Computer Sciences and Information Technology - Coursework Example

Computer Sciences and Information Technology (Digital Business) Supervisor: School: Word Count: 3940 Digital business, generally known as e-commerce, is a type of trade where the acquirement and selling of merchandises or services transpires over electronic schematics such as the web and other computer schemes. Electronic trade appeals on equipment such as cellular trade, electric funds transition, endowment chain management, web promotion, online corporate processing, (EDI), inventory running systems, and online statistics assortment system. A modern-day electronic transaction characteristically uses the World Wide Web at the very least at one time in the businesss life-cycle, though it may comprise a wider array of proficiency such as e-mail, cellular procedure, societal medium, and handsets as well. Digital trade is typically considered to be the business aspect of e-business. It can comprise of the switch of data to facilitate the advancing and recompense aspects of industry relations. This is an proficient and competent way of associating within an organization and one of the utmost valuable and useful ways of conducting trade. Background Information Rationale for my digital business venture Geographical Aspects If you have a position store, you are limited by the geographical zone that you can serve. With an ecommerce location, the whole world is your playing arena. Additionally, the influx of mcommerce, i.e., ecommerce on mobile phone appliances, has scattered every remaining control of geography (Safko and Brake, 2012). An ever expanding Customer base Physical skill is driven by brand and relations. In addition to these two compounds, online trade is also motivated by passage from exploration mechanisms. It is not peculiar for consumers to track a connection in exploration mechanism consequences, and resolve on an electronic trade site that the people have not learnt of. This extra supply of traffic can be the tip plug for some ecommerce businesses (Safko and Brake, 2012). . A brief description of the venture In this venture we wish to set up an e Commerce website that will be involved in the renting or hiring of cars. The website in mind is similar to zipcar.com. This venture involves putting up cars around the busy areas of life for example shopping malls and Airports. The rationale behind the venture is as follows. First and foremost it is cheaper than buying a car. Secondly it is more convenient to have a car waiting for you where you land than having it shipped to you in the case of travelers. It is convenient to use since you are going to be responsible for the car only when you have it. You have a wide selection of cars to choose from: meaning you are not limited with only the ones present in your drive way. I chose the ecommerce platform to further my business because of the following reasons:- Lessened Costs One of the most palpable positives of digital trade is the lesser cost. A fraction of these sank costs could spill on to clienteles in the type of discounted or reduced prices. Here are some of the strategies that costs can be curtailed with ecommerce: (Safko and Brake, 2012). Strategic Marketing Organic search appliance traffic, ppc, and societal media interchange are some of the advertisement systems that can be money making. Man power The systematization of checkout, planning, expenses, inventory management, and other supplied processes, lessens the amount of employees needed to run an ecommerce arrangement. Physical Location An ecommerce industry does not need a famed physical locality. Easy product location It is not about going for a shopping cart to the suitable aisle, or investigation for the preferred item for ingestion. On an ecommerce location, consumers can attach through intuitive routing or use an investigation box to directly narrow down their item quest. Some sites put in mind consumer tendencies and shopping list to ensure repeat procurement. Lower costs related to time traveling It is not outlandish for customers to voyage long distances to arrive at their preferred physical shop. Digital trade enables them to layover the same store basically, all they have to do is turn on their computer (Safko and Brake, 2012). Enables shopping for similar products in other online stores According to (Safko and Brake, 2012).Digital commerce enables relationship shopping. There are moderately a few online facilities that license customers to peek through various ecommerce dealers and find the principal prices. Who impose information transversely through product lines? Digital business sites can make supplementary data easily presented to consumers. Most of these records are donated by vendors, and does not control anything to shape or sustain. Problems relating to the ecommerce venture However, there are still some challenges that ecommerce faces. The problems can be characterized into technical and non technological. These problems are specifically significant to our scheme. There can be absence of scheme security, loyalty or principles owing to poor execution of e-Commerce. Software progress industry is still evolving and keeps altering swiftly. In numerous nations, web bandwidth may affect an issue as existing is inadequate cable bandwidth obtainable. Special types of web servers or altered software may be a prerequisite by the merchants implementing the e-commerce environments apart from scheme servers. Initial cost: The expenditure of creating E-Commerce importance in-house may be expressly high. There could be a stick-up in inducting the E-Commerce uses due to errors and lack of understanding. User resistance: User may not depend on on the site being unknown faceless seller. Such mistrust creates exertion to make user shift from location stores to virtual stores. Supply Chain used The eRetail stock Chain is the superlative and most active supply chain to use in this venture that we have commenced. This is because it has combined all the functions and procedures that an e commerce trade needs to apply in order to stay viable and on the go. Some of the combined aspects include