A2Z Cosmetics Internet and E-Business - Free Assignment Sample

Question: Describe about the Benefits and barriers to a business considering its online presence, security and legislative issues facing the online business and compare and contrast two models by assessing the benefits and challenges of A2Z Cosmetics? Answer: Introduction: The term E-business denotes the use of computer-mediated networks, so that a wide range of commercial transaction can take place. This concept of E-business is used to transform and automate a firm-level business process. It manages value chain more effectively across the firms. Additionally E-commerce gives customer support application and services where E-business can conclude human resource functions, supply-chain management, sales-force automation and other useful application for the automation of the firms core processes. While it is much concerned about the economic advantages regarding internet-enabled commerce, it is evident that with the use of internet it made the internet able to serve the maps and location tracking service to serve the reinforcement of unequal economic situation. E-business provides real returns to the firms, which makes the firm more profitable and productive. The ability to generate profit by the experiencing E-business has proven the exceeding capability of the most predicted optimistic economic scenario. Environment for E-business: E-business environment refers to a larger business context, which is also called macro environment. It includes those uncontrollable and external factors, such as social, technological and political components- the virtual organizations, which in turn influence the decision making strategies in an organization. These factors influence changes in interest rates, involvement of competitors, government rules and changes due to the cultural tastes (Borck, 2015). As far as the business strategy is concerned, it is very important to carry out the environmental analysis to identify the issues clearly. There are varieties of acronyms STEP or PEST in use for the macro environment. Being contrary to the popular belief that, E-commerce is not just using the web. Ecommerce is well enough for the B2B transaction before the back of internet in 70s vial EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) through value added networks (VANs). Ecommerce are divided into four categories: C2C, C2B, B2B, and B2C (Business Insider, 2015). Business to Business: Companies do business with each other, such as, wholesalers sales to retailers, manufacturers sells to the distributors. On the quantity of order, pricing is based, which can be negotiable. Business to consumer: Business who sales their products to the public through catalogs using available software on shopping cart. Consumer to Business (C2B): A consumer uploaded his/her project online with a desired budget, that consumers given requirements are reviewed by the company and bid on that project. The bids are reviewed by the consumer and consumer selects the most suitable company which will compete the project by fulfill the requirements. Consumer-to-Consumer: There is availability of many sites, which provides classifieds, forums, auctions where individuals are able to buy and sell with the association of online payment systems like PayPal, which allow sending and receiving money online. Auction service by eBay is a good example of person-to-person transactions, where transactions take place every day since 1995 (City.ac.uk, 2015). Companies, who are using internal networks to offer services and products online to their employees- not necessarily, meant to be on the web always- are engaged in Business-to-Employee (B2E) commerce. There are other kind of commerce, which takes place to govern so may type of transactions with govt. for the process to fill the taxes, to do business registration or to renewing of license takes place , such as, Government-to-Government (G2G), Government-to-Business (G2B), Government-to-Employee (G2E), Business-to-Government (B2G), Government-to-Citizen (G2C), Citizen-to-Government (C2G). A2Z Cosmetics, which is a newly established fashion and cosmetics business facing several challenges to capture their most possible share form market. Industries are changing rapidly, which makes it uncertain for the adaptation of the A2Z Cosmetics to the fashion industry. As far e-commerce is concerned, here Business-to-Customer (B2C) environment of e-commerce make it worth working. For example, if A2Z Cosmetics are trying to sell their cosmetics and available services, they will upload the required catalog of their services, product, along with prices, so that the consumer can choose appropriate product or services as per their requirement. Benefits and barriers to a business considering its online presence: There is common misconception on buying domain name requires setting up a website immediately. Rather, when a business selects and makes registration with a domain name, there are many ways, which can be used to establish the presence over web. Benefits: To have strong internet presence makes it more than selling products instantly. Ultimately, it builds business credibility. Recently, in a survey consists of millions of consumers by Weebly (web hosting service), where 56% of response giver said that they dont trust business without a website, which represents them. Now a day consumers are looking for interaction with the companies and want to build relationship with companies (Dob.nt.gov.au, 2015). In this context, it made sense that the small business should believe in the power of making their online