Act 1B

← Positive: ABC Books deals with a high volume of customer

queries, so the introduction of online customer service, in addition to
existing provision, would enable customers to access different customer
service options, such as phone, email or web-chat. This would also relieve
the in-store customer assistants, who would have their load lightened.
←

Act 1C

Customer satisfaction ratings: is the e-business move likely to significantly

improve customer satisfaction?

Growth: could the e-business element contribute to the growth of the company?
Think in terms of scale, profit margins, visibility, market share and quality.

Market share: can this contribute to growing the market share of the business?
Are we offering something new, or a competitive service?

Profitability: is this likely to increase profitability? Think in terms of stock

storage costs, cost of delivery, provision and profit margins.

Return on investment: the e-business may be successful, but will it provide

adequate return on investment? Think in terms of the costs of setting up the e-
business, advertising, maintenance and running costs.

Sales: will this increase sales? Think in terms of 24-hour orders and product
details available to customers.

Staff morale: will this make the staff’s job easier? Or will it be a fiddly
hindrance?

Staff productivity and professional development: what opportunities will this

provide? Think in terms of new positions and opportunities available.
Act 1D
When planning to pursue an endeavour, it is vital that the resource cost and
investment cost are analysed and assessed in relation to expected and potential
revenue.
You will need to assess your resource needs. This may include:
 Resources required to set up the online enterprise, such as:
o Servers
o Websitesetup
o Websitemaintenance
o IT consultants
o Manhours
 Resources required for online sales:
o Paymentformat
o Paymentprocessing
o Stock
o Storage
o Shipping
o Handling
o Humanresources
o Customerserviceandsupport.

You need to analyse costs in two ways:

 Set-up costs
 Running costs.

Set-up costs: this may include a large initial outlay, which will vary from
business to business and can range from hundreds of dollars to hundreds of
thousands of dollars.

Running costs: how much will the business cost to run? What are the profit
margins likely to be? Is the increased cost of provision going to decrease profit
margins? Or is online selling cheaper and will widenmargins?
Act 1E
Legal requirements
Here are the general outlines for legal requirements. It is your responsibility to
ensure that you are aware of these and how they affect you and your business,
while taking into account geographical variations.
Insurance:
o Theft
o Legal liability
o Business interruption
o Business vehicles
o Personal.
Security, privacy and data protection:
o Personal details and financial details must be stored in a secure manner
o Fraud prevention
o Secure purchasing
o Privacy policy.

← Ethical requirements Ethics also play a role in responsible trading. The

ethical guidelines and requirements involved with running an e-business
may be:
← Customer information:

← Customers entrust you with their details, which may be:

o Name and address

o Contact telephone numbers

o Email addresses

o Financial details

o Bank account details

← Communication:

← It is unethical and sometimes illegal to:

o Sell on customer details to third-party companies for profit

o Spam customers

o Contact customers to give them a hard sell.

Act 2A

E-business models may include:

 Aggregator models
o This is an e-business practice that gathers information on products from
other websites, in order to improve the e-business.

 Collaboration partners
o These are partnerships where organisations work together to reach
common goals. This may involve sharing ideas, resources and knowledge.

Not
 Micro-payments business model
o Small payments made, generally in the context of gameplay, where players
can purchase additional levels, characters or currency.

 Third party marketplaces

o Where customers can buy items through a third-party hosted by a main
website or business, such as Amazon or eBay.

Act2B
A third-party marketplace attracts a huge volume of customers, who visit the site,
search for their desired item and buy it, based upon their needs and / or
preferences, such as price, condition or location.

Strengths:
 High footfall
 24-hour availability

Weaknesses:
 May not necessarily be the desirable option in the marketplace; someone
else may be cheaper, faster or more attractive
 High levels of competition
Resources:
 Individual items need to be listed
 Stock levels need to be updated

Technical:

 Knowledge and understanding of marketplace selling

 Systems to list, remove and manage sales

Security:

 Have to use the security in place by the marketplace

  Cannot use own or additional security

Act 2C

Cost implications

Setting up and launching an e-business can be phenomenally expensive or

surprisingly affordable, depending upon:

o The size and scale of the e-business  The complexity of the e-business

o Developmental choices

o What you are selling

o The content of your website

o Other aspects of the e-business.

Act 2D

In order to choose the best business model or your ebusiness, you need to
consider:
Ebusiness features
Cost implication
Different ebusiness models
B2B, B2C and B2G business models
Strengths and weaknesses of each model
Resource, technical and security requirements
Threats and opportunities to the existing business.

Act 3A

The purpose of an e-business is the reason why you are starting up

an e-business. Purposes may be:

To make more money and sales

To expand the business

To reach more customers

To compete with competitors

To promote the brand name.

Your objectives are what you are trying to achieve. They may be
similar to the purpose of the venture and may be:

To make more money

To widen the customer base

To promote the brand name and the business

To expand / to grow the business.

Your values are the morals, ethics and ideals that your business
abides by and is built upon. These may be:

Environmental sustainability

Charity

Customer service

Reliability

Fairtrade

Speed of service.

