Transitioning From Mail-Order To E-Business: An Essay Guide.

Hardware and Networking Resources

Discuss about the Operational Customer Relationship Management.

Through use of, and developments in the internet technologies, both small and big enterprises have been given the opportunity to expand their markets sizes, reach more customers, and conduct businesses everywhere on a 24/7- 365 day basis (Murray & Donald, 2002). And in order to position themselves in the e-business industry, and to provide value added services, enterprises need to carefully strategize on, plan and manage e-business platforms and software applications including cloud computing platforms and hardware resources (Dr. S. Victor, 2014). This paper is a guide to one Dr. Wagner who want to transit his business from an odd mail-order business to a present-day e-business. This was as a result of them being impressed by our firm’s system at the Queen of Sheba wedding Emporium Database Management System and Decision Support System that utilizes Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel respectively. It is with no doubt that ICT functionalities and capabilities serve both as a marketing platform, contacting and reaching clients and potential clients (Heeks & Duncombe, 2001).

The availability of a good and well-established technology is a haven for new opportunities, and the increasing demand for faster, secure and cheaper transactions is forcing business across the globe to revise and business models and processes. Strategies being used include but not limited to selling their products cheap, and improving products’ quality. Usually, these strategies directly correspond to measures meant to reducing operational costs and optimization of business processes (Jurgen & Lutz, 2004).

Our client business model is based on the traditional mail-order method, also called direct mail marketing- a merchandising method in which enterprises make public their offers through mass mailing of circulars and catalogues or adverts that are placed in print media. Buyers and customers on the other flip side are required to make/place their order through mails (Soumya, 2012). This serves a greater deal to disadvantage the business as it serves as a scope for fraud, inconvenience, customer complaints, damage of property band good while on transit, increased operational costs among many other problems.

The paper is divided into four different sections: first, it explores the type of hardware, software, cloud services and networking infrastructure that the business needs to acquire and/or procure as they seek to expand their capabilities, second is a deep analysis of the benefits that the enterprise would leverage by using business intelligence and analytics systems, third we look at customer relationship management system and its benefits and the benefits that the firm would reap were it to install the system in their enterprise, and finally the paper offers advice on issues that the management should be aware of before stepping their feet into social media presence. To be accompanied by this deliverable will be a PowerPoint presentation that will be a general summary of the ideas presented here.

Business Intelligence and Analytics, Customer Relationship Management Systems

With a focused utilization of ICTs in education, industry and business sectors, information technologies have proved to be reliable given the fact that the todays digital divide generation is characterized by increasing access to the internet. However, this adoption need be enhanced by creation of healthy environments for competition, security, interoperability, standardization, security, staff training, and financial resources to procure, install and maintain ICT infrastructure (Kundishora, n.d.). Interconnected hardware, installed software and networking resources consists of e-business infrastructure and merge to form, an architecture that maintains data and content useable in delivering e-business services to customers and in managing enterprises’ information systems as well as managing and maintaining other resources.  A well-defined e-business infrastructure means that any business that is adopting e-business model will deliver quality services in terms of speed and responsiveness (Mike & Willem-Jen, 2007).

Hardware equipment needed for e-business platforms must meet the increasing demand of speed, security, reliability and high performance (Izzat, et al., 2009). Most importantly, for any e-commerce firm engaged in shipping of goods must work round the clock to ensure that the goods shipped are secure and delivered on time. The hardware requirement for Dr. Wagner’s are as described below.

Computer hardware represents the basic equipment that virtually all organizations have. However, selection of such devices depends on specifications and the purpose for which the business intends to use the machine. Among the interesting features that are looked at when procuring/purchasing computers are the power of the Central Processing Unit (CPU) - whose speed is expressed in instructions processed per second, the Random access Memory,  hard disks memory capacity, and peripherals such as the keyboard, monitors, mouse and the uninterrupted power supply units (UPS) (NIBUSINESS INFO.CO.UK, n.d.).

