Key Trends and Advantages of Digital Technology for Managing Digital Business in the Global Environment

This report discusses the key trends and advantages of digital technology for managing digital business in the global environment. It evaluates new business models and collaborative relationships through digital technology. It also explores how Amazon uses e-commerce principles. The report covers the subject of Digital Business and includes a task, course code, and college/university are not mentioned.

Digital Business

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK...............................................................................................................................................3
Key trends and advantages of digital technology and implications for managing digital
business in the global environment..............................................................................................3
Evaluation of new business models in context with key business issues....................................6
Impact of new collaborative relationships and strategic alliances through digital technology...7
How E-commerce principles could be used by Amazon.............................................................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Digital technology refers to the electronic tools, systems, devices, and resources that
facilitate generation, storage and processing of data. The examples of digital technology include
multimedia, mobile phones and social media etc. In context of business, it facilitates in
increasing the efficiency of systems, products and processes. Digital businesses utilise
technology for creating new value in business models, internal abilities and customer
experiences. Digital technology supports both B2B as well as B2C businesses in terms of
transforming the internal processes and providing opportunities for implementing new methods
of distributing products and opportunities for monetizing services (Dolgui and Ivanov, 2022).
This report will describe the key trends and advantages of digital technology for virtual
international businesses like Amazon i.e. an American multinational technology company that
focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and digital streaming. It will
cover the evaluation of business models relating to business issues. Further, the report will also
discuss the collaborative relationships through digital technology for Amazon and e-commerce
principles to be used by the business.
TASK
Key trends and advantages of digital technology and implications for managing digital business
in the global environment
Key trends of digital technology to global E-commerce businesses
Amazon is an American multinational technology company that engages in E-commerce,
artificial intelligence, digital distribution, etc. and is one of the world's most valuable brands. It
has been considered as one of the big five information technology companies with Apple, Meta,
Microsoft and Alphabet. It is an international digital business that is both B2B and B2C
company. Amazon has wide variety of products available on its website in which more and more
other businesses also turn to the website to arrange their supplies. Digital technology helps the e-
commerce businesses in staying ahead in the competition on a global basis with big multinational
technology organisations. The E-commerce technology trends have significant impact on online
e-commerce business like Amazon (Leslie-Jones, 2021). They include new customer demands,
shift of devices from desktop to mobile. Some of the key trends of digital technology for
managing digital businesses in global environment are as under -

 Use of Mobile devices – This is an emerging trend in the e-commerce world as the
number of smart phone users is rising day-by-day. To make their online shopping quick
and convenient , the number of smartphone users for online shopping has crossed more
than half of world population. The global trends in the e-commerce industry show that
mobile devices will be used as primary technology for searching, buying and researching
the products and services through e-commerce platforms like Amazon.
 Mobile wallet and app – E-commerce businesses need to integrate the functionality of a
mobile wallet into their business website. The launch of mobile applications is emerging
day-by-day for online businesses. One of the main technological trends in the e-
commerce industry is launching of a user-friendly mobile app. Integration of mobile
wallet into the e-commerce will increase the sales of company when the customers will
use mobile wallet for payment of their online shopping (Allioui and Allioui, 2022). For
example, Amazon has its own mobile app where the customers can order their desired
products and can payments therefrom that helps the company in increasing online sales.
 Voice search – The technology has supported the world with a large number of virtual
assistants like Google voice search,, Google home, etc. that train the customers to use
their voice for searching on the search engines. It is a rising innovation driver in the e-
commerce industry. It has been reported form the Google that almost 20% of mobile
device queries are based on voice and 40% of millenarians conduct their searches through
voice assistant. This facilitates development of customer loyalty for the businesses. In
context with Amazon, it has developed its cloud-based voice-service i.e. Amazon Alexa
available to millions of devices from Amazon and third party manufacturers. With
Amazon Alexa, the businesses can build natural voice experiences that will add value to
the customers' experiences and develop customer loyalty for Amazon.
 Product customisation – The customisation of product is one of the most effective
emerging trend in the e-commerce industry. The product customisation helps the
businesses and customers by facilitating hasslefree online purchases and catering to the
needs of customers. It is so because customisation makes customers' purchases
convenient. Customisation is more supported by automation such as recommended video
playlist on You Tube according to the behaviour of the user. For example, Amazon uses
customisation through Amazon custom i.e. a store on Amazon.com where the shoppers

