete top view of the activities of the business, but it also helps in sorting an consolidating all the statistics and formalities involved in business. E-business is an effective tool for any business organization which has established itself in the market in a lower level, but want to expand itself outside the primary limits. For Ideal DIY Store (IDS), which has already got a customer base across UK, it should be perfect to have e-business enabled for managing the customer and suppliers at one go. So, in terms of business environment around IDS, it is a suitable time to take the support of e-business, as it will help the organization in keeping the track of all the modules like supply chain, marketing, customer relationship, etc. in a consolidated e-business system (Combe, 2012).

Based on business transaction, we can have various kinds of e-business models:

• Business to Customer (B2C): In this kind of e-business model, the business organization uses the e-commerce utilities to sell their products or services to customers. Amazon.com is a good example of this model (Rayport, 2002).
• Business to Business (B2B): In this mode of e-business, dealings are done between two business organizations. These are more complex to implement electronically, as both the end-points of the transactions are business organization. Proper supply chain steps are followed at both ends (Rayport, 2002). This could involve transactions between a retail business organization and a vendor organization.
• Customer to Business (C2B): This involves selling of goods to business organizations from customers. This can include a customer selling a second hand car back to a service centre. Gilt.com is an example of C2B model (Rayport, 2002).
• Customer to Customer (C2C): These e-business websites provide facilities for two customers to communicate. EBay.com is an example of this model, where customers can buy or sell products of their choices.

Recommendation for IDS

For IDS, it should be suitable to implement such an e-business solution, which would consolidate both ends of the supply chain. It should have capability to track the payables module of business, i.e. the transaction between supplier and IDS (Kaplan, 2000). In addition to this, the solution should have facilities to track the receivables module, i.e. truncations between IDS and the customers. Thus the solution should offer a model which would have a mixture of B2B and B2C model.

2- Benefits and barriers to business with online presence

Benefits of e-business for IDS

IDS has been having 5 branches around UK. It has already been expanding in terms of customer base and items variety. With expansion in business, the demand for raw materials is also increasing. This would require a very efficient handling of supplier which supply the raw material to IDS. With complex calculations involved, it becomes very tough for the employees to keep efficient tracking of all the data. Thus, it is very crucial for IDS to implement e-business. It will help the employees to connect with the suppliers in a better way. The e-business will come with a consolidated database, which can be accessed anytime to know the status of the entities involved in the business (Kaplan, 2000). Also, e-business will also help IDS to cover a broad base of customers in a highly efficient matter. The e-business will help in having more clarity of requirements from clients and also will cater to a proper and clear communication with the supplier on items and freights. Thus, e-business will be very beneficial for IDS.

Barriers to e-business for IDS

IDS could face two primary barriers while going online. One would definitely be cost constraint. E-business would require a good implementation cost and a team which could support the technical stuff related to it. So, IDS management needs to analyse how much they want to expand the business. There is a risk of going into loss after spending so much on e-business implementation. Another barrier is that IDS management will have to work very hard in providing inputs to the e-business designer in order to pull all the important existing data into electronic systems (Rayport, 2002).

3- Security issues to IDS e-business model and preventive measure

Security Issues for IDS

Below are the possible security threat that could affect e-business aspirations of IDS:

• Virus and malware: Unwanted programs and applications in the forms of viruses, Trojans and malware could adversely impact the servers that might lead to data loss and data corruption. Proper anti-virus and server scan can help to prevent such stuffs.
• Software Errors: The implemented programs could have certain uncaught errors, which could impact the business processes in a long term perspective. This could be prevented by thoroughly testing the e-business system before implementing it fully (Kaplan, 2000).
• Data Theft: The e-business database would have very sensitive data which would be very important and private for IDS as an organization. Thus, certain measures need to be taken care which do not allow any unauthorized access to any unauthorized individual.

