isb - completed with toc (2)
DESCRIPTION
Information system fro BusinessTRANSCRIPT
ASSESSMENT DECLARATIONThis form must be completed, signed, dated and attached to each assessment task that you submit for marking.
FACULTY OF BUSINESS AND LAW
1. ADMINISTRATIVE DETAILS
STUDENT NAMES:
UNIT OF STUDY: BCO1102
TITLE OF ASSESSMENT:BCO1102 CASE STUDY PROJECT REPORT
DATE DUE: 14 May 2012 DATE SUBMITTED:
TEACHER/TUTORS NAME: TUTORIAL/CLASS TIME: T1/12.30-2.30
2. COMPULSORY STUDENT DECLARATION
Plagiarism means using another person’s intellectual output and presenting it (without appropriate acknowledgement of the author or source) as one’s own.
Plagiarism constitutes academic misconduct. Where there are reasonable grounds for believing that this has occurred, disciplinary procedures as outlined in the Policy for Academic Honesty and Preventing Plagiarism will be instituted.
PLEASE TICK TO INDICATE THAT YOU HAVE SATISFIED THESE REQUIREMENTS-
o I/we have read the policy on Academic Honesty and Preventing Plagiarism and the relevant referencing guides (or have had this explained to me by my teachers) and understand the consequences of committing academic misconduct as outlined in the policy.
o This assignment is my/our own work, I/we have not participated in collusion, nor have I/we previously submitted this or a version of it for assessment in any other Unit of Study at the University or any other institution without having obtained the approval of the teacher.
o I/we have taken proper and reasonable care to prevent this work from being copied by another student.
o So that the assessor can properly assess my work, I/we give this person permission to act according to University policy and practice to reproduce this work and provide a copy to another member of staff for the purpose of cross checking and moderation and to take steps to authenticate the assessment, including submitting a copy to a checking/detection system that in turn may retain a copy of this work on a database for future checking.
o I/we have carefully read the assessment criteria that will be used to evaluate my work as given below.
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
I/we certify that the statements I/we have attested to above have been made in good faith and are true and correct. I/we also certify that this is my/our work and that I/we have not plagiarized the work of others and not participated in collusion.
STUDENT SIGNATURES: ________________________________________________ DATE: ____/____/____
________________________________________________ DATE: ____/____/____
________________________________________________ DATE: ____/____/____
Criteria
No
ne
Min
imal
So
mew
ha
t
Acc
ep
tab
le
Go
od
Ou
tsta
nd
ing
Consultancy report
Executive summary: Clearly describes the system, costs, benefits and recommendations in business language that could be understood by the client
0 1 2 3 4 5
Introduction & Background: Clearly describes the scenario and the problem facing the business. The introduction that provides a brief overview to the report describing what each section will cover. The background clearly describes the business, the specific concept (CRM, SCM or eCommerce and the problem.
0 1 2 3 4 5
Specific System: Major section reflecting understanding of concepts resulting from research. Clearly explains understand of the concepts of the specific system. Identifies issues and benefits. Shows understanding of current trends and/or examples of use identified in their research. All clearly communicated.
0 2 4 6 8 10
Recommendations: The recommendations demonstrate understanding of concepts, are carefully consideration and link to the scenario
0 1 2 3 4 5
System Specifications: Clearly identifies specific elements of the recommended system. Identifies data requirements, new procedures and requirements of key business personnel
0 2 4 6 8 10
Overall presentation: Report uses the template, is well written, professionally presented and of an appropriate length. Appropriate references are cited using the Harvard system and the reference list is formatted correctly
0 1 2 3 4 5
Total out of 40
Subtractions
Final mark out of 20
TEAM PEER EVALUATION FORM
The team must meet and assign scores to each team member that reflects how each team member contributed to the completion of the business consultancy report. This is an opportunity to reward the members of your team who worked hardest on the team’s behalf and it is also an opportunity to fairly reflect the effort of team members who did not perform as well or who did not make sufficient effort to participate in team activities. Individual marks will be adjusted based on the team ratings you give each individual. See the excel spreadsheet, How YOUR team’s ratings will affect YOUR marks, available under the assessment details link in Blackboard.
