Design of an E-Consultation System - Research Proposal Example

RESEARCH PROPOSAL PROPOSED THE E-CONSULTING SYSTEM: A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS November I. Introduction The most recent statistics place the estimated number of global Internet users to more than 2.4 billion users, a staggering 566 percent increase since the year 2000.1 The bulk of these users come from Asia, North America and Europe. The figures highlight a high degree of Internet penetration in the countries from among these regions and, collectively, they constitute tremendous potential as a market or as audience, consuming digital content and even tangible consumer products. E-commerce has become an integral part of the Internet. Through the years, the manner by which digital trading activities were accomplished became more and more sophisticated. This is not surprising because the Internet is no longer just a tool. Rather, it emerged as a platform by which business could be conducted, a place where products and services are sold. People embrace it because of the degree of control it offers, particularly in the manner by which information, content and services are filtered to suit their needs. From a purely economic perspective, the Internet is a huge market for whatever product or service that an organization or an individual is selling. This research will explore the E-consulting system. It is an emerging e-commerce industry, which provides service to consumers. In brick and mortar terms, it is simply the business of consulting, operating to help clients solve their problems, whether it is in the area of business, health, crisis management, and so on.2 The information, data, message or advice provided by consulting experts were the goods purchased by individuals. Aim and Objective of the Study The purpose of this research is to explain what e-consulting is in an attempt to determine its significance to the wider consulting industry and to identify best practices and standards that can contribute to the academic literature on the subject. The research will emphasize on the variables and the theoretical underpinnings that distinguish it from the conventional e-consulting service. For these purposes, the following goals will be pursued: Define and explain e-consulting; Review the existing literature on the subject; Outline and describe current e-consulting solutions, applications and systems; Describe challenges, limitations and future trends in e-consulting; and, Outline the successful e-consulting model or design. II. Methodology This research will employ a several tools and research techniques within the qualitative method of inquiry. Data will be gathered using interviews and secondary sources and they will be presented as empirical evidence as well as case studies in the research discussion and analysis. The flow of the research, according to the proposed methodology, would start by doing interviews, perhaps using the focus group technique. Here, a structured interview will be designed and distributed to three to five industry resource persons. The purpose is to gain a significant knowledge and first-hand data on specific issues that would guide the researcher in the investigation of specific areas of interest. The interview will entail participants being asked questions; they will be asked to respond and allowed to respond to each other as well. It is expected the ensuing conversation could yield sufficient data to be qualitatively analyzed afterwards. In addition to the focus group interview, secondary data will also be collected in order to outline case studies. These sources would include prior studies published on the subject. More importantly, however, this would be consisted of actual cases of e-consulting models taken from the Internet. Primarily, a thematic analysis model will be used in this respect. The importance of this qualitative research tool is its use of coding, which provides a framework by which themes or concepts contained in a huge amount of data can be identified. According to Ezzy (2003), through this model, the researcher is able to build a systematic account of what has been observed and documented, allowing theorizing to emerge as well as linking data these emergent theories as well as existing ones.3 III. Literature Review As an emerging industry, e-consulting is not yet widely investigated. As a consequence, there is a dearth of prior scholarly research. Rare investigations include those research done on e-consulting as part of a different research topic. For example, there is the case of Buono’s (2003) study, which attempted to establish the theoretical paradigm of e-consulting business in their discourse on inter-firm networks.4 There was also Kubr’s (2002) attempt to explain e-consulting but this time the outcome was a mere exploratory study that was undertaken to augment their content on management consulting in general. He was able to provide, however, important statistics and figures that could depict the current trends. Other works that devoted some aspect of their study to e-consulting while investigating other related themes include studies by Cohen and Kalbaugh (2009), Garbade (2011) and Stanford-Smith and Kade (2000), who made an excellent argument of the