 
Table 1: hardware Resources Cost analysis:

Servers- web and file servers

The server technology to be used has to be carefully considered to guarantee that it support data flow and communication through the e-business website efficiently. This is the blood of every e-business and its failure could mean total business failure. The server must be fast enough to process customer request as fast as possible, and equally strong to support concurrent user transactions (David, 2013). This will ensure that the business does not lose sales due to poor connections and low throughputs. In order to increase expandability of the business, then we chose to, within the server platform, install rack servers so that we can easily connect to the cloud services. We hope to deliver to the firm a server with the following specifications and quotations (Shaishav, 2012):

Social Media Presence

 
Table 2: Dedicated Server specifications

These resources include basic utility programs, application programs and operating systems running on desktops and staff computers as well as installed in the dedicated server machine. Information systems are very vital and a crucial entity in business- they form the backbone of business operations and processes and can never be overlooked (Dr. S. Victor, 2014).

Operating system: Staff desktops and PCs will run on Windows 10.

As a new development in the information technology domain, cloud computing comes with promised scalability, enhanced flexibility and cost effectiveness. There are however a few concerns regarding security of cloud based systems and which must be looked on and taken care of (Georg, 2011). This explains why in the above sections we included firewalls in our document as a way of offering security to system users. Additionally, user authentication and staff sensitization will be important so as to make all stakeholders aware of what activities serve to threaten and expose their privacy.

An e-business system’s architecture is made up several layers- the logistic layer that is used to handle flow of goods and services through the enterprise, and the back-end layer that manages the catalogue as well as providing the much needed transactional processing services. The core aim of turning to cloud computing technology is to reap of its benefits which includes access to virtualized hardware resources including storage memory.

Business intelligence (BI) is a term that is used to refer to applications, tools and infrastructure, together with best practices that enhance access to information analysis leading to optimization in decision making processes and improved business performance (Mary, 2017). The term refers to the technologies, applications and practices that are used during collection integration and analysis of data, as well as presentation, and preservation of business information or the analyzed reports. The core aim of using business intelligence is to support decision making processes in the enterprises. This process uses content driven systems called Decision Support System. At times, the activity is interchangeably used together with briefing books, reports and query tools as well as Executive Information Systems (OLAP.com, 2016).

Following are advantages that the firm is bound to get by installing a Decision support System in their enterprise.

Enhanced and improved business monitoring: as a specialized and automated software, business intelligence system provides automated analysis of business data through a process that gives enterprises quicker, efficient and easier ways of identifying any weaknesses eminent in the business’s workflow this functionality will therefore help Dr. Wagner’s business to0 closely monitor its processes and strategize against over expansion, and monitor his business as it grows. The software serves to provide advanced data analysis and reporting capabilities thuds giving organizations a comprehensive understanding of their business performance. Through data mining and customized algorithm techniques of the software, business management gets a chance of having unprecedented power to direct business’s growth trajectory.

Improved decision making: the core purpose and the driving factor of developing and installing Business Intelligence software is to support decision making process.  According to a survey conducted by Helical It, decisions made by use of data rather than intuition have a 79% probability of being and leading to greater success. The system uses data from past experiences and processes, and that one from the present situation to analyze business trends and predict the future. Such data could be pricing information which could help in planning how to competitively position one’s products and services in the market.

Enhanced marketing capabilities and improved business intelligence: business intelligence leads to effectiveness and efficiency in accessing marketing efforts fostered by the enterprise. The software allows the business to see the demographic nature and attributes of the purchases made by their customers, what advertisements worked best, a functionality that is critical in identifying the real and true customer behavior, buying habits hence enabling the management to strategize in winning more customers and improving brand quantity.

Improve organizational and individual employee efficiency: any inefficiencies in the business workflow lead to wastage of man-hours- or labor and revenue. Business intelligence systems, through its customized performance measurements and metrics, comes in to stand in the gap by analyzing business related data, a process that uncovers all weaknesses on the business operations. The customized algorithms enhances collection, analysis, interpretation and representation of data that is related to a particular entity in the enterprise thus revealing its weaknesses and strengths, and providing guidance to possible improvements. In addition to customized algorithms and procedure is benchmarking procedures which businesses use to compare its performance against the industry’s average.

