BUS107: Fundamentals of e
-Business

ASSN 1:Starting a business online part 1

By Minh Thai
Professor: William Simonpietri
Date: 1/2/2014

Business as of today has become more competitive and more sophisticated than ever before. Owning a small clothing line has it’s complications but taking it to an e-commerce level is a total new logic. Before going to any new business venture, an evaluation must be done correctly in a professional manner. I think it’s best to have a SWOT analysis planned out prior to starting out. A SWOT analysis helps analyze the 4 compartments for either a business venture or project. The 4 compartments are Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. According to the text Strengths measures the advantages of the characteristics the business may have. Weaknesses measure the disadvantages of what a business may have. Opportunities help analyze new ideas for growth. Lastly Threats shows what factors that may cause a danger towards a business or project. The advantages under Strength, I would say for owning a small local clothing store along the Jersey shore is by taking constant current customers and showing them your e-commerce site, so that they may be able to spread the word for you. Secondly it’ll attract more tourists and people around the globe that are able to check the web-site out instead of only dealing within the retail environment and having only physical contact. Another advantage is more income and revenue will increase substantially. Not only e-commerce can be done also the convenience of social media to promote your clothing line such as Facebook, twitter and many other sites etc. Overall the site is up and running 24/7 and that doesn’t require too much man power labors as to opposing the retail stores requiring personnel. E-commerce since it’s done globally, tax brackets and profit may be more beneficial in pricing as in lower compared to within the U.S. The weaknesses I would have to say is one, if the clothing store is known for their warm welcome and providing great customer services then yes it would be more difficult to show that richness of person to person interactions. Secondly to find out and keep on track how much inventory is needed and how the sales fluctuates of either having too much in stock on certain items or too much of a shortage. As for opportunities, there are several factors for using e-commerce, first is you will be able to create more networks and connections, secondly you might have people that might want to get into different business ventures with you whether it’s from a small scale to large scale whether it’s through manufacturing through distribution to wholesaling perhaps. The final compartment I would have to say about threats are unlimited and unforeseeable. Internal problems may occur for example hiring the right people to help you manage your e-commerce site in a professional manner. Another issue would be the e-commerce is out there and it’s open to lots of hacking and scam in example like just recently Target stores and corporate was recently hacked through their banking system, which was breached and was charging large sums of amounts that weren’t valid towards customers, this however has made the company look bad publicly. The breach however effected 77 million people which was a huge catastrophe. One of the last issues under threats is other competitors that may have lower pricings and different marketing tactics or perhaps have been in the e-commerce much longer that they may know the ins and outs for their businesses to better thrive.

The only way to overcome some cultural issues in international commerce is by doing different tactics and be more understanding. For example if a business is done in a muslim dominated country, I would change some of the styles that would conform to their religion and culture to show them signs of respect and courtesy. In addition I, personally would hire some native workers and translators that are familiar with the language, customs, religion and type of governments to overcome these types of issues. Honestly, it would be very difficult to understand other international e-commerce, henceforth it's best to hire an expert native as I've stated earlier. To gain trust and be accustomed to the culture, language, government and infrastructure is to sometimes go to that particular country and be more open of their views and form a comfort level, because to me business is not only about buying or selling great products, it’s about people that are buying you as to what they see what and who you represent. In a way, if I had the proper funds, I would also form a charity which will help fund the countries to help better a social, economic and fundamental ways of life for them as a whole.

In regards to protecting businesses to operate a web to comply with the laws and regulations and for them to extend beyond business boundaries, I would hire natives and translators to explain to me more in depth of the countries policies and find out the pros and cons of it. Since technology is the modern way of fast and increasing speed of business communications to comply with the law, I would look into what kind of services and internet protocols on how the country perceives it and if it’s acceptable since the web does extend a company’s reach beyond traditional boundaries. To keep up with speed, I would hire I.T. professionals and with every business workers including myself to have a smart phone with notifications enabled and internet connection through satellite 24/7 in order to deal with the efficiency of business communications. Protecting the companies’ image is also by reviewing the countries policies and regulations. Lastly for the workers overseas, I’d offer them a handsome compensation to take care of them to show that we as a business care about the people and are strongly complying with the laws and regulations in a professional manner.

In this day and age crime is everywhere and it is beyond extremely difficult for Law enforcement agencies to combat online crime. One can say crime will never happen to them and since we do live in a world where crime has no address nor boundaries since we can’t stop those kinds of individuals with criminal and harmful intentions, I strongly believe a strong precaution and well planned protection is always in need to protect the business as a whole in the long run. The 2 online crime prevalent in e-commerce I would do is to hire a Chief of information Security Officer (CISO) and secondly have inputs on what type of operating systems and what type of security patches and how often that it should be updated and revised. A chief of information security officer is responsible for creating and making sure the business’s vision, strategy and program information assets are well protect, I would make sure I hire the right person and constantly have meetings with the individual and the I.T. team. The second online prevention is to install security patches and constant updates when necessary and to keep a log of information of transactions to be recorded and to have a back-up data in case the crime happens to be breached. Hacks can also occur in e-mails such as spams trying to advertise. It is best to also have spam filters and guards to facilitate junk e-mails that could contain viruses.

Reference:
Schneider. G. (2011). Electronic Commerce: 2011 custom edition (9th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning
"SWOT Analysis- Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats." PMI- Plus, Minus, Interesting. 1999. http://www.mindtools.com/swot.html. (5 Dec. 1999).