go to customise the products with their images, texts and logos that help the company in
adding value to the customers' experience and in ensuring customer loyalty as well.
 Rise in ROPO/ROBO – It refers to Research online, Purchase offline (ROPO) and
Research online buy offline (ROBO) by which the customers can find easiness in finding
for products and services at reasonable prices. It facilitates the e-commerce businesses in
tracking their offline conversions (Panova, Oparina and Bondareva, 2022). The e-
commerce businesses can satisfy the ROPO shoppers by various metrics such as CRM,
consumer shopping history, social integration and mobile payment etc. For example,
Amazon uses salesforce CRM to enclose the customers' data and customise the user's
overall on-site experience.
Advantages of digital technology to E-commerce businesses
The emerging technologies such as 5G, Internet of things and Artificial Intelligence etc.
play significant role in the development of E-commerce businesses. Some of the advantages of
digital technology to e-commerce businesses in context with Amazon are -
 Increased Efficiency and productivity – Technology is considered as driver of efficiency.
It enables the companies to make the employees smarter by ensuring their effective
technological systems and processes. The emerging technologies like cloud, mobile
devices, big data etc. facilitates the businesses in achieving high level of efficiency and
productivity. For example, Amazon has a cloud i.e. AWS (Amazon web services) that
provides servers, networking, remote computing, mobile development and security etc.
that help the company in increasing its efficiency.
 Better Resource management – E-commerce businesses are required to optimise their
resources for effective growth in terms of capital, labour, suppliers and inventory. For
example the Internet of things help the businesses in tracking their resources in real-time
providing them with greater visibility to the requirement of improvements the process
(Calderón-Garrido and Gustems-Carnicer, 2021). In context with Amazon, its the IOT of
its AWS facilitates in collecting, storing, and analysing the data from billions of
connected devices and sensors and this helps the company in dealing with commercial
and automotive workloads.
 Better digital presence – The businesses are required to have strong online presence in
today's digital world. The existence of a well-designed website that is convenient to

navigate , online interaction with the customers and presence on social media platforms
etc. help the company in strengthening their brand awareness and in better interaction
with the customers. Amazon has its effective and convenient website i.e.
www.amazon.com and mobile app that facilitates online shopping to the customers and
providing feedback of their reviews with the help of digital technology that ads value to
their experience and develop brand reputation of company thereby.
 Improved customer engagements – It is imperative for the e-commerce businesses to
engage with the customers so as to get competitive advantage by developing a large
customer base. The use of data analytics and AI help in creating customer profiles that
the business can use to facilitate personalised customers' experiences (Xiao and Xie,
2021). Amazon is going to implement Bot technology to automate its online channels. It
facilitates the company in conversational commerce by using chatbots.
 Innovation – In today's business world, the employees are becoming more technology
savvy paving the way for company to become more innovative by using the technologies
like IOT, AI, etc. that will help the company in making smarter decisions and identify
new revenue streams (Dobynde, Shprits and Shurshakov, 2021). In context with Amazon,
it has an artificial intelligence service i.e. Amazon Lex with advanced natural language
models for designing and testing conversational interfaces in applications.
Evaluation of new business models in context with key business issues
The digital, technological or E-commerce businesses are the ones that are most
vulnerable to cyber attacks in today's digital world. There are different models that support the E-
commerce businesses from cyber attacks and ethics and ensure protection of their cloud services.
It is imperative for the E-commerce businesses to ensure security of their large cloud where all
the essential as well as confidential information is stored relating to the employees database,
customers' profile, B2B contracts, suppliers' contracts etc. that have a fear of hacking by the
cyber attackers (Bresciani and et. al., 2021). So the companies need to use effective tools and
models to ensure security and avoid the cyber attacks. In context with Amazon, it uses AWS
security, identity and compliance services so as to ensure security management of IOT devices
by providing the service of AWS IOT device defender. The company's cloud i.e. Amazon web
services (AWS) ensures its network security by using AWS Network firewall.

