Introduction to Business Information System

In this assignment, the market and environment details of Honest Jim have been analyzed along with the development of a website mockup for presenting a proposed design of the website for Honest Jim.

Running Head: BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEM
Introduction to Business Information System
Name of the Student
Name of the University

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Executive Summary
In this assignment, the market and environment details of Honest Jim have been analyzed along
with the development of a website mockup for presenting a proposed design of the website for
Honest Jim. Honest Jim is one of the rapidly growing car dealership companies in Australia that
have been born during the sudden increase in popularity of cars in Australia two decades earlier.
Cars have always been favorite among the Australians but in the last two decades of the
twentieth century, sales went down due to various economic problems as well as issues with the
market.
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Part A: Business Evaluation – Honest Jim Case Study...................................................................3
Industry Background...................................................................................................................3
Business Model............................................................................................................................4
Environment................................................................................................................................5
Value Proposition........................................................................................................................5
Environment Analysis – SWOT and Porter’s Five Forces..........................................................6
Excel Tasks..................................................................................................................................9
Part B: Information Portal Design...................................................................................................9
Review of the Design...................................................................................................................9
Justification of the Design.........................................................................................................10
Customer Engagement Techniques: HCI and Web Usability Guidelines.................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................12
Appendices....................................................................................................................................13
Appendix 1: Website Mockup...................................................................................................13
Appendix 2: Excel Sheet...........................................................................................................16
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Introduction
Honest Jim is a car dealing company that sells cars since 1970s. With the increase in
sales in the 21st century, Honest Jim has faced considerable growth and now sells popular
branded cars as well as provides car loans (rentals) to the customers. Currently, Honest Jim CEO
wants to expand the company to throughout Australia and also enter the online business market.
Accordingly, a plan has been developed to prepare and design a website and information portal
for Honest Jim that can be accessed by the customers for viewing information as well as
purchasing cars online.
In this assignment, the market and environment details of Honest Jim have been analyzed
along with the development of a website mockup for presenting a proposed design of the website
for Honest Jim.
Part A: Business Evaluation – Honest Jim Case Study
Industry Background
Honest Jim is one of the rapidly growing car dealership companies in Australia that have
been born during the sudden increase in popularity of cars in Australia two decades earlier. Cars
have always been favorite among the Australians but in the last two decades of the twentieth
century, sales went down due to various economic problems as well as issues with the market. At
the turn of the century, the sales again went up rapidly and at that time, companies like Honest
Jim faced sudden rapid growth (Valadkhani and Smyth 2016). Considering the markets of native
Australian demands for new and trendy cars as well as rental cars for immigrants on a temporary
basis, these companies started providing cars for both purchase and rental. Hence, in the
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industry, there is a significant competition among the small and large companies but there has
always been a steady growth in sales and hence, most of the companies have been able to sustain
in this current market.
Business Model
Honest Jim deals with sales and rental of various cars that are popular among the
Australians and the immigrants. The main strategy of Honest Jim is to sell trendy and popular
cars at discounted prices that the actual market price. According to Honest Jim owner, every
company sells cars at same or higher price than the market price. On the other hand, if Honest
Jim is able to reduce the price of the cars, more customers will be interested to purchase cars
from them instead of other competitive rivals. Furthermore, Honest Jim also provides cars on
rental on a fixed duration contract mainly to the immigrants who come to Australia for education
or work for a limited period of time. Considering the two aspects of business of Honest Jim, the
proposed business model is a combination of disintermediation and leasing. The
disintermediation business model will allow Honest Jim to procure the cars directly from the
manufacturers without having to wait for the long line of the supply chain (vom Berg, Gómez
and Sandau 2017). In addition, the supply chain also results in considerable increase in the price
of the cars as all supply chain intermediaries get profit from the movement of one node to
another in the supply chain. On the other hand, direct supply from the manufacturer ensures there
are no supply chain costs and there are only minimal costs that are to be paid to the middlemen.