INSTRUCTIONS
1 List the name and ID of each team member.2 Agree to a team rating for each individual to reflect the contributions of each person to the
completion of the project by distributing 100 percentage points among them. If the team had three members and all team members performed equally then all would receive 33 points. If one person receives more than 33 points then one or more others will need to receive less than 33 points.
3 Include a comment justifying the team’s allocation for each person.
NAME of Team Member ID Number SCORE COMMENT
1.
2.
3.
DECLARATION AND SIGNATURES OF EACH TEAM MEMBER
By signing below I am indicating that I agree to the team allocation of scores above and that I understand that the percentage score above will be used to adjust the team mark for the assessment to arrive at my individual mark.
NAME of Team Member ID Number SIGNATURE DATE
1.
2.
3.
VUIS Consulting
CASE STUDY PROJECT REPORT
STANDOUT SHEDS PTY LTD
PROJECT TEAM MEMBERS:
- ALMIRA LAUTAN (3902603)- KONG CHIEN YI (3905579)- VIVI (3902592)
21 MAY 2012
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents...................................................................................................................1
Glossary..................................................................................................................................2
Executive summary...........................................................................................................3 -4
Introduction............................................................................................................................5
Background............................................................................................................................5
eCommerce Systems...........................................................................................................6
The meaning of eCommerce .......................................................................................6
Issues and Benefits......................................................................................................6
Current Trends and Examples in insert specific concept eCommerce.....................7-8
Recommendations.................................................................................................................8
System Specifications......................................................................................................9-10
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................11
BCO 1102 <Project Title> Page 1
GLOSSARY
Term Definition
Misleading or deceptive conduct
An unethical behaviour shows by a company which untruthfully in all the business dealings and the company will be punished by the law.
Technology Burnout
An interesting counter-trend has emerged in the aftermath of the technological revolution in recent times. That of professionals seeking to literally switch off or unplug.
Project Brief <Project Title> Page 2
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The purpose of this report is to advice Standout Sheds on how to overcome their declining
sales which are mostly done from their offices by implementing electronic commerce in their
business. In this report, background of the company, definition of electronic commerce (EC)
and how it works, disadvantages and advantages of EC, the system specifications and how it
would benefits Standout Sheds.
Standout Sheds is a company which provides their customers with prefabricated steel
sheds, garages and also carports. This company is located at Melbourne and they focus a lot
on providing high quality designed goods and sell their products at very competitive prices.
Standout Sheds is interested in implementing this type of service (EC) to their
customers as many people does a lot of shopping at home these days via the internet. They
are losing many businesses as they usually provide their services to their customers from the
offices. An EC site has brochures of the items or services that a company provides and once a
customer has decided what she wants to purchase, all she has to do is to add the items to her
shopping cart. Once payment is made, the seller will then start delivering the chosen items.
EC is capable to provide a company with the easy access to the global market. People
from all over the world can purchase the items they want from a web site which provides
online shopping services. EC helps an organization to save cost as the owner does not have to
pay any rental fees. Besides, online shopping can be done whenever and wherever a person
wants which will then increase the satisfaction of the customers.
Everything has its pros and cons, same goes to EC. EC raises many ethical and legal
issues which then lead to the downgrading of the effectiveness of EC. To mention a few, the
problems that might affect an organization would be, employees resist to change to adapt
themselves to the new technology, customers would have to reveal their personal details, and
also customers would be spammed by newsletters and also various kind of notifications.
Project Brief <Project Title> Page 3
To solve the problems that Standout Sheds is currently facing, they are advised to
implement the electronic commerce technology. The company must provide online
purchasing services to their customers to reach out to as many customers as possible as some
might not be able to purchase at respective physical store. Maintenance must be done from
time to time to fix the problems faced and last but not least, Standout Sheds must be aware of
the competitors from the same industry. In order to overcome the problems that might arise
from the implementation of EC, Standout Sheds is advised to upgrade their company from
time to time to catch up with the trend in the market.