Legislative Issues for IDS

E-commerce is a more clear and open mode of transaction between the two parties. IDS may have to check a lot of things before registering with the suppliers. Any discrepancy with the goods sold to the customer could lead to a legal implications or penalty by the customer, as e-commerce is a more serious transaction type and the customers have almost have zero tolerance towards forgery. It is very important for IDS to do a background checking of all the suppliers and should ensure that they are authorized suppliers and selling quality goods (Rayport, 2002). Thus legislative issues become more important in case of e-commerce than offline business.

4- Internet Technologies and their importance in making e-business successful

The available internet technologies has a huge role to play in deciding and designing the suitable e-business structure for a business organization. Currently, there are various internet technologies available in market and all of them have varied utilities in terms of facilities, User interfaces and security. For IDS, it is important to choose such an internet technology that can be best suited in terms of data security, as it will have to deal with sensitive data related to banking sector for the transactions between IDS and its suppliers. Moreover, it needs to have such a system in place which is very friendly as the end-users in terms of customers. In the era of e-commerce the user interface of a website vastly determines the customer indices of a business. Thus the internet technologies has to be chosen very wisely by the think-tank of the business organization (Vakharia, 2002).

There are various modes of communication in e-business. Here are the description of a few of those:

• Mobile telecommunications: Mobile networking plays an important role in e-business communications. These days, mobile numbers are a mode of authentication of accounts used in e-business websites. Mobile phones are used for notifying the stakeholders of the proceedings or intimating important data or messages.
• Social Media: Social media like twitter and Facebook can stakeholders together and can play an important medium of drafting notices and communications at one go.
• Emails: For more private and important detailed communications, emails are effectively used in e-commerce. This could be used for giving notifications and reports to both customers and suppliers by IDY.
• Android Applications: In addition to e-business sites, android application for a few routines could also come handy for IDY as they consume very less memory and solve complex purposes (Mahadevan, 2000).

These modes of communication is considered one of the most important aspects in the digital economies of today. There has been a big shift from offline modes to online to mobile. Telephone, email and conferencing have over to private Social Networks which operate inside an organization. Extensive shift of traffic from desktops to mobile will see a continuing and evolving change in the modes of communication used.

TASK 2

1- Illustrate the different e-business models that can be best suited for Don’s Lumber Company

In order to come to conclusion regarding decision on choosing the best suited e-business model for Don’s Lumber Company, we need to analyse the current challenges that the company are facing. Don’s Lumber Company has been doing a variety of work including selling materials like flowing, mouldings, windows, siding and roofing. For these materials, the prices keep changing and the manufacturing cost gets impacted, as a result. Now, when the customer enquires about some bulk stuff manufactured by Don’s Lumber Company, then the organization has to check with the suppliers about the actual prices at the ground level. Once the prices from suppliers are confirmed, then only the business could estimate the pricing of the stuffs manufactured by them. This process actually involves a lot of manual work from the team and that too is prone to a lot of mistakes. In this scenario, the Don’s Lumber Company can go for a solution which can help in consolidating the database related to the pricing of the raw materials by the suppliers. It can be updated based on the time to time reporting from the suppliers which are partners to Don’s Lumber Company. This would also help to maintain clean and crisp accounting information of the transactions which are made between the business and suppliers. Cash Management and Payables modules of the supply chain management can be handled by a good quality e-commerce tool.

For this scenario, Don’s Lumber Company must go for B2C model of e-commerce in which they can maintain a consolidated database related to the stuffs with suppliers and can maintain a full-fledged website which can give access to users to enquire or purchase the goods offered by the company. It will also help Don’s Lumber Company to retain the board customer base across New York, because it can cater the consumer requirements at one go. B2C model will allow the company to maintain a website which is updated by the suppliers’ database and there would not be any need of manual intervention, as the database would be updated timely. All in all, a B2B model would support the company to keep good consolidated database of the updated pricing of the materials from suppliers, but the B2C model should the highest priority task for the company in order to keep the customers interested.

a- Describe how this process could be improved with e-business solution

As demonstrated above, Don’s Lumber Company could go ahead with B2C approach while handling their customers and B2B for consolidating the supplier database and getting rid of the manual price enquiry process. In this section we would analyse how different models allow us to generate revenue.