presence, as it helps the upcoming business not to miss the inexpensive way towards the brand awareness and to grow its customer base. To claim an online lead for the brand is one of key decisions the owner must make, such as picking the right domain name. It is important to consider their domain choice carefully, as it is the online hub of the brand. For instance a business owner must take some time to carefully consider what domain name extension, such as, .COM, .NET, .TV etc is best to choose among form them for their business. Once brand set up their online presence, it is time for the business owner to steer the sheep when topic came to make marketing decision which in actual get the customers to the websites. Barriers: As far barriers are concerned, this focuses its light on the facts, which can drag the whole concept of E-business behind. These are often seen for the small business or those business, which are just now stepping their feet into the industry. Such of these facts are- lack of time to implement the e-business, the high level of associated complexity, lack of technological expertise for the engagement of the e-business, resistance to change the work practices in order to adopt the business technology, lacking compatibility between e-business and current technologies, concerns on security management of e-business, lack of financial resources, lack of trust to adopt the e-business technology, lacking the concept/plan to implement the e-business strategy, inadequate competition within industry. Security and legislative issues facing the online business of A2Z Cosmetics: As a new undertaking business, which is going to step its feet into the industry, it may such security issues, which are- Information security: In the past, this simply means to be ensured whether information was locked in the safe or drawer, but in this technology era, where we are concerned about the extended challenges to be more secure about the information contained on the companys server, networking devices, etc. Threats can come from hackers, efforts of foreign espionage, or even form competitors for obtaining corporate or personal information contained on the systems, which might have crucial importance to others. Hence, cyber security is a paramount matter for companys security personnel. Stolen or lost physical storage devices: Being as important as the internet security threats, devices such as, cell phone, computer, USB flash drives, CDs/DVDs, hard drives fall into this category. There is lot of information carried by this kind of devices, hence one should be conscious enough not to allow these devices are misplaced or get lost. This kind of devices carries security measures like passwords, additional information to access other devices and credentials. Human Error and insider threat: There is a suggestion from the researches done previously, where majority of security breaches take origination from external resources. Hence, external threat can originate within the organization. For example, if one of companys trusted employee stole proprietary information of her/his employer. Insider threats who involves the misuse of his/her authorized privileges, have long presented serious problem for the private sector and the government sector computer system. In addition by having access to the companys networks, insiders are able to understand the way things work, they know where the data resides, how the data are made available, which make them able to have opportune time to destroy the whole system introducing malware or by disrupting the system. Natural Disasters and Accidents: Accidental deletion, natural disasters (e.g. Floods, fires etc.), computer crashes, hardware failure, all these can cripple a business permanently. These kind of threats are needed to take care equally, like cyber attacks, emergencies. Cybercrime in the United States: Year Complaints received Dollar loss in millions 2001 50,412 17.8 2002 75,064 54.0 2003 124,515 125.6 2004 207,449 68.1 2005 231,493 183.1 2006 207,492 198.4 2007 206,884 239.1 2008 275,284 264.6 2009 336,655 559.7 2010 303,809 0 2011 314,246 $485.3 Different modes of communication available to an e-business and their applications: As technology is progressing, new communications are taking birth and with the evolution they are getting old. In business, when business owner is trying to communicate with the employees, client, customers, he/she may have choices to make marketing or interpersonal communications, electronic media are though critical enough to do the task cost-effectively and efficiently, they are crucial to pursue with. The medium are such as- Mobile devices: As a less formal mode of communication, people are increasingly are in use of text messages, short emails using PDAs (personal digital assistants), cell phones. PDAs with ability to use internet has changed the work experience with e-mail, much like the way of sending quick messages, but with the different connection type. As a result of this not only the business associates make communication with other mobile devices, but many companies gain the ability to do marketing to customers via text messages. Social Networking Media: The ability and use of social networking media started evolving. Companies do promotion of events, offer discounts, and communicate with customers, drawing attention to sales with the use of social networking media. For example, recruiters can search for CFO (chief financial officer) candidate being connected with the CFOs who are listed on the social networking site of business. All these gave a new way to reach people without being in