Recommendation for E-Business Systems and Enterprise Business System - Essay Example

Information Technology Business due: Introduction Businesses have thriving day by day depending on the strategies used by the owners. An ambitious business person should always be on the lookout for better ways of improving the business. Technology has proved to be the best boost to any business. Computer-based operation of a business makes it efficient, and cost-effective to operate a business. For instance, an ambitious business person dealing in sale of automobile tires sees an opportunity for expansion of the business by offering more products and services to the customers. Thus includes offering products and services via the Internet. The store, however, lacked computer applications for supporting the business functions. In the following section, a discussion will be made on some recommendations for e-business systems and Enterprise Business Systems for supporting the growth of the online business. Recommendation for e-business systems and Enterprise Business System The management of the business should understand that today’s business strategizing calls for more flexibility than in the past. They also require to note that strategy development process needs to be much more dynamic. There is the promotion of new value propositions by new companies, and new technologies are being used to give companies a competitive advantage. The company will also need to take very informal and dynamic approaches which tend to degenerate from strategy into tactics. For instance, the company may create a website, so as to advertise its existing and new products. The website will reach a lot of potential customers from a wide area. This is because the e-business enables the market to become global. The general purpose of search engines like Google enables the potential customer to find all the products on sale. Through the website, the clients can also make enquiries about the products, relating to price and durability. The company may also decide to sell its current and new products via a portal without rethinking the nature of its products (Harmon, Guttman & Rosen, 2001). In connection to making use of the internet for the sale of products, the business needs to consider using mobile systems. The mobile systems make e-commerce time independent and user location. However, regulatory issues are to be developed, especially regarding the international e-commerce and guarantee questions. Of concern also are the legal issues on e-cross border transactions and e-contracting. In the development of e-business applications, it will need to create a plan linking the business applications with the steps it wants to take to get to the future state. Depending on the nature and extent of the changes the company proposes to make in its core business processes, it should probably also have to phase in the changes in its business processes (Harmon et al., 2001). The core of an e-business is comprised of three main components; supply chain management, back-office support, and customer relationship management. The business will, therefore, have to consider the three components if it is to succeed. The three main components are integrated and coordinated through infrastructure management, knowledge management, and channel management. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) forms a crucial part of most enterprise infrastructure supported by information systems. The business should extensively make use of the ERP systems. The ERP systems need to enable enterprises to respond quickly to customer orders, consumer demands, and market opportunities. The available information and connectivity makes it possible for outsourcing and better management of suppliers. The Web, therefore, provides the global infrastructure for coordinating with the back office, supply chain partners and interacting with customers. The business will also need to have a well laid out Information Technology (IT) infrastructure, which is the foundation for business success. The IT infrastructure must be carefully managed in order to support the goals of the business, and should be perceived internally as a strategic asset. Justification of the recommendations In the world of e-business, mobile devices have been widely employed, due to the fact that wireless accessing and processing of information does not require much storage capacity. Wireless application protocol (WAP) has been defined to cater for the mobile devices. The WAP converges the wireless communications and the Internet. The convergence has been motivated by the rapidly increasing number of people using the mobile devices to access the Internet and transact e-business. A huge market potential has therefore, resulted from the use of the wireless technology and the Internet (Kou & Yesha, 2006). Mobile payment comes in handy when transacting a wireless e-business. The success of e-business is largely dependent on mobile payment. The payment allows people to purchase the products or services at the convenience of their current locations. However, when transacting the business online, security of the wireless media cannot be compromised. Authentication of the payment has to be fully processed to ensure the right payment reaches the intended person, who in turn has to verify his authentication details. To eliminate the restrictions of mobile devices as far as security of payments is concerned, a mobile agent technology is required. The mobile agent technology facilitates the whole process of payment through creation, execution, transfer, and management of all the other agents involved (Kou & Yesha, 2006). On the recommendation for use of ERP systems, it is important to note that the e-business establishes a value chain across the market and industries. The ERP systems take care of the internal value chain within a company. For the business to succeed, it should construct its system architecture by integrating ERP systems with e-business. The company will use a Web-based interface such as corporate portals, with the outside entities in addition to add-on modules such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the integration (Leon, 2008). The IT infrastructure plays an important role in the operation of an e-business. The management and perception of the role of a company’s IT organization is critical to success. The IT organization in successful e-businesses is viewed as a revenue generator and treated as a competitive asset thus allowing innovation within the organization so as to help drive competitive advantage and help reduce operational costs. The reliability of the infrastructure is important and has to be carefully managed. This is because a temporary loss of service can result in devastating losses (Leon, 2008). Challenges in implementing the IT Infrastructure One of the challenges of implementing e-business is resistance by the members of staff. Some employees may see e-business as moving the business transactions toward the web where the customers and suppliers perform the work. Because of losing their jobs, they may not be supportive of the move. The business should, therefore, consider that fact and take the major approach of involving human resources in the migration to e-business (Lientz & Rea, 2001). Another key challenge to successfully implementing an e-business strategy is the management of the expectations of the e-business, and effectively communicating the benefits to business partners. Security breaches and malicious attacks is another challenge facing e-business. The malicious attacks may include vandalizing Web sites, disabling of computer servers using viruses, denial of service (DoS) attacks, and buffer overflow techniques which can be costly to e-business. This