product& inventory management, apprising of your e-orders, warehouse running and scanner Incorporation. Project Management Methodology Agile venture management methodology assimilates well with our undertaking. This is for the reason that all the various things on sale can be assimilated into one and deployed as rental items. Any challenge that may ascend from this approach can be dealt with in the analysis stage. The old and customary way of project running namely the waterfall executive methodology did not have the analysis of integrated goods since it mostly doled with industrial goods. Scoping However, to fully diagnose the range of the commerce (Safko and Brake, 2012) we need to evaluate it deeply. To do this we will employ the help of implements of analysis. In this study I choose to set up the SWOT analysis and competitor Analysis (Peterson, 2011). The justification behind this espousal of the tool is that in spite of the business idea being fairly old the trade itself is fairly new. It also is constantly faced with a lot of opposition from similar businesses (David, 2012). I as the business person need to comprehend my business surroundings. That is my strength and weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Swot Analysis of my ecommerce Venture Strength and Weaknesses For ecommerce dealers examples may be a grander variety of merchandises and quicker or cheaper transportation than other ecommerce merchants. Do you make window easy and fast? Yes I do all one has to do is click the mouse and find me there with prices at hand for all services being offered. Do you suggest other element options to your clients? Yes, this is because I can manage to. I plan on offering to my clients variety in vehicle selection (Peterson, 2011). These are sprightly advantages. Ecommerce dealers profit from a physical improvement — you have lesser operating costs than a slab and brick store. What makes my industry unique? The fact that it is available around the clock, and that you do not have to talk to anyone physically. Do you offer location goods not available elsewhere? Are they handmade or exceptional? Because of conveyance times, there is no immediate gratification with ecommerce. Heavy, huge and fragile merchandises are costly to transport. Costs are continually a bother. Security and rip-off concerns mean some general populations are still averse to use their passes online. Allowing shoppers to make payments using PayPal can dull this worry. Show rooming has rather blunted the dilemma of customer inability of client to drop the products with buyers looking at merchandises in stores and then making use of their cellular phones to place commitment to purchase with a virtual vendor, frequently whilst still in the corporeal store(Peterson, 2011). Opportunities and Threats The queries we ought to be asking are (Peterson, 2011). “What new knowledge can help me cultivate my business and achieve a lead over my rivals?” and “Where are my enemies vulnerable?” Ecommerce changes every day. New expertise and applications have aided in leveling the playing turf with time-honored vendors. For example, developments to shop lug software have formed a faster, evener, more consumer-friendly spending occurrence. Live antithetical has enhanced ecommerce shopper service, dampening the conservative retailer benefit. Using big statistics analytics could be an instance for Ecommerce Business to best appreciate client partialities. Societal media websites present free or low-cost elevations (Peterson, 2011). But it’s up to the virtual business to stay current and take on novel applications and topographies. You ought to constantly be looking for far-reaching industry shifts that can affect your development. These include approved and legal changes. For example, legislature presently before government may force all Internet dealers to amass sales tax. Low obstacles to entrance are a stable hazard in ecommerce. It’s modest to set up ecommerce trade, even in the feasting room. Clusters can sell articles via societal media without locating up their individual websites. Competitor Analysis Competitor analysis in promotion and strategic administration is a valuation of the fortes and weaknesses of existing and potential participants. This analysis affords both an aggressive and defensive tactical context to identify chances and threats. Profiling combines all of the appropriate sources of competitor scrutiny into one agenda in the support of proficient and effective strategy creation, implementation, checking and adjustment (Robles, 2011). Competitor investigation is an essential element of corporate strategy. It is debated that most firms do not carry this type of analysis analytically enough. Instead, many enterprises function on what is called “informal impersonations, conjectures, and perception gained through the morsels of information about contestants every manager repeatedly receives.” As a result, customary environmental perusing places many companies at risk of hazardous competitive blind spots due to a lack of forceful competitor scrutiny (Robles, 2011). The Scope Competitors Array One mutual and useful method is constructing an opponent array. Key Industry success factors Weighing Competitor 1 zipcar Competitor 2 Europcar Competitor 3 Hertz Competitor 4 SIXT car Hire Extensive distribution 4 6 2.4 3 1.2 Customer Focus 3 4 1.2 5 1.5 Economies of scale 2 3 0.6 3 0.6 Product Innovation 1 7 0.7 4 0.4 Total 1.0 20 4.9 15 3.7 Business System option employed According to (Robles, 2011).To appropriately facilitate my business I have gone for the tic tail scheme for a number of explanations that I will try to expound in the fore coming paragraphs. First let me start with a brief depiction of what tic tail is. Tictail is a permitted to register e-commerce stage that permits personalities and dealers to set up their own applied store quickly . Commenced in 2012, in below two years Tictail has over 35000 virtual stores that have been situated via them. Reasons for employing tic tail as my ecommerce platform Tic tail takes care of entirety needed in my undertaking. This includes putting up