Impact Of E-Commerce On Traditional Businesses: Two Technologies And Recommendations

1. Identify and briefly describe the two technologies from the list provided that you will research in your business systems analysis

2.Explain the objectives of undertaking this project to integrate new technology. In others words, what should the project accomplish, and how does it support the goal of your business?

B. Provide a project description that explains the purpose of the project. Be sure to address the following:
i. What does your business need to do to satisfy the objectives?
ii. What are the desired results at the end of the project?
iii. Why is it important for your business owner to consider implementing new technology?

This paper discusses about the impact of e-commerce websites and the support that these websites would provide to the different traditional businesses. The report discusses about the various kinds of business processes that should be followed by the concerned business to shift towards the e-commerce platform. The paper would also put focus on the different kinds of privacy concerns that are in relation to the online platforms (Turban et al., 2017). The report also discusses about the two different kinds of technologies that would be able to support the business and thus be able to expand the business.

This report focuses on the problem that is faced by the business owner in choosing a particular technology during the shift of the brick-and-mortar business to an e-commerce platform. The primary problem of concern is in relation to the different forms of security and consumer privacy that should be protected internally. In the present form, the business has a basic website that has a list of their products and the customers could just be able to purchase items from their retail store (Hartono et al., 2014). The problem is that the business owner thinks that they are left behind in the highly competitive market and thus are thinking of a shift to the e-commerce platform.

The technologies that would be put together within the present business are Social Computing and Wireless, Mobile Computing and Mobile Commerce. These technologies would be able to suffice to the needs of the business and could also serve the customers in an efficient manner.

The main objective of the brick-and-mortar business is to generate new form of revenue based on the impacts made by e-commerce platforms. The owner of the business is deciding to streamline the processes of the business based on integrating the traditional business model with the new e-commerce platform. The project is based on making use of the latest technologies that would be able to support the business based on choosing of their e-commerce platform. The business should also review the privacy and security issues in relation to the e-business platform.

The primary purpose of the project is to choose the proper technological platform that would be able to support the current business model of the business. Based on the final achievable state of the project, there are certain aspects that should be addressed:

• Based on achieving the objectives of the business, it could be suggested that the business should make use of the technologies that would be able to suit as per the needs of the business. These technologies would also serve the purposes of supporting the privacy and security concerns in relation to the e-business platform of the business.
• The desired results that are expected at the completion of the project is that the different processes of the business should be streamlined. This would also include the integration of the business within the online platform, manage the inventory and also facilitate different other kinds of processes within the business.
• With the latest shifts in technology and consideration of increasing the revenue of the business, it has been seen by the business owner to shift their business to the new online platform. This would not only increase the revenue of the business but would also put forward new areas to showcase their business to other customers. This would help in gaining a wide customer base unlike their competitors.  

Based on the requirements of the business, the shift to a technological platform would need the basic form of technological requirements. These includes a proper web server, server software, web based tools such as HTML text editors and CMS systems. The e-commerce platform for the business would also include a database system, networking systems, suitable browser compatibility, ports and domain names (Nica, 2015).

Two Technologies

The company selected in this part of the report is Zappos. The company is based on an online shoe and cloth retailer. It is primarily based in Las Vegas, Nevada. The company was founded by Nick Swinmurn and the original website was launched under the name of the domain name of Shoesite.com. The company was one of the early adopter of the social media computing technology. They have made use of different social media platforms such as Twitter and YouTube in order to attract their customers. Zappos is also making use of social media platforms in order to collect comments from their employees and customers. Customers mostly tweet their feedback about their purchases made from the website (Baghdadi, 2013). Zappos disrupts the process of management by inserting themselves into the minds of the customers. They post the feedbacks of the customers on their webpage and thus adopts a wide form of transparency for other customers.

Bluefly is an online shopping website that deals with fashion dress and accessories. The business offers a wide range of fashion apparels based on the choices of the users. The online retailer has refurbished their website and mobile application in order to reflect their streamlined interface. This would include push notifications and would also provide constant updates across several platforms. The business also provides cloud-based program in which the digital contents would be updated simultaneously. They also have a consistent content management systems that would have the capability of instant update on their products. The mobile application have also been equipped with better form of mobile experience for the users (Rahimi et al., 2014). This would ensure faster load times, streamlined look and performance of high quality.

Based on the technical research on the companies, it could be concluded that both of these companies are making varied use of technological platforms in order to gain benefits. This part discusses about the ways in which Bluefly makes varied use of mobile commerce technology in order to benefit themselves in the highly competitive market. With the innovation in their website and the redesigning of the mobile applications, it has been seen that the business has benefitted themselves. There has been a massive growth in the number of download of the mobile application. This is primarily due to the reason that the mobile application is equipped with a technology based on faster load time of pages, performance based on high quality and an easy user interface.

Business Requirements

The new business model that has been provided in the case scenario could make use of the strategy followed by Bluefly based on mobile commerce. With the new kind of design of the mobile application, the business could bring in an adaptive and responsive form of application based on increasing the mobile commerce sales of the business.

The technology described in the first scenario is based on social computing. This technology has been seen to bring about a massive form of change within the context of the business. In the current context, the business has a normal website and customers are able to purchase items from the retail store. This new technology would help the business to attract much number of customers and also showcase the various contexts of their business to a larger platform (Li et al., 2013).

The technology described in the second scenario is based on mobile commerce and mobile computing. As the current scenario of the business is not much advanced, hence the mobile computing technology would be able to provide a means of support to bring in changes to the business platform (Dinh et al., 2013). This technology would enhance the management of the shopping experience and would also support social content and push notifications.