is because they make the systems unavailable for normal operations, which in most cases results in incomplete transactions or loss of business while the systems are incapacitated. The global nature of Internet makes it hard to regulate cybercrimes, leaving room for attacks to be launched from countries with less stringent regulations (Anumba & Ruikar, 2009). The cost of technological infrastructure can also be a hindrance in the implementation of e-business. The technological infrastructure is a crucial enabler for adoption and sustenance of e-business. Telecommunications infrastructure and advancements in technology facilitate innovation, efficiency and operation of the company. However putting all these components together, they may add up to huge amounts of money. Despite all the benefits that may result from the technological infrastructure, the company may not be able to meet the costs thereby making implementation difficult (Anumba & Ruikar, 2009). It was found out that one of the benefits of engaging in e-business is the global marketing and sale of the available products. That is why some of the most extreme information technology requirements found in the commercial world are often associated with design and implementation of large-scale business systems. Issues with the design and deployment of such systems include localization of the applications for international users, management of the quality of service, and protection of access to the data and applications. The implementation of the e-business may, however, be difficult due the high costs attached to the design and deployment of the systems (Cruz-Cunha & Varajao, 2011). Privacy and security concerns for a health care information system For a hospital setting, there is the need for the ethical premise to provide the foundation for the way organization views its responsibility towards the patient, staff, and community. Privacy issues pose one of the biggest concerns to the success of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) implementation in a hospital system. That is why there has been concerns about the right to privacy being compromised by the emerging technology. Privacy advocates have in most cases expressed concerns that placing of RFID tags in common items such as pharmaceuticals may allow them to continue to be tracked once they have been purchased by patients. Information pertaining to patients has to be private and confidential at all times. In this case, information security is not just an IT issue but an organizational issue. The information goes beyond the legal compliance requirements into the moral obligations of the organization. To ensure the data is private, secure, and confidential there are a number of measures that should be taken (Yang & International United Information Systems Conference, 2009). To start with, the information system and the electronic admitting database should be treated as separate databases. They should not be connected electronically in any way. The separation design is for security reasons. The hospital’s entire database system houses the most sensitive information that is the patient’s information. To buffer security of the system, there is need to purchase a firewall. The firewall will protect the system from hacking and breach of security. However, keeping the databases also separate helps in improving security (Yang & International United Information Systems Conference, 2009). The communication channel is another issue to consider. There tends to be a security threat between the authentic RFID readers, and the patient tags through a wireless communication. An RFID patient tag reading will occur when the reader generates a radio frequency signal that communicates with the tag, such as that of a tagged patient, triggering a response from the tag. The threat here is that an unauthorized reader can trigger this response by revealing the patient information such as the patient ID and can easily be misused by hackers and criminals. Further, with respect to reprogrammable tags, unauthorized alteration of the patient data can be done in the hospital information system (Yang & International United Information Systems Conference, 2009). Another issue of concern is the security of the data. This is a major matter, as the nature of the transmission mechanism in an RFID-enabled healthcare system. The security of the patient database repository is of concern due to hackers and other unauthorized persons. The transmission of the collected data of a patient from a RFID reader over an internet to a remote database is vulnerable to the interception, alteration or destruction of the signals (Yang & International United Information Systems Conference, 2009). Conclusion Adoption of the latest technology is a guarantee of success to any business. The Internet has become a very crucial tool in the operations of many businesses, and the benefits reaped from the usage are phenomenal. The Internet has allowed companies to venture in e-business, where they save a lot in terms of advertising while at the same time reaching out to customers from all ends of the globe. The use of mobile devices comprising of mobile phones, tablets, and laptops has boosted e-business in a big way. The users of the devices can access products and services on sales anytime and anywhere. In addition, payment for the services and products has also been made available online, making the whole transaction easy and convenient. This has not, however, been without some serious challenges such as access into the systems of businesses by unauthorized persons through hacking. The intrusion has resulted in the loss of confidentiality of customer information; lack of trust in the company by the company thus derailed progress. The Health Care sector has also not been left behind in the use of latest technology of information systems. The introduction of the information systems in hospitals has enhanced the patient service. Through the information system, patients can access to their records enabling them to submit their consent forms for treatment. All this is done through the internet. Technologies such as RFID have been employed in the health sector. However, implementation of a hospital information system has been faced with the challenge of cost. The high cost remains the main hindrance to greater RFID implementation in healthcare. The cost is high due to hospital infrastructures such as the RFID hardware-tags, and readers, IT system, network infrastructure, system integration, redesign of the process and organization change and the labor cost. The information of a patient needs to be accorded the highest level of privacy and confidentiality. This has, however, been faced with the challenge of intruders who gain access to a hospital’s database and accessing the highly secured information. References Anumba, C. J., & Ruikar, K. (2009). E-Business in Construction. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Cruz-Cunha, M. M., & Varajao, J. (2011). E-business issues, challenges and opportunities for SMEs: Driving competitiveness. Hershey: Business Science Reference Harmon, P., Guttman, M., & Rosen, M. (2001). Developing E-business systems & architectures: A managers guide. San Francisco [u.a.: Morgan Kaufmann Publ. Kou, W., & Yesha, Y. (2006). Enabling technologies for wireless E-business. Berlin: Springer. Leon, A. (2008). ERP demystified. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill. Lientz, B. P., & Rea, K. P. (2001). Start right in e-business: a step by step guide to successful e- business implementation. Routledge. Yang, J., & International United Information Systems Conference . (2009). Information systems: Modeling, development, and integration ; proceedings. Berlin: Springer. Read More