Word Counts: 468 words
Project Brief <Project Title> Page 4
INTRODUCTION
The internet has became an important way for both business-to-consumer and business-to-
ecommerce. Nowadays, every company are being linked electronically. Companies are
focusing on business-to-consumer aspect of e-commerce to enhance success of doing
business online. E-commerce or online transaction is to make and change the value of the
connection among or between organizations and individuals which electronic
communications and by using digital information processing technology in business (Sarkar,
S 2011). There are five types of E-commerce model; Business to consumer, business to
business, consumer to consumer, peer to peer, M-commerce. E-commerce consists of E-
commerce built the trade-off between needs for providing personal information to complete
an online transaction and the consequence of providing the information. Most e-Commerce
company collect personal information to enhance the marketing strategies and gain
individual’s behavior to meet their needs and wants effectively.
The purpose of this essay is to advice the Standout Sheds Company how to increase
the sales by using electronic commerce.
BACKGROUND
Standout Sheds is an independent business company which was founded in1990s by
two Australian close friends and this business has been operating for over 20 years since then.
It provides prefabricated steel sheds, garages and carports in Melbourne. Their products are
often used for workshops, horses, car storages or any other similar applications. Their
products cannot be purchased at usual large stores like Bunnings and Mitre 10. Standout
Sheds focuses more on providing high quality designed goods and subsequently delivering
their products at competitive prices as selling of sheds, garages and carports is a highly
competitive business.
Project Brief <Project Title> Page 5
E-Commerce Systems
THE MEANING OF ECOMMERCE
E-Commerce (EC) is actually a method of doing business transactions via the
cyberspace (Gawady 2005). Companies found that e-commerce offers a big opportunity to
increase their sales and create awareness to the customers. Nowadays, every company has
their own website. The website is aim to reach potential customers. It provides information
about the products, online purchase, and online customer service. It also creates two ways of
communication and customers find it is more efficient and not time consuming. E-commerce
system also builds a continuing relationship between company and customers. Because in the
time of online purchasing, customers are required to fill their information such as name, date
of birth, address, email, credit card number. The system will automatically save the data of
customers and will send any promotions announcement through email.
ISSUES AND BENEFITS
E-commerce raises many ethical and legal issues, questions, and responsibilities. The
company is required to be able to answer all the questions asked by the customers to convince
them that the company’s website is trusted. Some issues that influence the effectiveness of e-
commerce are privacy, misleading conduct, spam, intellectual property rights, consumer
protection, and technology burnout. (Elliot, Rundle-Thiele & Waller 2012). The most
common problems which can be found in every customer hesitation are privacy and customer
protection. Customers may found that it is not safe to give the credit card number while doing
an online transaction. They might be think of hackers who could get their private information
easily and for free. Therefore, in order to cover the problem of privacy, the company has to
mention in the bottom of the website that their website is trusted.
Customers also wish to be protected from the first time their visit a website. A company may
offer some options, such as suggest them to install a firewall, email filters to delete spam,
anti-virus software, personal details protection, and asking for secondary email address when
registering for online service.
Project Brief <Project Title> Page 6
The issues not only rise from outside the organisation but also inside the organisation. For
instance, staff may resist changing. It could affect Standout Sheds Company to move another
step forward. The employees may be misunderstanding of what the company wants to change
and they also might be think it would against their individual needs (Kalakota & Whinston
1997).
A company is not suggested to use e-commerce to increase their profit if the company has
unstable economy. The cost of e-commerce cannot be predicted due to the technology has
changed rapidly. The company should monitor the change frequently in order to keep on up
dated.
In other hand, e-commerce brings some benefits that have been recognised by many
companies. Through e-commerce, an organisation is able to access to the entire global
market. They can sell their products to overseas customers via online. It also helps a company
to reduce costs. Having a website means having a new branch that is no need to pay for rental
fees every year.
Customers also get some benefits through e-commerce. It gives customers convenience to
make a purchase from their house. It is open for 24 hours and 7 days a week. Customers can
save their time by online shopping. This strategy can increase the satisfaction of customers.
Standout Sheds Company may give any offers to their online customers. Such as free
delivery fees, point collection, and discount.
