The Use of the Internet for Purchasing Goods and Services Has Enormous Potential - Essay Example

E-Business Table of Contents 1.Bumble Products and Services Company 2 2.SWOT analysis: 3 a.Strengths 3 b.Weaknesses 4 c.Opportunities 4 d.Threats 4 3.Revenue models: 5 4.Marketing strategy: 5 5.Legal and ethical issues: 6 6.Privacy and security: 6 7.Hardware and Software resources: 7 8.Network considerations for getting online: 8 9.Solutions: 13 10.Costs associated: 14 11.Conclusion 16 References/ Bibliography 17 1. Bumble Products and Services Company Bumble Products and Services (BP & S) Company is a large enterprise where the various hair care products are sold. They are venturing into e-commerce with an attitude to synchronize its operations and create a standard for getting the jobs done. Identifying the crucial business activities and process managements would entail greater envelopments of technology to cater information to its full swing. In the United States, it has the ability to provide enterprise customers with electronic data interchange (“EDI”) ordering and customized billing services, customer savings reports and stocking of specialty items specifically requested by these customers. The relationship marketers’ efforts are supported by frequent catalog mailings and e-mail campaigns both of which are designed to cause inbound telephone sales and interactive websites, which allow customers to purchase products directly over the Internet. BP & S would like to address the department named customer sales and marketing. This department is aimed for fetching the customers for its products and services. It markets its products and services over the internet for selling its products. The online technologies would act wonders for BP & S enterprise in giving them a global stand and make them quite susceptible to attract competition. Presently it caters to a limited amount of consumers. Its desire to enlarge its wings to international market makes sure that the global demands of the consumers would result in fostering standard practices in line with international standards. The products would be made to compare with the competitors and would further add the brand and quality for sale in the international market. The international consumers would be at ease to purchase products at their convenience and would get across its message with the help of online technologies. Its products would fetch better acceptability in the foreign market and would comprise quality and international standards in the making of things. 2. SWOT analysis: a. Strengths Loyal customers Strong reseller network Good products Focused management/staff Competitive product prices b. Weaknesses Has not utilized Internet technology BP & S not well-known among prospective customers Drop in growth rate Profit margin is too small (company needs to reduce costs) c. Opportunities To create a web site to serve customers and promote the company To enter the international market To establish online sales as a new distribution channel d. Threats Other larger and more well-known competitors may enter BP & S’s targeted market segment Economic slowdown could reduce demand Competitors have utilized Internet to enhance customer relationships 3. Revenue models: Among the revenue models named B2B, B2C and C2C, we can select B2B and B2C for the following reasons: The website would cater to individuals and institutions meaning other businesses The website would not cater to C2C as no customer can sale to others, taking that would mean that the site is an auction site, which it is not in the real sense 4. Marketing strategy: Rendering to international customers and consumers is quite a challenge for any enterprise as they perceive the products and services of other countries with extreme competitive motives and continuous comparisons with their usual practices. The brand image of BP & S would accelerate the products sale and push its image into the international market for better collaboration and sale. Collaboration with international suppliers and vendors for sale would result in making immense profits and would compose better deals for making profits. 5. Legal and ethical issues: Legal and ethical issues are vital to online success. Building trust and user confidence is essential to our client, respecting consumer privacy and adhering to data protection legislation. "Consumers are extremely concerned about security and privacy on the Internet" (Trepper, 2000.) BP & S Safe Shopping Guarantee means customers pay nothing if unauthorized charges are made to their credit cards as a result of shopping at Amazon. They use secure sockets layer (SSL) technology encrypting all personal information. "BP & S takes customer fears about security seriously" (Chaffey, 2004). BP & S makes clear terms of trade and offer warranties/returns policy. 6. Privacy and security: On the e-commerce side, it can use VeriSign services for protecting data and information exchanged between the sites. It uses a 128-bit SSL certificate to get the job done. The e-commerce transactions can be well protected using the SSL technology (Rayport, 2002). It is very secure for all business deals and offers greater protection for business financial information. The security aspects could be divided into two parts: one would be software security and another would be information security. 7. Hardware and Software resources: The front end design would compose setting up the website and would require HTML and client side technology for getting the job done. The creation of the static pages would take HTML and JavaScript or VBScript must be used to validate the web site and its form entries and data storage requirements. The advanced technologies would make sure that data is represented well and connected for getting the usability right for the website. The usability features must be taken care so that one is able to acknowledge the look and feel, consistency of content, navigation patterns, anytime-anywhere traveling within the website and many more (Usability.gov, 2007). It also allows user to understand and reciprocate information, their current path and content for the website. The client side features enables the user to take the correct action and guide them all along. The middle level architecture takes into account the business logic that is driving the front end and all the operations that the user is supposed to perform to accomplish a certain amount of their job. The business processes are the payment modules, generating the online dynamic content, tracking one’s order, tracking the online cart or basket requirements, handling the database operations and making sure that they get everything they want. Several applications severs like IBM Websphere, JBOSS can be used for the purpose. The database for the website is composed of several tables which record data and information from the users of the system which comprise of several individuals, institutions and several other businesses. The data is stored and fetched when required to view the information. Databases of RDBMS nature such as Oracle, DB2 and others can be used for widespread storage of data and information. 