Amazon uses Fire Eye Cloud security for its AWS that protects the infrastructure of
cloud. It streamlines the migration, search the misconfiguration, improve detection and increase
compliance to face the threats with amazon services like S3, ECS, EC2 etc. EC2 is a computer
service that enables the computer applications to run on AWS and ECS is an AWS service that is
used mainly for orchestrating Docker containers. S3 is AWS's go-to cloud storage option.
Amazon also uses a Fire eye network security tool or model that ensures protection of network ,
users and data against the cyber security threats. These threat are able to bypass the conventional
tools like firewalls and secured web gateways etc. But the Fire Eye network security tool used by
Amazon empowers the company to perform traffic analysis on a real-time basis with quick
delivery of decisions (Razaque and et. al., 2021).
Amazon uses Amazon Guard duty i.e. is a security tool that uses machine learning for
avoiding any malicious activity in AWS environments. It integrates the cloud trail event logs, S3
event logs, VPC flow logs etc. so as to control and analyse all the activities. It identifies the
issues like exposed credentials, communication with malicious IP addresses and domains. It
costs more to the company as the pricing is based on amount of data analysed. It helps the
company in ensuring security of its data from malicious activities.
AWS shield i.e. an application security tool is also used by Amazon. It is a protection
service i.e. fully-managed distributed denial-of-service (DdoS) that provides protection against
common DdoS attacks against the AWS environment. It facilitates the company in preventing a
wide variety of malicious traffic from reaching its website and applications and thereby provides
convenient and hasslefree customers' services through Amazon mobile app and website (Haque
and et. al., 2021). It provides assurance to the company that all its internet related points are
protected from the cyber attackers. AWS Web application Firewall controls and protects the
applications and APIs that are built on services like CloudFront, API Gateway and AppSync. It
helps the company in ensuring security from malicious activities to protect its applications from
cyber attacks. So, the above mentioned IT security tools and models are used by Amazon to
avoid the key business issues related with cyber security and ethics that serve the security of
company's cloud as well as network.
Impact of new collaborative relationships and strategic alliances through digital technology
Collaborative relationships refer to the agreements and actions made by consenting
organisations for sharing resources so as to achieve a mutual goal. In this , the resources like

finances, knowledge and people are shared between the two parties. Strategic Alliance refers to
the arrangement between two companies for undertaking a mutually beneficial project while
ensuring independence of each project (Bogachov and et. al., 2021). It is less complex and
binding than joint venture. Amazon , after going public in the year 1997, formed long-term
relationships with many strategic partners that include America Online, Yahoo, Excite,
Netsacpe, Alta Vista, Geocities, Prodigy, @Home that were search engines, internet service
provider and web hosting services.
Amazon web services (AWS) i.e. American e-commerce big Amazon's cloud computing
business has formed strategic alliance i.e. partnership with CRM services provider Salesforce.
They have reported that they are expanding their global strategic partnership with new initiatives.
Salesforce is going to introduce Service Cloud Voice i.e. a new proposal that combines Amazon
connect for providing contact Center agents to offer improved customer service support. Both the
companies will together deploy powerful AI and voice technologies for delivering smarter and
quicker customer service experiences. Both Salesforce and AWS are making AWS content
available on Trailhead and online learning platform of Salesforce so as to support the users'
training in cloud related technologies.
Amazon web services (AWS) i.e. Amazon.com company had announced its global
strategic alliance with Blackberry QNX a global leader in intelligent security software and
services. Mutually, they had developed an Intelligent Vehicle data platform named as Blackberry
IVY. It is an expandable , cloud-connected software platform that facilitates auto-makers for
delivering a consistent and safe way to read vehicle sensor data and normalise it. AWS and
Blackberry have together created this software platform to bring invention to the in-vehicle
experience and facilitate in creating new applications, services and opportunities, etc.
Amazon has made strategic partnership with many giant businesses on a global basis
including financial services market. But its 2020 partnership with Goldman Sachs is one of the
most effective and attention-seeking collaborative relationship. Amazon has partnered with this
investment bank for providing small business loans to more and more of Amazon's US
customers with proposing line of credit of 1 million dollars to businesses providing products on
Amazon (Goldman Sachs and AWS Collaborate to Create New Data Management and Analytics
Solutions for Financial Services Organizations, 2022).