• Business to Business Model: It usually clears the way for a well maintained system that keeps track of supplier transactions. In real-time, business gets affected by many factors related to suppliers. Supplier relations are one of the crucial subjects of consideration. If a system can be put in place which can keep the supplier properly checked and consolidated, the business to be done with clients will never get adversely affected. Thus, there is a very good boost to the revenue generation, as removal of all the irregularities and manual work from the process attained by Don’s Lumber Company would be done by opting this mode (Kaplan, 2000).
• Customer to Business Model: It itself is a revenue generating tool, as we pit the customers against the business. However, it is not eligible for consideration for Don’s Lumber Company.
• Customer to Customer Model: The supply chain involved with Don’s Lumber Company includes the suppliers at one end and customers at other end. Thus, this kind of model will not be able to impact the revenue for Don’s Lumber Company.
• Business to Customer Model: Maintaining a website which gives customer the access to the utilities of business is a very good idea for the company. The customer can log in and enquire about the prices of the goods they want to purchase. Also through this website, a substrate can be formed between suppliers of raw materials and the customers, so that the daily manual work of checking the latest prices can be minimized. Every day, the e-business support team can consolidate the goods pricing database with the latest available prices. Thus, by keeping the customers satisfied, there could be a huge elevation in revenue, if Don’s Lumber Company follows this model.

b- Analyse each model in terms of its capacity to generate revenue

There can be many future developments that are possible for Don’s Lumber Company, if they start the business using e-business techniques. Below are a few of them:

• Expansion of Business: Putting a website in place for Don’s Lumber Company will help in better management of the business. It would mean a better watch on the data transactions and business calculations. This helps a business to expand itself, as it is easier to maintain the chart of accounts of the business. The owners of the business can have a confined look on the business happening online. The business can open stores in locations other than New York and have a consolidated view on all of the business activities.
• Management of Human Resources: Not even the procurement and financial stuff, going for e-business also helps the company to expand the e-business utilities. There are a lot of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) told like Oracle e-business suite and SAP ERP. All these tools give ample opportunity to keep track of human resources and payrolls of the employees of a business organization.  This means that even if a business organization is looking to expand in terms of staff entry, then also, database consolidation can keep a track of the human resources as well (Shim, 2002).
• Advertisement Opportunities: With changing times, we can see that e-business has also become a huge site for advertisement. If for an organization, e-commerce goes successful, they can even implement advertisements on their websites and can utilize the customer base to post advertisement of other business organizations. So e-business also gives this opportunities to the organization, if the websites goes steady in terms of customer visit.
• Coping up with latest Technological Developments: Technology development in business is day by day changing the way business is done. So, if a particular business organization gets left behind from e-business utilities at a certain time, then there is a possibility that it will not be able to cope up with the latest business trends and strategies that could come up in future. That is why, it is always crucial for any budding business organization to have scope for e-business (Zott, 2011).

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Conclusion

Unit 29 Internet and E-Business Assignment Help now-a-days is a must do activity for the business organizations which are in fast growing status and are looking to expand the business. Now only for expansion point of view, but also for consolidating the statistics related to business can be easily done by implement e-business solutions for a business. There are quite a few challenges and barriers in creating a website. But proper planning and background study could enable good quality service through e-business. Website design structuring and planning helps in determining the potential risks which one can face in doing e-business. All these need to be kept in mind while implementing the e-business operations.

References

Cao, M., Zhang, Q., & Seydel, J., 2005. B2C e-commerce web site quality: an empirical examination. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 105(5), 645-661.
Combe, C., 2012, Introduction to e-business. Routledge.
Kim, S., & Stoel, L., 2004. Apparel retailers: website quality dimensions and satisfaction. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 11(2), 109-117.
Kaplan, S., & Sawhney, M., 2000. B2B E-Commerce hubs: towards a taxonomy of business models. Harvard Business Review, 79(3), 97-100.
Mahadevan, B., 2000. Business models for Internet-based e-commerce. California management review, 42(4), 55-69.