my online attendance and keeping trajectory of my orders. Tic tail works a friendly user edge that is devoid of preventable and convoluted jargon that only aids to confuse the user. It is a podium that keeps on sprouting and in the course so does my commerce. It has an inventive and smart nourishment system that keeps track of my trade and constantly bequeaths my business undertaking with valuable tips. With a rising number of tic tail requests my store is ruined for choice as I can pick from an selection the apps that I feel will better suit my store. Great inventors available to me from the outset stage that will aid me put out both the virtual stores character together with mine. Last but not least tic tail existence can be felt in more than 150 countries (Robles, 2011). I would also in prospect think of conveying my online existence to Magento. This is since Magento has more clients compared to Tic tail. Magento has also been in the open market longer making it more unswerving and more dependable among consumers on the web (Robles, 2012). Budget Breakdown PPC is an online advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, in which supporters pay the website holder if ad is ticked. With search instruments, advertisers generally bid on essential word phrases noteworthy to their target market (Robles, 2011). With this expenditure it is inflexible to put in the precise cost. Nevertheless, the rest of the expenditures incurred are easily valued. Holding cost with hostgator would cost me 47.95 pounds per year. Domain name cataloguing will charge me 18 pounds annually. DPA registering will set me back a further 53.96 pounds through the year. For the initial year I do not intend to employ anyone. Legality of the venture For any commerce to take effect there are some lawful aspects it has to take into deliberations. The type of commerce venture also comes to play. It can take the shape of a sole owner, partnership, and Company. As a startup I assumed of going at it alone. Some of the permissible obligations include: For a Sole Trader Business License Many corporate owners have to acquire a trade license to be able to lawfully carry out commerce, and these concerns apply to sole merchants (Robles, 2011). A sole mercantile should first endorse with the clerk in his constituency to obtain data on any license required to exercise the commerce in the region. He can advance the basic permit relevance forms from the district clerk. Business Name In the words of (Robles, 2011) Sole proprietors are under no obligation to choose a traffic name for their job, when they get to setting up the scheme. However, if the vocation owner chooses to run the commerce under a contrived or assumed trade designation, she has to list that trade name with the administrator in her local office. Payment of Taxes A sole mercantile has to make sure his business meets the region and federal taxation requirements. Due to the veracity that legally, a sole merchant ship and a sole dealer are a single soul, the sole dealer bears expurgate of the undertaking. This means the profits and liabilities expanded in the transactions fall under the cloistered income tax division and are deposited under his IRS Form 1040, schedule C. As a lone administrator, he can employ his societal safety number to tax description (Robles, 2011). Self-Employment Tax A sole proprietor has the duty to pay self-employment expurgate, that is, Medication care and Communal safety taxes, because she is the receptacle of the commerce. The business owner has to offer to the IRS the principal business code to classify her commerce construction. When uncovering her taxes the trade owner only recompenses her tax once although the quantity of sole authorizations she holds. However, if the proceeds ensuing from her trade are below $400, she is not liable to pay the tax (Robles, 2011). For the ecommerce venture Data Protection (a) You must fix under the Data safeguard Act if you bring any type of statistics about people, these could be your clienteles, human resources or potential patrons. This fact includes forenames, corporeal address, phone numbers and emails. (b) You must communicate what you do and target to do with your effort data and not stray from that testimonial. (c) The Act communicates to any amount of business. (d) You must not trade overseas the distinct data past the EC (European Community) devoid of consent from the inhabitants you are collecting data on. (e) You must make definite that all data is thought firmly and must be visible or removed upon request from the subject substance of the statistics. (f) You must only mark data which is relevant to your chief corporate needs. Consumer safety (Distance Selling) Regulations The Customer safety (Distance Selling) scheme 2000 applies to a number of ecommerce positions. However, they are not effective for business-to-business transactions. (a) You ought to present unblemished data about your merchandises and services proceeding to purchase. (b) You ought to be unblemished about relocation and stuffing costs and also if VAT or any extra tax is amalgamated in the price publicized on your site. (c) You must make available a written authentication of order following purchase, for example an authentication email (Edwin, 2012). (d) You ought to permit a "cooling off" time anywhere by the punter can change their mind and let go or revisit the order in and within 7 effective days for greater products. Certain exceptions do narrate with substances such as untreated and digital produce. (e) You must inform your clientele of their opportunity to call off their instruction with no failure other than return stationing and pack ((Edwin, 2012). Ecommerce Directive (a) You must bring forward the name of your undertaking, the business listing number (or owners name), corporeal address, communication data e.g., handset amount and emails, VAT inventory number if trade churns out a profit of 200 pounds and beyond. (b) You may give in to trade or skilled designs if pertinent. (c) You must present perfect data on price, tax and conveyance cost to customers. (d) You must palpably show your sites