Business Information Systems

Initiating a business provides an opportunity, but it also comes with challenges that an individual needs to face while starting up a venture.

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BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS
6/17/2019
System04121

BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS 1
Introduction
Initiating a business provides an opportunity, but it also comes with challenges that an
individual needs to face while starting up a venture. Moreover, it has been identified that the
technological and social environment has rapidly changed, which has increase the
opportunity of being an ecommerce business. Ms Lara is willing to initiate a cat related
garments business through ecommerce, for which the key aspects and element that she
needed to consider will help her in setting up and conducting business successfully would be
discussed in the essay further. E-commerce is a business conducted online where trading of
the goods that is buying and selling of the goods is conducted over the internet. This can be
done through various modes and level of use of the internet and platforms. The essay purpose
is to analyse the key activities that Lara needs to do while conducting online business. For
instance, the key aspects to be discussed include various areas that would be appropriate to
address the E-commerce to work effectively (Tiago, 2014).
E commerce
Initially, in order to initiate an e-commerce business, it is important to understand key
ecommerce elements for instance technology. Technology plays the most important role in
this business; it is the technology that will let Lara develop a website or other platform to sell
its product. The technology would be in form of hardware that are the assets in which Lara
would require to invest like laptops, barcode scanner, and softwares that will let Lara connect
to their potential customers that is internet, development of websites, development of social
media pages, posting of pictures and its content to sell the products. Most importantly the use
of technology would be for payment of the products through online; this would require

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different modes to be made available to the customer to make payments like mobile wallets,
debit card, credit card, net banking and similar options (Ryan, 2016).
Another important aspect to initiate business through ecommerce includes the role of
government that must be considered by Lara (Thomson, 2016). The regulatory system of the
nation is to be considered and abide by Lara to conduct business. For instance, the consumer
rights that need to make sure by Lara that the conduct of business is legal and relevant. The
regulation is becoming strict and precise due to the increase in cybercrime and illegal conduct
of business through online mode. For example, electronic commerce regulations 2002 (unido,
2019) is the act implemented; thus, if Lara business is able to conduct business online or not
will be dependable over the government of the UK. In 2013, the UK law was updated and
affect the business due to the implementation of EC directive regulations 2002. This
regulation was introduced with the purpose to clarify the online business rule and regulation
and enhance the customer confidence and trust towards ecommerce companies. Eventually, it
can e said that each website that is developed and initiated over the internet needs to be
covered as per this acts and regulation, which h has to be abiding by Lara for initiating
business (pinsentmasons, 2019).
Digital marketing
In order to trade goods online, Lara needs to understand the key elements of digital
marketing. For ecommerce activities the marketing is also conducted through the internet,
this includes placing, promotion, and trading of goods through digital mode. Digital
marketing strategies need to be planned and implemented to conduct the business effectively.
The digital marketing plan for Lara would include strategies like the use of websites and
mobile application for the placing strategy. Moreover for the promotional strategy Lara could
use various strategies like social media platforms, search engine optimization, email

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marketing. Among the above mention strategy it is very important for the company to opt for
SEO strategy, the reason being the company needs to create brand recognition and generate
brand positioning to attract the cat lovers. Use of search engines are most commonly
considered by the customers, for which Lara must invest in a specific term like cat prints to
make the information regarding the brand available to the customers (Choi & Park, 2016).
It can be said that the people are mostly spending time on social media, which makes the
social media platform most approachable to reach out of a maximum number of customers
through an attractive way (Kim & Edelson, 2015). This could include advertising, video
campaigns through social media post to attract customer and enhance brand recognition and
brand trust among the customers. Lara can attract cat lover merchandiser through videos and
images that would be eye catchy, especially for cat lovers. The platforms of social media
marketing include Facebook, Instagram, twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube. Lastly, it is
recommended to Lara to consider customer relationship management and customer
engagement to email marketing. This could be interactive for the customers, and through this
Lara would be able to understand the customers’ needs and expectations and increase
customer satisfaction. t5herfore, it can be said that for E- commerce business Lara must
consider digital marketing strategies, even before the brand launch (Zahay, 2015).
Information
Information plays a vital role in e-commerce business as the information provided to the
customer could be the major basis for the purchase decision of the customers. Moreover, the
customers are providing their personal information while purchasing from the websites,
which increase the privacy issue, which needs to be considered by Lara while conducting e-
commerce business and will affect the brand trust among the customers (Holt, 2015). Data
privacy is one of the major challenges in e-commerce business. Privacy is controlling