touch with previous secretaries or lot of efforts behind to find out their personal phone number. Email: Being one of the older form of communication done electronically, Email remains a staple of era of modern business, Due to its versatility, email is in use for asking questions, getting relative answer, making awareness of issues to people, holding group conference, passing documents, sharing of information and much more. Most of the organizations now admit email as legal proof and evidence of transactions and contracts. Relevant internet technologies and their importance in making an e-business successful: The industry on e-commerce comprised of varieties of services and products, which includes, Hardware components, such as, firewalls, routers, servers, digital switches and work stations); and varieties of software products. Software technologies are upgrading day by day in an high proportion to manage the traffic online and to meet the requirement of fast growing e-commerce challenges. As a basic web base application e-commerce application needs to be three tired application. 1st tire is considered as user interface layer to handle client-side technologies to create flashy and interactive web pages as a form of data validation, such as HTML, DHTML, and JavaScript etc. For 2nd tire there exists scripting engines and web container. Correspondingly both the server side technologies- scripting language (e.g. PHP, JS) and programming languages (C++, C, J2EE) are in use (Docs.oracle.com, 2015). For 3rd tire, it is considered as data layer, whose components are database management system (DBMS) and corresponding data sources. There are lots of DBMSs are available in market in order to fulfill the requirement. They are Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase, IBM DB2 etc. There are such Web server in use, such as, Apache, Wamp, Xampp, Microsoft IIS etc. and for the development of JSP components and java servlets , WEB containers are required. While telecommunication technology is concerned topic for an organization to communicate over internet, there are varieties of communication protocol are in use consists of digital rules to exchange data within or between computers. Some of the best known protocols that are in use are IPX/SPX, AX.25, X.25, TCP/IP, and Apple talk. Now a day VoIP technology is in use for a multi-provider, interoperable environment, as the providers and vendors tend to develop their services or products on their own way, where VoIP gives popular service as current telephony system and widely used in industrial or public applications (Ebusiness.cs.cmu.edu, 2015). These are protocol are arranged depending on the grouped functionality, for instance, there is group of Internet layer protocol. The functionalities in groups are mapped onto the layers. Each layer is in use to solve a particular problem, which is related to each other, for instance, Internet-network interface functions, application-transport functions (Mashable, 2013). Main features of HTML: HTML is the language in which all web pages are designed since mid of 1990s. It is a big thing to learn all the major pieces of HTML. Some useful characteristics are- Basic HTML takes care of such features to include paragraphs, numbered and bulleted lists, titles and so on. More controls over style feature like colors, fonts and positioning, the CSS (Cascade Style Sheets) standard is the nice way to do so. To view someone elses internal structure of a web page, one can view the source code form view option of a HTML window. Tables can be built also, in order to group rows and columns. Forms are also used in a web page, in order to link another page dynamically, to meet the readers requirements. SSI (Server Side Includes) features allow to automatically include page URLs and timestamps or insertion of other file content can also be done. By executing scripts, which generate contents each time a page get loaded (Open.ac.uk, 2015). Functions of clients, servers and browsers: To economize the bandwidth and performance, a client server system creates both of a server that holds client software which access the data from the server and all system data. The client software requests for the immediate requirement from the server and the server will fulfill the requests. This system also responsible to create a layer of security in order to allow server to only fulfill requests made at a time by authorized client. Clients, who are sending requests to the server, use browser to send request by having an internet connection. There are some browsers at the client end, such as, Mozilla Firefox, Google chrome etc (School-for-champions.com, 2015). Role of search engines and its application for A2Z Cosmetics: Now a day Search Engine Optimization is more important to those business who are stepping their feet into the industry as SEO provides solution to the low cost promotion. The business information can be delivered worldwide to those prospective buyers via online dictionary and search engines. Visitors, who are coming to the organizations websites through the search engines, are seeking for the specific products and information. Hence the organization A2Z Cosmetics is assured of focused, comprehensive and targeted web presence in this context (Small Business - Chron.com, 2015). Use of intranets and extranets within business communications: Intranets serve an organizations requirements on digital communication. Intranet provides a secure space to store, access and retrieve data and to develop electronic materials. By reducing errors and speeding up workflow, intranets provide a way to