benefits of ICT-based consulting, citing important tools and technologies in the process. The relevant sources that are adequately available are dominated by those studies that explored general or different themes such as the nature of the Internet, e-commerce, social media and online marketing, among others. Clark (2010), for example, devoted much of his work to explaining how the Internet works and how knowledge, information and opinion are disseminated and traded as goods in the process. Works on e-commerce provide critical insights with regards to how trade gets done over the web. Some helpful studies include Manzoor’s in-depth study on the subject and how it is differentiated from the traditional brick-and-mortar business. Similar work includes Stair and Reynolds’ investigations on the information system and Bidgoli’s (2010) e-commerce model in selling information. Then, there was Bagad’s (2009) extensive work on the sell-side e-commerce, particularly on systems that engage in the business of selling services that includes the retrieval, storage, management and delivery of information, content or data. Stair and Reynolds (2009) explained e-commerce tactics and strategies, including online marketing and relationship marketing. The characteristic of the Internet as a market can be explained by existing literature on social media. An analytical report for Facebook generated using the Google Ad Planner tool revealed staggering statistics: 600 million users worldwide and 25 million British users; 770 billion page views and 23 hour-average of visitors’ use.5 A report by Strategy Analytics predicted that by 2012, the one billion mark would be breached, with one out of 6 people on earth will be using social media.6 Social media is important because it serves as barometer of people involvement and commitment to the Internet. According to Paul Clark (2010), social media is ultimate democracy of expression, “typified by e-mails, blogs, podcasts, video- and photo-sharing, voice-over IP, message forums and boards, and wikis” constituting some form of organic conversation that involved the production and access of contents by individuals using computers and the web.7 Social media exemplified the manner by which the Internet became not just a communication tool but a digital society where communities thrive, relationships are forged, agenda for public discourse are set, and so forth. Using the Internet, people not only lead more efficient lives. They established their own web footprint and digital lives. The dynamics of this aspect of the web can guide e-consulting firms in their platform designs for more engaging and effective web presence. Although there are few studies on e-consulting that could have provided empirical evidences in regard to efficiency, successes and failures, among other variables on this specific topic, the available sources – as cited – proved to be sufficient. These resources were able to demonstrate a universal framework that depicts effective approaches by which organizations and individuals buy and sell online. They are relevant to this research because e-consulting is, after all, a business. It has products or it offers a range of services and the dynamics by which those are marketed, sold and delivered to consumers follow the conventional e-commerce paradigm. References Bagad, V.S. Management Information Systems. Technical Publications, 2009. Bidgoli, Hossein. MIS 2010. New York: Cengage Learning, 2010. Buono, Anthony. Enhancing Inter-Firm Networks and Interorganizational Strategies. Information Age Publishing, 2003. Business Wire. "Social Media Users to Exceed One Billion By 2012: Long-term Financial Viability will Depend on Targeted Advertising Success" Business Wire, http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20071213005893&newsLang=en. Clark, Paul. Stormy Skies: Airlines in Crisis. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2010. Cohen, Adam and Kalbaugh, Edward. Esi 2010: Sources Technology and Process. Aspen Publishers, 2009. Ezzy, Douglas. Qualitative Analysis: Practice and Innovation. London: Routledge, 2003. Garbade, Michael. Differences in Venture Capital Financing of U.S., UK, German and French Information Technology Start-ups: A Comparative Empirical Research of the Investment Process on the Venture Capital Firm Level. Norderstedt: GRIN Verlag, 2011. Google. :Google Ad Planner: Facebook.” Google, https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en#siteDetails?identifierwww.facebook.com&lp=true. Internet World Stats. "Internet Usage Statistics". Internet World Stats, http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm. Kubr, Milan. Management Consulting: A Guide to the Profession. Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2002. Manzoor, Amir. E-Commerce: An Introduction. Saarbrucken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010. Stair, Ralph and Reynolds, George. Principles of Information Systems: A Managerial Approach. New York: Cengage Learning, 2009. Stair, Ralph and Reynolds, George. Fundamentals of Information Systems. New York: Cengage Learning, 2011. Stanford-Smith, Brian. and Kidd, Paul. E-Business: Key Issues, Applications and Technologies. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2000. Read More