requisites and Conditions. (e) You must identify all instructions. Marketing Strategy In marketing the undertaking I have engaged the ACCESS archetypal to assist me. My Audience in this report would have to be the business community. This is because business people are at the frontline of the technical insurrection and the actuality of business being carried out online has in the recent past grown multifold. The segment of daily PC and web operators has augmented over the past five years in all aspects of the business form, but the gap squarely a cohort has relatively been unwavering (Nabendu, 2012). In 2008, 70 % of businesses across the U.K, Employs a PC every day and 66 % were connected every day or coarsely every day, often from the comfort of the living room or from a physical location. The idea is that businessmen are more likely to hire cars online for business associates compared to any other data groupings. I will test this report in the coming articles. Rivalry is also another feature that I will take into thought. It is not essentially a bad thing. Antagonism will take part of my marketplace share but it also provides me the occasion to assess my forte and explore other scopes of my occupation that I feasibly did not reflect. Concept testing parameters Commercial criteria Virtual usage Frequency on societal media Justification 1. Brand Recognition – One of the supreme authoritative methods to use social medium is as a brand- advancement tool. With social medium, you get to resolve on how you require placing your organization and what you want occupants to be uncovered to regarding your undertaking. 2. Community – There is nothing like public media when it involves taming a public. When your group becomes part of your culture, you gain prompt admission to them. That means you can expose out what influences they are prone to and carry out analysis of your merchandises (Safko and Brake, 2012). 3. Repeat Exposure – There is an old preferment adage that says it needs six to eight exposures to commodities before a customer decides to get it. A clear improvement of social platform is repeat involvement with your scheme (Nabendu, 2012). Site Design Tools Personae This is a brief description of the customer. This tool is important in site design as it gives you a peek of how the customer is like. This will in turn enable you develop an approach that will suit his or her specific needs. A persona is basically a log of recent experiences and a personality check list. Site designers need to pay special attention to the individual personalities of their clientele if they wish to develop the business and drive in more customers. As a site design tool it can help the proprietor better understand the customer. Here are some examples of personae:- Bina: Female, 35 years, married with two small children. Moved to UK from Bangladesh as a teenager Is half of a job-share as an education officer with the Forestry Commission. Familiar with learning management systems but no other Internet systems Vickie: Female 67, widowed. Retired bookkeeper with manufacturing firm: Familiar with office tools, an ardent fan of Facebook and eBay. Otherwise little acquaintance with Internet systems Eric: Male 20, studying Engineering. Family came to UK from Hong Kong in 1980’s; he lives with them during vacations. Keen user of Twitter and Google Scholar and follows several newsfeeds. Customer Journey Simply put customer journey is actually customer journey. This journey is calculated from when the customer clicks or logs in to the site to the exact moment the customer receives the car. This tool like the personae tool is also essential when it comes to understanding the customer. When a site designer understands a customer journey he can in turn try and shorten that journey or make it as smooth as possible. In constantly using this tool the site designer continuously makes adjustments to his or her site and being that the tool is the most important of all tools the customer also finds it easy to maneuver and in the process ensures that there is repeat business. Review The plan was timely executed and the establishment was a work of art (Safko and Brake, 2012). However, I am a bit apprehensive of the choice of business venture as this venture is open to a lot of competition and regulations. My site is comparatively new associated to zipcar (Peterson, 2011) and the rest of my competitors who have been in the market longer than I have. This has enabled them to develop in ways that I could not imagine. I think the part about experience puts me at a disadvantage. Secondly technology is continuously evolving. The way people adopt technology is also changing. Young people on one hand are open to technological advances and are ready to adopt any new technology in the market. The older generation is not as eager to adopt technology and prefer simple and workable solutions to their technological limits. This creates a problem for me: how do I balance and control the apps that can be integrated into my site? Thirdly, there is another element of risk that comes to play. Any business venture has calculated risks that they think they can deal with in their plan and objective phase. However, this is not the case. Some risks cannot be foreseen and this may create problems for the site. Some of the risks can include:- The site creation does not immediately guarantee customers Immense competition Price discounts so as to fight competition References Lon Safko, and David Brake. (2012). The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and strategies for Business Success. New York: John Wiley and Sons Peterson, S. (2011). Petersons Graduate Programs in Computer Science & Information Technology, Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Energy & Power Engineering: Sections 8-10 of 20, Cincinnati: Springer Robles, M. (2011). Technology: Third International Conference, AST: New York: Young Cramer and Sons Nabendu, C. (2012). Advance in Computer Science and Technology: Seattle: Greenwood Publishing Edwin, D. (2012). Milestones in Computer Science and Technology: Connecticut: Cedargrove Publishers Read More