This will allow Honest Jim to sell cars at a much lower price than the market and still sustain in
the industry easily. This business model is completely aligned with the marketing and pricing
strategy of the company and can be suitably fitted within the business operations of Honest Jim.
The leasing business model is required for the car rental services provided by Honest Jim. The
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leasing contracts can be of various durations – 3 months, 6 months or 1 year depending on the
requirement of the customer and the contracts will have a fixed monthly rental that the customers
have to pay within the due dates.
Environment
Most of the car dealers target the higher markets of the industry and sell premium cars
that are mostly expensive and out of reach of general people. Hence, in spite of the promise of
high revenue due to high prices of the cars, the market is limited and is often prone to various
risks (Sipho and Daniel 2017). On the other hand, Honest Jim focuses on budget cars that are
affordable as well as popular among all tiers of the customers. Furthermore, Honest Jim sells
these cars at much discounted rates due to which, the cars are very much affordable for any
customer.
Value Proposition
In order to create a value proposition for Honest Jim, it is important to determine three
main factors – user wants, value provided by competitors and value provided by the proposed
model. Now, in this case, Honest Jim proposes to develop an online website through which, the
customers can order cars at various deals and these cars will be delivered by Honest Jim to the
address selected by the customer (Lindquist 2015). Based on a review in the market, it has been
found this feature is not provided by any of the competitors yet. In addition, the customers have
also suggested that this type of service will really help them a lot when they do not have to the
time to travel to the car showroom. Thus, this proposed website can bring a lot of value to
Honest Jim who will also enjoy competitive advantage over other rival companies.
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Environment Analysis – SWOT and Porter’s Five Forces
The internal and external business environment of Honest Jim can be analyzed using
SWOT Analysis and Porter’s Five Forces as follows.
SWOT Analysis
The SWOT Analysis has been conducted on Honest Jim as follows.
Strengths Weaknesses
 The main strength of the company is its strong
presence in the market. Honest Jim has a solid
customer base and a sustainable business
framework that they followed from the beginning.
 Another strength of the company is that its
current business model is well aligned with the
market demands and requirements of the
customers.
 The main weakness of the company is that its
technical set up is not well upgraded and it mainly
relies upon manual operations. This method
worked for some time but will not work in the near
future due to lack of efficiency and effectiveness.
 Another major weakness of the company is its
marketing strategy and medium. Honest Jim does
not have any media presence and hence, marketing
is not up to the mark.
Opportunities Threats
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 Car market in Australia is always an opportunity
– Honest Jim can exploit the market using suitable
business models and technically upgraded system
(IT).
 Honest Jim owner is willing to invest in setting
up information system for the company – this is a
great opportunity to become technically updated
and gain competitive advantage in the market.
 The main threat for Honest Jim is the market
itself. Honest Jim faces a strong market
competition due to a large number of companies
operating in the same segment of the market.
 Another major threat is that the current staffs of
Honest Jim do not have sufficient technical
expertise to run the business once the information
system is developed and launched.
Porter’s Five Forces
In order to analyze the external business environment of Honest Jim, Porter’s Five Forces
Analysis has been conducted as follows.
Force Explanation Rating
Bargaining Power of Suppliers In the proposed business model
for Honest Jim, suppliers are
non-existent as the company can
directly procure the cars from the
manufacturers through some
middlemen. However, the
middlemen can also demand
some significant amount of price
for supply of the cars. Hence,
there can be significant supplier
Medium
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bargaining power.
Bargaining Power of Buyers Buyers of any industry have
bargaining powers since the
target of any customer is to
purchase a product at a lower
price than the actual. However,
considering the requirements of
the customers, Honest Jim will
sell cars at a much lower price as
per the proposed business model
and hence, the buyers do not
need to bargain much about the
price.
Low
Threat of Substitutes There are always threats of
substitutes in the market
especially in the car market
where new car manufacturers are
growing up and supplying cars at
cheap rates. Hence, Honest Jim
needs to be aware of new
launches and the popularity
ratings of the new cars.