CURRENT TRENDS AND EXAMPLES IN INSERT SPECIFIC CONCEPT ECOMMERCE
Standout Sheds Company has to be aware of the new trends of e-commerce. If the
company cannot follow the trend, they might lose their customers. There are some trends
which predicted will be growing in future. There are mobile business, price competitions, and
videos attachments. The features of mobile phones keep updating to the latest technology.
Customers can do an online shopping and make a payment directly with a mobile phone. A
company may create an official application for mobile phone to facilitate their customer to
access their website.
Project Brief <Project Title> Page 7
Low price also be one of the future factor that might influence customers to buy a product.
They will search more information about the product before they buy. They also will find the
lowest price which offered by a company. Therefore, Standout Sheds Company should be
creative by giving price to their product. It should be lower than others but keep earn profit.
A video given in a website can encourage customers to buy the product. The video usually
shows how great the product produce by the company and how to use it correctly. Customers
found its helpful to get better understanding about the product. The survey in 2011 showed a
website with a video increase 64% of the sales. Standout Sheds should create a video of their
product, therefore customers more interested to buy than only read the articles about the
products.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Standout Sheds Company is suggested to upgrade their company website in order to follow
the trends in the market. The company should provide an online buying, and online customer
service. So that the customers are able to reach the information anytime. It might cost a little
bit expensive because Standout Sheds needs to hire additional staffs for control the website.
But the cost of upgrading the website can be cover by the increase of quantity demanded.
Online purchase is the best alternative for a customer to buy a product without wasting time.
The company also needs to pay more attention towards their new website in the future. They
have to be aware of website maintenance, and if it happens it should be fixed as soon as
possible.
Project Brief <Project Title> Page 8
SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS
E-Commerce (EC) is actually a method of doing business transactions via the
cyberspace (Gawady 2005). An EC site is similar to a mail-order business. An EC site has a
brochure of the items or services provided by that particular company to be evaluated. Once a
buyer has decided what items to purchase, he or she can add the item to the shopping cart.
Once the buyer is done with her shopping, she would need to provide the payment manager
her shipping and billing information. Once the payment is approved by the Visa Net
authorization center, then the seller will start delivering the items the consumers have ordered
(Oregon 2012).
There are various kind of EC models like the Business to Affiliate model (B2A) and
Business to Portal model (B2P) to mention a few. But the two major EC models that are
widely use today are the Business to Consumer (B2C) model and also the Business to
Business (B2B) model (Adeyeye 2008). B2B are the transactions between companies via the
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) whereas B2C is an EC model where the company EC
activities focus on customers rather than on business (Gawady 2005).
Transaction of products, services and information through computer networks.
Transaction or trading of business can be done via two methods. The first method is
electronic mail or in short, E-mail. E-mail can be defined as the interchange of computer-
created and computer-stored messages through a telecommunications system. Online service
users or public networks can also be used to exchange E-mails. E-mail makes it convenient
for the buyers and sellers to communicate and exchange information between each other
(Gunasekaran, Marri, McGaughey & Nebhwani 2002). The second method would be via
electronic data interchange or in short, EDI. It is a computer-to-computer exchange of
business without the involvement of human. It is proven that EDI speeds up the purchasing
process, lessen the transaction cycle times, inflates the inventory turnovers and most
importantly increase the rate of order comebacks from the suppliers and requests from the
customers (Gunasekaran, Marri, McGaughey & Nebhwani 2002).
Both these methods cannot be used if it is not for the help of internet. Internet helps in
spreading of one organization's trading communities. Internet technologies implementations
are trouble-free and it is easy for staffs to catch up with the way it is used. Usage of internet
benefits an organization as it helps to reduce cost and time and make it possible to reach out
Project Brief <Project Title> Page 9
to the global market at a very cheap cost (Gunasekaran, Marri, McGaughey & Nebhwani
2002).
A complete set of web server hardware is the key to the success of EC. The total
storage volume and computing power needed by the web server depends on two things which
are the software that is used to run on the server and also the capacity of EC deals that must
be operate. Therefore, a powerful personal computer is required for an EC server (Rob n.d.).