Reduction of operational costs: improving business ‘s productivity and increasing employee efficiency translates to reduced operational costs in two main ways: a few employees are required to work on an assignment and that such assignments are timely done, with a lot of accuracy and efficiency. Accounting department for example, is no longer required to cross check and cross-post individual department’s data since such info will be readily available in the system’s database. Equally, department in charge of processing orders will have a reduced work load and have access to the same data hence doing things faster and timely. This software helps businesses reduce their operational cost by creating an efficient workflow through which the different departments are involved in an easier working life.

Helps increase and maintain customer base: it is the aim of every business that is future oriented to create, increase and maintain a formidable customer base, and that which is characterized by strong relationships and trust based. It is recorded that gain new customers is six-seven times harder or rather expensive than retaining them. The business intelligence system offers a lot of insight to strategic managers and customer relationship team in regard as to why some customers are leaving while others continue to buy from the firm by analyzing and critically evaluating customer behavior. Unsatisfying results such as late delivery and shipments, customer complaints and results are collected for analysis using the software thus helping a firm gain an insight into customer gain and retention.

Acts as a catalyst to business growth: the business intelligence software comes packaged as a software suite containing its own data reporting features that ensures employees are served with the right data analytics all the time. This turns out to be a pillar and a supporting element whenever they want to make critical decisions. Managing a business from a mere idea to a big entity or enterprise isn’t a walk in the park. Business intelligence system comes to aid the process by providing right data savvy, and enabling managers to accomplish virtually everything with a lot of flexibility and accuracy. The suite allows businesses to customize some algorithms and procedures to meet their specific varying needs while maintaining its powerful capability.

Selecting a business intelligence tool should be based on the processing activities that are expected to be carried out, audience, success factors that are used to drive the business and the decision making processes.

We suggest that the firm goes for the OLAP- Online analytics processing tool since it is a powerful tool that allows users to pick and choose sections of data they are interested in and view it or have it analyzed from different angles and perspectives (CLARITY, n.d.). In addition to this, OLAP enables managers and analysts to gain useful insights through a fast, convenient, interactive and consistent access to a wide variety of information that has been transformed from data, and reflects on the real dimensionality of the enterprise in accordance to users’ understanding.

In the past few years, online stores and markets have had to operate in increasingly advanced techniques to maintain relevance and market shares in the ever growing industry and that which is characterized by stiff competition. This competition has seen and pushed many enterprises to implement new tools and strategies that guarantee viability in the future- the Customer Relationship Management System. A customer Relationship Management system refers to a strategy used to manage an organization’s interactions and relationships with existing and potential customers.  The system is essential in enhancing an all-time connection between the business and the customers, and ensures that customers’ needs are always in the fore front. Although this technology is slightly complicated when applied in the e-commerce world, the technology gives online firms competitive advantage over others through but not limited to the following ways.

Data collection and deeper analytics:  a CRM leverages all sales channels to the extent of providing business managers with the finest details regarding who is their clients, what they are buying and their motivation towards buying.  More to this is the provision of information that leads to accurate prediction of customer behavior and determination of their purchasing power. With these details in mind, sales persons have the best approach of enticing more customers and the existing ones being devised to increase their purchases through offers that could be specially tailored to get them to the bait. As such, there could be least expectation of the general outcome other than exponential growth and explosion of the firm. Other benefits of CRM include trend based sales- determine what to flood in the online and physical stocks based on the trend and seasons, connecting all involved teams and department with the clients, understanding customer trends, product returns and efficient task management (Dr A., 2003).

Operational CRM refers to the ‘front office’ supporting infrastructure and system interface to such business process as customer contact, marketing sales and services. The results of these processes are then forwarded to respective employees together with necessary information to help finish the tasks at the back-end interfaces of the application/system. The operational CRM for sales system- also called Sales Force Automation (SFA) offers critical functions such as lead and account management, quote management, forecasting, sales administration and contact management. Key to this system is hardware infrastructure requirements- mobile synchronization together with an integrated product configuration. This tool is specifically designed to improve sales productivity. In simpler terms, it is a software that allows organizations to effectively manage and take care of their customers by providing support of such functions as sales and marketing.  Examples of operational CRM include contact call centers, data aggregation and web sites (STRAIGHT MARKETING, 2010).

