Ebusiness Evaluation Report - Learning Outcomes and Requirements

• Identify and link ecommerce objectives with business strategies
• Identify and describe an existing eBusiness ’s revenue/business model  
• Define and describe the technology infrastructure components of eBusiness
• Describe and evaluate any strategies and tactics used to market and sell products and services on the Web to consumers
• Discuss any issues regarding the eBusiness environment: Legal, intellectual property, cybercrime, ethical, and taxation
• Identify electronic commerce opportunities
• Describe the planning, implementation, and management of the existing eBusiness
• Demonstrate an ability to conduct effective research through the use of college resources, including the learning resource center, the Internet and library databases, trade journals, trade associations, and newsprint for the completion of all research based assignments.

Research and evaluate an ebusiness or company with an ebusiness component. Once you have selected a company, your report must evaluate a company from an ebusiness perspective:

• Identify the company’s Business Strategy and assess whether the ebusiness component is linked to the strategy

For a complete strategy statement, you will need to identify three factors:

• The firm’s goals and objectives (both business and ecommerce)
• The firm’s product/market focus
• The firm’s basis of competitive advantage (i.e. the core competencies on which the firm relies for its success)

• Assessment of the Environment, the company, and its eBusiness component:
  • SWOT Analysis: The first part involves analyzing the key strengths and weaknesses of the firm. For a proper analysis, you should state a fact about the company and then show how that fact could help or hinder performance.
  • Examine 3 to 4 of the following elements:
    • Marketing/ eMarketing  – advertising, selling, public relations, distribution, pricing
    • Finance – sales revenues, profits, growth rate, debt to equity, quick ratio
    • Technology – the technology employed by the company to provide its ebusiness offering, measuring benefits, managing costs, comparing benefits to costs
    • Research and Development – state of technology, ability to develop new products
    • Production Capability – capacity of plant, productivity of workers, uses of technology
    • Analyzing opportunities and threats in the environment. Opportunities are activities/trends occurring in the environment, which the company can take advantage of, but cannot control. Environment includes organizations and activities beyond the company’s control. Threats are activities/trends in the environment that a firm must avoid and can not control
    • Examine 3 to 4 of the following elements within the environment:
      • Market size, revenues, growth rate, history, market trends, market drivers
      • Competition – company’s position, number of competitors, barriers to entry, saturation
      • Technology – what is the state of technology in the industry? New ideas that threaten product lines? Ability to patent or trademark?
      • Economy – is the economy growing or shrinking? Inflation, unemployment, energy costs
      • Political – legal barriers to markets, government treaties, international barriers
      • Social cultural – state of demand, consumer trends, international cultures

• A good starting point is the “status quo”. If the current strategy is left unmodified, what will happen to the company’s ebusiness performance. Try to be as specific as possible. Will there be deterioration of profits? Ability to service debt? Also try to measure the severity of deterioration.  Clearly a small deterioration in the future may only require a minor modification of strategy now.  Provide 2-3 strategic alternatives / recommendations that will resolve the issues cited in the report.

• When presenting these ebusiness strategies, describe them fully by identifying any changes to the company’s goals, product/market focus, or basis of competition. Clearly, which components you change and by how much are a function of your earlier analysis of the status quo. Once each ebusiness strategy has been stated, you should analyze it. You can state pros/cons for each strategy by comparing it to the firm’s goals, the company’s strengths or weaknesses, or the environmental opportunities or threats. Again throughout your analysis, you are subtly  building a case for the strategic direction you see as the best. 5 Points per Strategy

• Clearly and decisively identify which of the alternatives you would recommend to company management. Justify your selected ebusiness strategy either by stating why your choice is superior or why the other choices are inferior.
• An implementation plan is action focused, involves a time-line and sets priorities. To develop a match between the strategy and the company/environment, management will need to take several steps. An action plan must be developed. This tactical plan should also identify various time mileposts to see if the new strategy is on-track