8. Network considerations for getting online: The current business environment demands efficient use of IT in maintaining transparency within the company and at the same time active use of WWW in getting into new markets and opportunities. The system which has been proposed will help the BP & S in maximum possible use of network by making everything available at all PCs connected to the network and at the same time gives option of accessing the same through WWW to have remote access. With company’s website, people will come to know about BP & S and at the same time the expected collaborators and clients will also be made aware of the importance BP & S gives to latest technology including IT. The main reason behind connection of laptops of onsite engineers with that at BP & S is to reduce the distance between the two. A virtual connection will make this office as near as the next block within the head office. The laptops of the engineers can be connected with the head office or the server through VPN technology or Virtual Private Network Technology. The VPN technology is a private network communication technology used within company with message transmission being confidentially or securely done over publicly accessible network (Howstuffwork, 2006). Figure 1 : Network architecture of LAN The various assumptions are as follows: Director is connected with the server, using a desktop pc. The sales account managers are connected through hub interconnected with 3 laptops. Here the hub is used to redirect traffic according to requests made by the user. The engineers are provided with laptops and interconnected using a switch, a two layer switch which takes care of the storing and forwarding mechanism. Figure 2 : The VPN technology can make private connection between two LANs through the use of publicly accessible network. (Source: http://www.ingate.com/img/vpn-img.jpg) Implementing a private wired network between the two is going to be very costly and might be infeasible. But that problem can be solved through VPN technology with switch with laptops of onsite engineers be connected to server present in head office at BP & S. Security in the network can be maintained through the authentication system. Any access to the network or server will require approval from the firewall. Firewall is basically a system which checks the access right of the user (Forouzan, 2003). The access rights are assigned by the system administrator and the firewall compares the access right of the client intending to get into the network with the list or database already provided to it by the administrator. This technology makes the network secure and also gives option to authorized users to access the network through proper channel at either end of the network. 9. Solutions: The various solutions could range from the following: Building the software: The software development by the organization can be taking up by allocating a separate team to plan, build and operate the system so that the system security and privacy is retained and the organization is able to manage the system updation and future requirements (Hoffer, 2002). Allocation of new team or hiring for the purpose and effective management of the team is quite difficult. On the other hand understanding of the system requirements would be better performed by the people of the same organization. Buying the software: The purchasing of generic software would be of great help as it would save time, costs and effort on the part of the organization. However the generic software’s are often expensive and includes a large array of functionalities that are often of no use to the organization in particular. 10. Costs associated: Building the software: It would take around 4500$ to construct it. Sommerville (2004) defines ROI = (Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment)/ cost of investment Here the gain from investment would be 250000$ for a period of 10 years, cost of investment would be 4500$, so ROI is calculated to be (250000 - 4500)/4500 = 54.56 Buying the software: The cost of the software package would be around 6000$. ROI = (Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment)/ cost of investment Here the gain from investment would be 250000$ for a period of 10 years, cost of investment would be 6000$, so ROI is calculated to be (250000 - 6000)/6000 = 40.67. 11. Conclusion The Internet has brought the whole world together and in addition to it the tastes and interests of the people are organized well. Shopping over the Internet is an activity that most people engage in, almost regularly. It is rapidly developing as an alternative to the high street and sales have already overtaken virtual shopping. The use of the Internet for purchasing goods and services has enormous potential. The Internet enables consumers to shop or do transactions 24 hours a day, all year around from almost any location. It also provides consumers more choices and allows them to have quick comparisons. Moreover, it allows consumers to interact, exchange ideas, and to compare experiences with other customers in the electronic communities. Though the Internet offers a range of advantages that collectively have been shown to be important enough to attract massive interest, recent surveys demonstrated that the penetration rate of Internet shopping remains low. References/ Bibliography Chaffey, D. (2004) E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 2nd Edition, Prentice Hall, Pearson Education Limited, pp.46, 53, 55, 224, 492. Forouzan, A. Behrouz (2003). TCP/IP Protocol Suite, second edition. Tata McGraw Hill. Ghosh, AK (2001). Software security and privacy risks. Rayport (2003). E Commerce, TMH. Howstuffwork Inc (2006). Retrieved 4, December 2008 http://www.howstuffworks.com/vpn.htm Singh, V. (2001). Color Design for the Web. Retrieved 4, December 2008 from http://coolhomepages.com/cda/color/. Sommerville, Ian (2004). Software Engineering, Pearson Education. Trepper, C. (2000) E-Commerce Strategies, Mapping your organizations success in today's competitive marketplace, Microsoft Press, pp.138-140, 153. Webopedia (2006). Bandwidth. Retrieved 4, December 2008 from http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/b/bandwidth.html Read More