Your purpose and objectives will shape the way you design and
implement your e-business, as they define your aims and goals, whilst
your values affect and reflect what you stand for as a business, in
terms of morals and ethics.

Act 3B

You need to identify your target market so that you can:

Build your e-business in a way that appeals to this target market

Identifying your target market is a critical step early on in the planning process,
as it can affect how the business is planned and built; failing to develop your e-
business accordingly can make it unappealing to the groups you are trying to sell
to.
Value chains

o Accepting PayPal or similar payment processing methods

o Allowingthemtocreatean account that remembers their shipping and billing details

o Not forcing buyers to sign up for an account and fill in lots of details; let them buy
their book and leave, but give them the option.

Identify exactly where you want or need to be within the value chain; ABC Books
needs to occupy the positions of a retailer and customer support services in order to
meet its purpose and objectives.

An example value chain would be:

Input: writers / authors and their publishers

Manufacture: publishers and book factories

Output: delivery and storage services

Marketing, advertising and wholesaling: the publishers and the authors would
generally advertise and promote the titles and the book distributor would sell books
wholesale

Retail: ABC Books receives the products and sells them to the end users

Customer support: ABC Books would provide this to their customers.

Act 3C
Technical requirements
Setting up an e-business well requires a significant amount of technical expertise;
there are many poor attempts at e-business out there, which you will likely have
come across. Shoddy websites do not instil customers with confidence in the
business and may not make them feel secure enough to enter their personal and
financial details.
These technical requirements may include:

← Advice on existing business strategy and base business

versus growth business

← Advice on staffing arrangements

← Advice on technology issues/compatibility

← Banking information for electronic funds transfer

Act 3D

Culture change

The transition from traditional store-based business to e-businessis a significant one

and will trigger the need to a culture change within your organisation.

Some of the major changes that e-business enables may include:

← Being closer to your customers. Customers can now visit,

call email, instant message, video call or telephone a representative of your
organisation with their queries and complaints. Social media allows
organisations to communicate directly with their customers on a less formal
level.

← Footfall in stores drops dramatically, as online sales

prove very successful. This means that stores need to close and people either
lose their jobs or work to support the online element.

← Customers can shop around and compare the clearly-

displayed prices and descriptions of products in several businesses, before
choosing the cheapest / biggest / fastest / best service.
Act 4A

Implementing an ebusiness will require that you put systems in place to support

your customers, your staff and the supply chain.

This will require a change to the policies and guidelines of the business, as they

must adapt to the changing business.

Your organisation may already have policies and procedures in place to handle

situations, but these need to bere-evaluated to incorporate the online element.

Implementing an e-business will require that you put systems in place to support
your customers, your staff and the supply chain. This will require a change to the
policies and guidelines of the business, as they must adapt to the changing
business.

Act 4B
Customer needs are what shape a business, so organisations need to be switched
on about what these are. E-business in itself solves a lot of problems, such as the
need for 24 hour purchasing opportunities or to locate hard-to-find products.

Staff may need training, support or other help to enable them to do their job well
or at all.

The supply chain is a more concrete element of running a business, in that it

cannot be so easily changed; after all, factories can only produce a certain
amount of product(s) per hour or day and other stock numbers may be limited.

Ultimately, customers are who decide whether a business succeeds or fails; you
could have the best business plan and model in the world, but if customers don’t
buy from you, it will inevitably be a failure. For this reason, your business needs
to be fluid and flexible and to adapt to changing customer demands.

You need your staff to run your business and to run it well, so ensuring that they
have the training, equipment and resources they need and checking that they are
happy is critical.

Without a supply chain, you likely couldn’t operate your business; when the
supply chain’s requirements change, you need to be able to accommodate these.

Act 4C

Julie from packing has suggested that using a tape gun would save a lot of time
and improve the presentation of packaged goods. Currently staff use tape
dispensers, which usually means that the tape application is wonky or requires
multiple strips of tape, a well as making the employees’ hands sore. Using a tape
gun to slide down the length of the parcel and then cut the tape could be very
time efficient and look a lot smarter, as well as improving staff morale and
working conditions.
 Customer feedback is an invaluable resource and it can usually be collected
for free.
 Customer feedback will highlight strengths and weaknesses in the purchasing
and delivery model of your ebusiness, whilst staff feedback will enlighten you
about the process behind the scenes
 All feedback is good feedback, even when it is negative; a problem identified
is a problem solved and makes the e-business a little bit stronger and a little
bit better everytime something is resolved or adjusted.

Act 4D

The most convenient way to do this is to send customers an email several days
after their purchase; telephone calls are often considered a nuisance and a
disturbance to a person’s day. Email allows the customer to reply at their leisure
and the results can be automatically electronically tallied to produce a visual or
verbal report. This is also a cheaper option, as it doesn’t require a person to
contact each customer and record their replies.
As well as highlighting strengths and weaknesses of the process, frontline staff
can also make suggestions that can be incredibly useful to the business that may
not even occur to the management or designers removed from the process.