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someone’s personal information, which should not be losing to anyone. The company needs
to maintain the privacy of the customer. Lara has to exploit the private information of the
customers for the purpose of business growth and opportunities. For the purpose of customer
database, Lara has to main the personal information but in case the privacy issue is found to
be dissolved to the customers, they would refuse to purchase online from the brand which
would eventually resultin the inability of the brand to retain their customer and harm brand
image (Kowalski, 2015). Lara is recommended to implement privacy policy to its
organization to ensure that the privacy of eth customer are maintained, otherwise users must
not be able to feel comfortable making payment online at the website. This is a relevant
aspect that Lara must consider as the privacy issue has been observed in recent years; in 2016
the number of incidents related o data privacy increase from 783 to 984. Some of the data
privacy issues include intellectual property reselling, the integrity of server machines, web
activity correctness, buyer striking, snooping into customer computer, passwords guess,
sniffing the network. The prevention steps that Lara must consider include lawful private
information collection, fair data collection, do not disclose data, personal data utilization
securely, personal data accuracy, and the limited time span from retention of personal
information (Kim, 2016).
Security
Security is one of the major concern and challenge that Lara could face and need to abide.
One of eth security issue is the data privacy issues, discussed before. Some other issues
relevant to ecommerce business are authentication that is the authenticity of the users, for
which the identities must be known to one other that is the buyer and the seller. Another issue
is integrity that is tampering of information that is being exchanged among the parties
(pdfs.semanticscholar, 2019).

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Factors that affect the security of e-commerce include the role of system log files and
auditing. The log files are responsible for storing ass the network and data activity, through
which computer auditing program would be able to track the activities of network which
included the details of files like moved, downloaded, copied, and deleted files and all the
unsuccessful attempts of logging to track any kind of hacking or password guessing. This
would help Lara to enhance the security of the e-commerce business. The online auditing
could also help Lara to check on the real time basis to manage internet transactions then
configured further to tools for security measurement. Through this Lara could be able to
evaluate the risk and control the identified risk (Nacos, 2016). The log files would generate
the alert automatically and are responsible for reports to the auditor. Moreover, Lara must
consider general data protection regulation that includes five key cyber security classes to be
abided by Lara’s company to conduct business online. Therefore, it can be said that Lara
must consider the security issues and ways to increase security over the internet for
conducting ecommerce business (digitalstrategy, 2019).
Conclusion
From the discussion, it can be summarized that Ms. Lara is willing to initiate a cat related
garments business through e-commerce, for which the key aspects and element that she
needed to consider were included for discussion. Technology plays the most important role in
this business; it is the technology that will let Lara develop a website or another platform to
sell its product. The digital marketing plan for Lara would include strategies like the use of
websites and mobile application for the placing strategy. Information plays a vital role in
ecommerce business as the information provided to the customer could be the major basis for
the purchase decision of the customers.

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References
Choi, D. & Park, D.H., 2016. Innovative service concept generation based on integrated
framework of design thinking and VRIO: the case of information supporting system for
SMEs in Korea. In Proceedings of the 18th Annual International Conference on Electronic
Commerce: e-Commerce in, p.23.
digitalstrategy, 2019. security-issues-in-e-commerce. [Online] Available at:
https://digitalstrategy.ie/security-issues-in-e-commerce/.
Holt, T.J., 2015. Cybercrime in progress: Theory and prevention of technology-enabled
offenses.. London: Routledge.
Kim, S.B., 2016. A Cybercrime Prevention Program based on Simulation and Quiz Game:
Applying Item Response Theory for Effective Information Security Learning. International
Journal of Security and Its Applications, 10(5), pp.165-80.
Kim, P. & Edelson, S., 2015. What did I just tweet?: The need to address digital emotional
literacy in corporate communications. In Digital business discourse, p.189.
Kowalski, R.M., 2015. Cyberbullying via social media. Journal of School Violence, 14(1),
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Nacos, B., 2016. Mass-mediated terrorism: Mainstream and digital media in terrorism and
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pdfs.semanticscholar, 2019. Privacy and Security Issues in E-Commerce. [Online] Available
at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ffe1/c67215a7b902c9af8219f15cdcfc767418e5.pdf.
pinsentmasons, 2019. the-uks-e-commerce-regulations. [Online] Available at:
https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/guides/the-uks-e-commerce-regulations.

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Ryan, D., 2016. Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the
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Thomson, H., 2016. Marketing small and medium sized enterprises in the digital age:
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Tiago, M.T.P., 2014. Digital marketing and social media: Why bother? Business Horizons,
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