The current scenario of the business is based on a simple website. The website does not provide the option to their customer to purchase items. Based on the technical aspects that are used by other businesses such as Bluefly and Zappos, it could be recommended that the concerned business within the case scenario should make use of the latest technologies (Einav et al., 2014). The business should make use of an integrated form of mobile based computing and social computing in order to match their business goals with their competitors. The technical solution suggestible for the business would be based on designing a mobile based application (de Reuver et al., 2015). This application could help their customers to manage their shopping items, improve the social content and thus would also include push notifications based on latest purchase habits.

The recommended technology based within the context of the business is based on mobile computing and social computing. While, mobile computing would be able to provide the basic definition of a new kind of mobile application for the business, social computing would help in enhancing the social interactivity of the business platform. Social computing would play a major role in bring new kinds of innovations within the context of the business (Laroche et al., 2013). It would be helpful in highlighting the business aspects and would thus also help in mixing with their customers. The business could leverage their website for e-commerce and thus be able to supplement the type of processes based on purchasing habits of their customers. The increasing form of social interactivity would be able to create a kind of technology that would help the business to sell their products (Niranjanamurthy et al., 2013). This would help the business in mirroring the ways by which the consumers would evolve their lifestyle patterns.

Technology Requirements

The security features that should be included within the recommended technology based on designing the new e-commerce website are:

• PCI Compliance– The new website should meet the PCI Compliance Standards. They include American Express, MasterCard and Visa Inc. They are meant for developing, enhancing and maintenance of security standards based on the security of payments (Yeo, 2013).
• SSL Certificate – This certificate would properly ensure that any kind of sensitive information sent via the internet would remain secure and encrypted. The SSL certificate would thus ensure that all sensitive information would be encrypted such as credit card information, passwords and usernames. They would be unreadable to everyone except the server destination. Hence, they would protect the entire communication based on theft and eavesdropping.
• Use of HTTPS – This is a protocol based on transferring data via the internet. HTTPS would encrypt the information. This should be used on such pages that would collect and store data. This would ensure that the visiting customers would feel secure when they would feel to be secure during the transmission of information (Durumeric et al., 2017).

Based on the consideration of security and privacy during seeking third-party vendors for the proposed technology, it could be recommended that the business should perform a regular back-up of their data and also perform recoveries (A. Harris & P. Patten, 2014). The business should also conduct internal form of security audits. A proper form of background check on the present employees should be conducted as they would have access to the entire data of the business (Zhu & Furr, 2016). There should also be a proper form of security policy and disaster recovery plans and these should also be updated on a regular basis.  

Based on protecting the internal information related to the business. The proper form of internal safeguards that should be put in place includes the education of staff based on using the new kinds of security features within the business. A proper form of background check on the employees should also be conducted (Yadav, Sharma & Tarhini, 2016). A proper form of password policy should also be ensured and this password should be changed at regular intervals such that it would be hard to crack for any unauthorized user. 

References

Milestone One

Baghdadi, Y. (2013). From e-commerce to social commerce: a framework to guide enabling cloud computing. Journal of theoretical and applied electronic commerce research, 8(3), 12-38.

Hartono, E., Holsapple, C. W., Kim, K. Y., Na, K. S., & Simpson, J. T. (2014). Measuring perceived security in B2C electronic commerce website usage: A respecification and validation. Decision Support Systems, 62, 11-21.

Nica, E. (2015). Positive drivers of consumer trust in e-commerce. Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics, 3(1), 60-65.

Rahimi, M. R., Ren, J., Liu, C. H., Vasilakos, A. V., & Venkatasubramanian, N. (2014). Mobile cloud computing: A survey, state of art and future directions. Mobile Networks and Applications, 19(2), 133-143.

Turban, E., Outland, J., King, D., Lee, J. K., Liang, T. P., & Turban, D. C. (2017). Electronic commerce 2018: a managerial and social networks perspective. Springer.

Milestone Two

de Reuver, M., Verschuur, E., Nikayin, F., Cerpa, N., & Bouwman, H. (2015). Collective action for mobile payment platforms: A case study on collaboration issues between banks and telecom operators. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 14(5), 331-344.

Dinh, H. T., Lee, C., Niyato, D., & Wang, P. (2013). A survey of mobile cloud computing: architecture, applications, and approaches. Wireless communications and mobile computing, 13(18), 1587-1611.

Einav, L., Levin, J., Popov, I., & Sundaresan, N. (2014). Growth, adoption, and use of mobile E-commerce. American Economic Review, 104(5), 489-94.

Laroche, M., Habibi, M. R., & Richard, M. O. (2013). To be or not to be in social media: How brand loyalty is affected by social media?. International Journal of Information Management, 33(1), 76-82.

Li, Y. M., Wu, C. T., & Lai, C. Y. (2013). A social recommender mechanism for e-commerce: Combining similarity, trust, and relationship. Decision Support Systems, 55(3), 740-752.

Niranjanamurthy, M., Kavyashree, N., Jagannath, S., & Chahar, D. (2013). Analysis of e-commerce and m-commerce: advantages, limitations and security issues. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication Engineering, 2(6).

Harris, M., & P. Patten, K. (2014). Mobile device security considerations for small-and medium-sized enterprise business mobility. Information Management & Computer Security, 22(1), 97-114.

Durumeric, Z., Ma, Z., Springall, D., Barnes, R., Sullivan, N., Bursztein, E., ... & Paxson, V. (2017, February). The security impact of HTTPS interception. In Proc. Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS).

Yadav, R., Sharma, S. K., & Tarhini, A. (2016). A multi-analytical approach to understand and predict the mobile commerce adoption. Journal of enterprise information management, 29(2), 222-237.

Yeo, J. (2013). Using penetration testing to enhance your company's security. Computer Fraud & Security, 2013(4), 17-20.

Zhu, F., & Furr, N. (2016). Products to platforms: Making the leap. Harvard business review, 94(4), 72-78.