replace the old business solution to gain efficiency. Some specific applications are included, where multiple employees are able to access the same files, digital reference databases to look up the figures and facts, software for instant messaging, internal email etc (Tutor2u.net, 2015). Extranets connect multiple: Extranet connects multiple intranets together, so the major use of this is to provide the valuable cooperation between various organizations on joint projects, information sharing and initiatives. Different e-business models to generate revenue for a business: There are various revenue models available, such as- Revenue model used for Web catalogue Revenue model for digital content Revenue model for advertising support. Mixed revenue model for advertising-subscription. Fee-for-Transaction Revenue Model. Revenue Model for Fee-for-service (Diigo.com, 2015). Compare and contrast two models by assessing the benefits and challenges: Fee-for-Transaction Model Revenue Model for Fee-for-service In this revenue model business offering services charge fee based on size or number of the transaction. This model does not relate to agent or broker provided services to complete transaction. After receiving fee, online travel agents facilitate a transaction for their clients. Professional services are provided online in this model by lawyers, accountants, doctors etc. Report on future developments in e-business models: E-business offers so many business advantages for the traditional business. E-business helps in overcoming the business constrains by providing the widest range of products to the customers without having them in their respective warehouses. As much as people are adopting this E-business, they are updating this technology for the ease of use by application of mobile commerce. Along with this revolution people are adopting wireless devices to access internet on them. In this context integration of enterprise application is beneficial, but some organization is unable for integration due to have modern application with legacy system (Tutor2u.net, 2015). Key features of good website design structure and Impact of a well-designed website on an e-business: The under mentioned elements are necessary as a guide to help websites owner. Here are top six elements for good website: Providing good visual design: Use of themes to the topic can help the web designer to keep content on track. Content: A good website with relevant content delivers readers requirement. Navigation: Navigation is considered as the GPS of a website. The Nav bars are the available button in the website direct the visitors, where they need go for the information. Call to action: with this Call to Action is a set of words that give indication to the visitors of website to take immediate action while on website. Credibility: A good website win the trust of the visitors by incorporating items to identify the website as a legitimate resource Mobile site: One must make it sure that the implemented website is viewable on an internet enabled mobile device. So that, more and more visitors can increase in numbers to go through the website using mobile. Issues concerning website usability: Content: Content is the key to a good web page and often critical for the usable and effective website. Page Layout: While many websites are facing issues on scroll up and down to read entire content, they may find it irrelevant to stay. To keep the page simple and clean Grid Layouts are great way to position the contents. Colors: One must make sure about the colors, while choosing colors and use color theory for good color scheme. HTML: HTML learning can familiarize web page designers about building of web pages. CSS: Various CSS style properties are used to affect the look of the web page to get the displays more prominent. Download speed: If a search engine has choices to provide ranking among two or more pages, the faster page will gain the highest ranking even with the difference of milliseconds also. Conclusion: After a thorough observation, a conclusion came into the point that, e-commerce has become an important even essential part of todays modern society. The WWW or the World Wide Web is the most usable part of our daily routine. As the availability of web developers no a day become more reachable with low prices, so, all the small or medium scale companies can afford to use the world wide web to sell their products. Though gaining benefits by adapting these technologies is not easy, as A2Z Cosmetics need to overcome many barriers associated with their implementation plan. For example, one of the negative impacts of e-commerce is to have lack of selling advice and guidance for the accommodation of customer service online to answer any question. It is important to note that; e-commerce does not give equal benefit to all the small companies. Amount of benefit a company gets from the e-commerce, depends on the kind of service the e-commerce giving. Above all these, e-commerce does benefit a ny kind of business even in minimum amount. References Borck, J. (2015). Transforming e-business: E-services. [online] JavaWorld. Available at: https://www.javaworld.com/article/2076217/transforming-e-business--e-services.html [Accessed 24 Feb. 2015]. Business Insider, (2015). THE FUTURE OF RETAIL: 2014 [SLIDE DECK]. [online] Available at: https://www.businessinsider.in/THE-FUTURE-OF-RETAIL-2014-SLIDE-DECK/articleshow/32755733.cms [Accessed 24 Feb. 2015]. City.ac.uk, (2015). Part-time full-time e-Business Systems | Postgraduate MSc Course | City University London. 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