Every EC webpage requires a web server software to provide customers with several
basic services like the security and identification, website development and also web page
construction to mention a few. In order to display items for sale and to provide online
shopping services for the customers, a particular company needs to implement EC software to
provide the five basic elements, namely, catalogue management, product configuration,
shopping cart, EC transaction processing and also the web traffic data analysis (Rob n.d.). In
order to solve the overloading of information that a customer must consider about before
purchasing an item, recommender system is used. A recommender system recommends
products that a customer wants from a site by making full use of the customer's demographic
characteristic and also the purchasing history of the customer. This system allows automation
personalisation on the web which then enables individual personalisation of each customer
(Schafer, Konstan & Riedi 1999).
There are three ways in which the recommender system enhances an EC site. The first
one would be it is capable of helping the customers to find the items that they wish to buy.
Secondly, this system is beneficial as it suggests customers additional items for the customers
to purchase. For example, a customer might see list of suggested additional items to purchase
in the check-out process. The most crucial thing about this system is that it improves
customers' loyalty by creating an enhancement of relationships between the customers and
the sellers. This system is used after a site learns everything that they need to know about
their users and then provide them with what they demanded (Schafer, Konstan & Riedi
1999).
There are many web pages out there which are using this system like for example,
Amazon.com, eBay and also Levi's online store. Amazon.com has many interesting and user-
friendly features like the eyes feature which enable customers to be notified whenever there is
any new items that are added into the catalogue. Another interesting feature that this web
page has would be the book matcher feature where customers can review about the books that
have read. A Levi's online store has its own special feature like the style finder where a
Project Brief <Project Title> Page 10
customer to receive recommendations on articles on Levi's clothing (Schafer, Konstan &
Riedi 1999).
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Standout Shed found an opportunity to boost up their sales and create
awareness to customer by implementing e-commerce to reach the potential customer by offer
product information, online customer. Ecommerce is the cheapest way of doing business
commerce because the transaction through electronic payment is cheaper than conventional
type of counter transaction. And, it also can reduce the transaction cost from the payment of
rental fee that paid. Therefore, in order to increase the sales, Standout must know who is the
potential customer, how to suggest the customer for purchasing items and create the
relationship between customers and buyers.
WORD COUNTS: 2,162 WORDS
Project Brief <Project Title> Page 11
Reference List
Adeyeye, M 2008, ‘e-Commerce, Business Methods and Evaluation of Payment Methods in
Nigeria’, Journal Information Systems Evaluation, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 45-50, viewed 28th
April 2012, < http://www.ejise.com/volume11/issue1>.
Collin, S 2000, Work The Web: E-marketing, Wiley, Chichester.
Elliot, Thiele, R, & Waller 2012, Marketing, 2nd edn, Wiley, Australia.
Gunasekaran, A, Marrib, HB, McGaughey, RE & Nebhwani MD 2002, ‘E-commerce and its
impact on operations management’, International journal of production economics, viewed
27th April 2012, pp. 185-197, < http://www1.umassd.edu/charlton/birc/ec_om.pdf>.
IT BusinessEdge 2012, ‘Top 2012 Ecommerce Trend: Retailers Need to Move to Mobile’, IT
BusinessEdge, viewed 09th May 2012, <
http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/trends/article.php/3939771/Top-2012-Ecommerce-
Trend-Retailers-Need-to-Move-to-Mobile.htm>.
Kalakota, R & Whinston, AB 1997, Electronic Commerce: A manager’s Guide, Addition
Wisley Longman, USA.
Kroenke, DM 2008, Experiencing MIS, Pearson Education International, USA.
Misr University for Science and Techonology 2005, ‘The Impact of E-commerce on
Developed and Developing Countries’, Case Study: Egypt and United States, Misr University
for Science and Techonology, viewed 24th April 2012, <
http://www.must.edu.eg/Publications/Businees_Res5.pdf>.
Sarkar, S 2011, E-Commerce and Digital Models for Business; (Managing Information
Technology in A Global Economy), Arise, New Delhi.
Project Brief <Project Title> Page 12
University of Houston-Clear Lake n.d., Electronic Commerce, Management Information
System, viewed 28th April 2012, <https://mis.uhcl.edu/rob/Course/MIS/Lectures/Electronic
%20Commerce.pdf>.
Project Brief <Project Title> Page 13