High
Threat of New Entrants Australian car market is almost
like a gold mine – every year,
new car dealers are growing up
and strongly entering the market.
High
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Thus, Honest Jim faces
significant threat through the new
entrants.
Market Rivalry Based on the analysis of the
above points, it can be said that
market rivalry is very strong –
Honest Jim needs to be
technically updated with suitable
business strategy to survive in
the market.
Very High
Excel Tasks
The relevant excel data has been calculated in the attached excel sheet. Based on the data,
three insights and trends that Honest Jim manager can identify to gain competitive advantage are
as follows.
Insight 1 – Diesel cars have more popularity in the market and the sales of the diesel cars
show the same.
Insight 2 – Ute type vehicles are more popular among Australians as reflected by the
sales values.
Insight 3 – Toyota is more popular than other car brands as reflected by the sales data of
Honest Jim.
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Part B: Information Portal Design
Review of the Design
Following the development of the mock up of the website, three main pages have been
created and designed – home page, product page and purchase page (Rodríguez et al. 2017). The
home page is informative about the services, product page is where a customer can check a
particular product in details and in the purchase page, the customer can buy a car by making
payment.
Justification of the Design
This is the most feasible, practical and easy design of website in which, the customer can
easily read and view the information and products and can make payment to purchase the cars.
This mockup can be further developed for more detailed webpage design as required by Honest
Jim.
Customer Engagement Techniques: HCI and Web Usability Guidelines
The required customer engagement techniques are listed below.
HCI Guidelines Web Usability Guidelines
Designs are consistent with each other System status is easily visible
All elements are visible easily Design is consistent and follows standards
All elements work as per required The graphical user interface is attractive
In addition to these designs, it can also be suggested that further modifications to the site
like search engine optimization, customer chat system, intelligent search inside the website, car
suggestion specific to customers and other features can be added into the website that will help to
engage more customers through the website (Moumane, Idri and Abran 2016).
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Conclusion
It can be concluded that Honest Jim can proceed with the design of the website as it
meets the HCI and web usability criteria and will also present a significant business opportunity
for Honest Jim. Considering the two aspects of business of Honest Jim, the proposed business
model is a combination of disintermediation and leasing. The disintermediation business model
will allow Honest Jim to procure the cars directly from the manufacturers without having to wait
for the long line of the supply chain. The leasing business model is required for the car rental
services provided by Honest Jim. Hence, Honest Jim needs to deploy these business models and
launch the website in order to expand and enjoy competitive advantage in the market.
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References
Lindquist, J.D., 2015. New Dealer Choice: The Buyer Perspective. In Proceedings of the 1987
Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 260-264). Springer, Cham.
Moumane, K., Idri, A. and Abran, A., 2016. Usability evaluation of mobile applications using
ISO 9241 and ISO 25062 standards. SpringerPlus, 5(1), p.548.
Rodríguez, G., Pérez, J., Cueva, S. and Torres, R., 2017. A framework for improving web
accessibility and usability of Open Course Ware sites. Computers & Education, 109, pp.197-215.
Sipho, M.S. and Daniel, T., 2017. External environmental considerations in the planning of
strategies of car dealerships.
Stanford, J., 2017. When an Auto Industry Disappears: Australia's Experience and Lessons for
Canada. Canadian Public Policy, 43(S1), pp.S57-S74.
Valadkhani, A. and Smyth, R., 2016. The effects of the motor vehicle industry on employment
and research innovation in Australia. International Journal of Manpower, 37(4), pp.684-708.
vom Berg, B.W., Gómez, J.M. and Sandau, A., 2017. ICT-platform to transform car dealerships
to regional providers of sustainable mobility services. Interdisciplinary Journal of Information,
Knowledge and Management, 12, pp.37-52.
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Appendices
Appendix 1: Website Mockup
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Appendix 2: Excel Sheet
Harley Whyte Student Number: 9725121