The sales department is a critical one in every business and especially in the online ventures. Experts working in these departments need to view, edits and analyze data to reach success and for Dr. Wagner’s e-business, they could help customers in their day to day operations using SFA in the following ways. The business could think of hosting a website in which it will post all its products, promotions and offers instead of taking such as adverts to the print media. As a way of increasing customer-and the service provider relationship, Dr. Wagner could think of securing a platform to send automatic mails to registered clients informing them of their currents deals and any changes in the business process that could affect them.

Operational CRM could also be customized for customer and support services only. This platform is said to consist of contacts that handle and execute basic customer transactions. For the case of Dr., some of the basic operations will include a client buying goods and services that need be packaged, crossed checked and shipped. DR. Wagner can offer customer service a call center that which would serve to answer any call from clients well as there is emails and messages. The company could help itself maintain their customer base by streamlining their services. For example, they could think of gathering the customer’s audio information, quantifying revenue cost for inaction and putting that audio in other departments, crating customer engagements by use of emotional microburst connections (John, 2015), providing value via education thus preventing future contact, implementing a revolutionary voice call system that will always run whenever a client’s calls to the business before their calls are answered.

It could be too unfortunate for the firm to invest much of it resources, time and energy to a project that would come to backfire later. In most cases, such scenarios happen where CRM systems are overrated as per expectations and with the thinking that the system comes to solve all business problems. While it is in no doubt that CRM offers solutions to business problems, lacking knowledge on how to use it together with the measurement metrics could turn disastrous. For this reason, we are advising Dr. Wagner to always combine a few software performance measurement metrics that will help them generate highly detailed and ‘fined’ business reports to avert paralyzing the business. 

 Conversion rate- a measurement metric that serves as a point for having  general view into the sales department performance. The metrics offers trajectory of sales generated within the enterprise. Win rate is another metric that the business could apply in measuring or explaining ratio of closed deals and viable opportunities that the enterprise became part of. Other useful metrics include the Retention Rate and Customer Lifetime value (LTV), average deal sizes, and sales length, all which amass their capability to produce the best analysis of the business position as far as performance is concerned. These metrics, it must be understood, uses a list of checklist and can as we’ll be customized so that they meet individual enterprise’s needs (SMARTCLOUD CONNECT, 2016).

Social media platforms such as the Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, IMO, and telegram have grown to become deeply entrenched in our present day society. And since marketing generally involves connecting to people, preaching to them of your products, these platforms have provided a better avenue for networking with people, reaching out to many would-be clients, and giving insights and recommendations that enterprises use to better their products (Dave & Smith, Emarketing Excellence, 2012). The physical distance between a buyer and a seller in the offline marketing has been completely eradicated. Dr. Wagner has to be made aware that digital marketing or embarking on a social media presence is a business presence like any other, and it therefore requires skillful planning and allocation of resources and staff to monitor and manage what information is flowing out of the enterprise and as well as critically analyzing clients’ feedback through these platforms. It must be understood that digital marketing could propel the enterprise top greater heights, and equally, in the very easy way, bring it to ashes and rumbles.

For this undertaking to succeed, and give the enterprise a competitive edge over other firms in the same line of industry, a clear vision, mission, objective and purpose statement must be well spelt out (Vargas-Hernandez, 2015). What do we want to achieve through digital marketing? What is our approach to digital marketing? All such questions must be considered before taking full swing into the whole business idea. Additionally, the business must include a marketing message to communicate the core differentiators and societal needs that their product meets, and the problems it solves or it is trying to solve to target and the-would-be customers.