The company has also recently announced its partnership with Startup India , Sequoia
Capital India, and Fireside ventures for launching an accelerator programme to facilitate the first
startups to show their brand to global audiences. Its main is to create Amazon's Global selling
programme so as to support early stage startups in the customer products to launch products in
the international markets. With its partnership with Startup Accelerator, Amazon has formed a
mentorship board that comprises of Amazon leaders from worldwide and senior leaders from
Start-up India (Amazon Partners With Start-up India, Others To Boost E-Commerce Exports
From India, 2018). So, the above mentioned strategic partnerships of company shows that
Amazon has expanded its business effectively by having the impact of its collaborative
partnerships with many big technology companies and is still forming strategic alliance with
other big companies through digital technology (Zinner and et. al., 2021).
How E-commerce principles could be used by Amazon
For the customers, E-commerce is rapidly becoming the primary mode of purchase. It is
imperative for the E-commerce businesses to analyse the consumer behaviour and expectations
that are constantly evolving so as to get the competitive advantage in the E-commerce industry
by developing a large and loyal customer base. The e-commerce businesses must follow the best
principles and practices so as to have an effective and profitable online business. In context with
Amazon, the principles of e-commerce and their use in the business are mentioned below –
 Use good UX design – Although making an e-commerce website is easy, but
incorporating a good UX design in the website is much more complex. So, the businesses must
use simple practices like easy website navigation and engaging landing page top turn the website
visitors into customers (Avania and Widodo, 2022). Amazon’s website is crafted to satisfy
customers’ needs. Its scan find option helps the visitors in locating the products by scanning the
barcode of their products.
 Make paying system easy – The E-commerce business must have a range of payment
options available so as to offer checkout to the customers. It will clearly state the shipping costs
and returns policy of the business. It helps in developing customer loyalty. Amazon pay accepts
credit cards i.e. Visa, MasterCard, American Express etc. and debit cards. For selected
merchants, amazon.com store card is also available.
 Use Email communication – It is a great tool to communicate with the customers so as to
inform them about sales and release of new products. They can also use tis to reengage with the

customers who have left their carts. Providing receipts and delivery updates through email will
also help the company in building brand reputation. Amazon also uses Amazon simple Email
service (SES) that is a cost-effective email service built on its expandable infrastructure. It can be
used for transactional emailing, marketing message etc.
 High Quality visual content – The visual content on the website of company is used to
show information about the product. The major percentage of the customers make their
purchasing decisions by relying upon and impressed by the photos and videos. Amazon also
markets its products by showing them on its website so s to bound the customers to buy them. It
increases competitive strength of the company in E-commerce industry.
 Improve page loading speed – The e-commerce shoppers have a tendency to leave the
site on facing slow loading speed of the page. So, the businesses must optimise their site by
decreasing image file size, using browser caching, and reducing redirects (Peng, Hu and Tan,
2021). Amazon’s average web page load times is 1.14 seconds on amazon mobile and 2.3
seconds on amazon desktop making it competitive with giant technology companies in E-
commerce industry. (Amazon is crushing retailer load times, 2022)
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that technology plays a vital role in the E-
commerce industry and provide competitive advantage top the businesses operating therein. It
has been observed that Mobile wallet and app, Voice search, Product customisation are the key
trends of digital technology that help the businesses in global environment. Digital technology
serves the businesses with many advantages like Resource management, digital presence,
customer engagements, Innovation, etc. It can be identified that there are various digital tools
available to e-commerce businesses to avoid the issues of cyber-attacks such as AWS IOT device
defender, Fire Eye Cloud security, Fire eye network security, etc. It can be analysed that forming
strategic alliance with other online businesses by using digital technology that helps the
businesses in ensuring global expansion as in case of Amazon and Start-up India. Then main E-
commerce principles like good UX design, email communication etc. must be used by the
businesses so as to gain competitive advantage by developing a loyal customer base.

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