The once used for fun social media platforms has been turned into excellent marketing tools through which service provides and sellers of different goods reach out to their clients on a ‘one-on-one’ basis through tweets, Facebook chats, Instagram messaging, IMO and many other social media apps, and that which have greater following and user subscription. By turning to social media as a marketing tool, Dr. Wagner’s enterprise will be in a position of reaching out to more customers, comparing and contrasting what other firms and who are their competitors re doing, discover new business trends and ideas, and create and manage traffic to their website (Sree, 2015).

The purpose of this statement is to provide useful guidance to our employees in matters related to social media usage, and should be understood, and adhered to by all and sundry. Social media usage in this policy refers to printing, publishing and sharing business information with outside world through social media applications such as blogs, Facebook, twitter. Instagram, Pinterest, wikis, message boards, microblogs, chat rooms and electronic newsletters among other information dissemination means. Our company recognizes the role of social media usage as a tool to support our company in its marketing strategy, and as such, this policy is applicable to our employees in the line of duty and respective responsibilities.

1. All employees shall be expected to adhere to this policy, whether on duty or not, within the premises of work or outside, and the company’s code of conduct as a guiding reference to ethical business behavior in reference to social media usage.
2. All employees must be aware of the company brand/image created through social media platform, and must therefore pay close attention to what they post or publish.
3. Information and business data categorized as critical, private to the firm and confidential reports shall not be subject to sharing through these platforms or any other print media, which is to be issued out to the general public and shall not subject to public discussion.
4. Whenever an employee encounters a situation that leads to confrontations, they shall be required, by the terms under this policy statement and professional code of conduct, to answer the clients in a humble way, without harassing them, and in cases where it becomes impossible, they shall withdraw from such confrontations in a tactful way that will leave the clients unhurt.
5. While it is a collective responsibility for all employees to market our products, this responsibility sits at the core of digital marketing team and shall be responsible to publishing to respective media platforms, information that sells our company as a brand, in correctness and accuracy. They shall also be responsible to answering customer queries and attending to customer complains as appropriate.
6. Employees must not allow social media platforms to take place of their work.
7. Violations of provisions in this policy statement may lead to disciplinary actions against individuals, or group of individuals.

It is evident from the researches done that electronic commerce has grown and changed that way we do businesses toady, including our transactions and global negotiations. As cost for equipment that support these technologies keep on reducing and going down, it is only better for enterprises to grasp this opportunity to increase their customer base, geographical markets and market shares.

Investing in technology and information systems that enhance the functionality of online business helps bridge the gap between buyers and sellers. Some advantages that e-business ventures and related systems have include secure, fast and reliable transactions, data analytics and support of decision making process as well as creating an understanding of diverse customer needs and purchasing behavior powered/fuelled by different demographic factors such as age, gender and location (Mahoney & Thelen, 2010). In addition to this, a business is able to measure its performance in the market, customer satisfaction level through analytics tools and customer relationship management systems.

By using social media platforms such as Facebook, Tweeter, and Instagram businesses reach out to more customers and help them improve their brand quality. All these are among the opportunities that transitioning from the mail-order Dr. Wagner’s business will comfortably seize and reap from. It is a never regret initiative that need be given the best managerial support.

Dr. Wagner’s business core aim is to migrate to a modern day business ran on an e-platform basis. And this paper has served as a guidance to emerging technological trends that are shaping e-businesses for the better. From the findings of the research work carried out and as described through this paper, making the following considerations will serve to move our client’s business far beyond the level they want.

E-commerce is tailored and anchored on technology. And cybersecurity threats have exponentially increased both in number an in effects, it will be therefore advisable for the business to equally invest in security for its infrastructure and systems.

Careful considerations have to be made when purchasing hardware/software resources. The firm must make sure that it procures such from certified vendors and who are willing to offer support and maintenance as part of their responsibility and contract. Additionally, these equipment must have easily accessible spares and have a guaranteed warranty.

Installing these systems will not be the end of the journey, but the beginning of a more resource and time requiring one. Technology is fast changing, hence the business should be ready to invest in new technological trends if it is future oriented and if it wants to dominate the market, and get the big catch out of the deal.

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