Enhancing E-business Initiative 7 Enhancing E-business Initiative

E-BUSINESS INITIATIVE 1
Enhancing E-business Initiative
By (Name)
The Name of the Class (Course)
Professor (Tutor)
The Name of the School (University)
The City and where it is located
The Date

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Executive Summary
The 21st Century business processes are centered on technology advancements that are
bringing forth complete revolutions in the way today’s businesses are conducted. Today,
businesses use technology to acquire a competitive edge over others and achieve their strategic
goals. This is to mean that businesses strategies are becoming more of technology driven.
Among these technologies that have served to revolutionize our today’s business processes and
models include e-computing technologies that come virtualization capabilities, e-commerce and
e-business systems that offer a great degree of pricing transparency to their customers and
improves inventory management (Mary, 1997). Through the online markets and business-to-
business platforms, buyers interact with the suppliers directly, thus eliminating the middlemen
distributors and intermediaries hence reducing inventory management costs.
Getting the best out of these technologies demands business ventures to strategically plan
their resources and allocate time and energy into realization of such, and which must be aligned
with respective firms’ goals and objectives. Involved business management needs to make
informed selection of hardware and software resources, as well as technologies that are trending
in the market, lest the whole idea of revolutionizing their business turns out to be a white
elephant.
This paper serves as a guide to one Dr. Wagner Rickie is has shown special interests in
migrating his enterprise from traditional mail order model to a present day e-business model.
Through carefully selected topics and critical analysis of such, the paper takes the client through
implications of technologies involved in e-businesses, makes conclusions and ends by giving
them crucial recommendations. Also included in this paper is a proposal for hardware and

E-BUSINESS INITIATIVE 3
software infrastructure, with accompanying cost analysis that we found enough to satisfy the
need of computing power access to ten employees in our client’s enterprise.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................2
Expanding E-business Capabilities..................................................................................................5
Introduction......................................................................................................................................5
Section 1: Hardware, Software, Networking Infrastructure and Cloud Services............................6
Hardware Infrastructure (Including Networking Resources).......................................................7
Software Infrastructure and Resources......................................................................................10
Cloud Computing Infrastructure................................................................................................10
Section 2: Business Intelligence....................................................................................................12
Pulling the Best Out of BI and Business Analytics...................................................................12
Choosing a BI Software.............................................................................................................15
Section 3: Customer Relationship Management System...............................................................15
Operational CRM for Sales Services.........................................................................................16
CRM for Customer Service........................................................................................................17
Using CRM Metrics to Monitor Business Performance............................................................18
Section 4: Social Media Presence..................................................................................................19
Social Presence Issues................................................................................................................19
Social Media: Avenue for Consumer-Provider Communication...............................................20

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Social Media Policy...................................................................................................................20
Conclusions....................................................................................................................................22
Recommendations..........................................................................................................................22
References......................................................................................................................................24

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List of Tables
Table 1: hardware Resources Cost analysis:.................................................................................10
Table 2: Dedicated Server specifications......................................................................................10
List of Figures
Figure 1: interconnection of devices in the e-business adopted from (EMC Corporation, 2002).12
Figure 2: client-server connection.................................................................................................12

E-BUSINESS INITIATIVE 6
Expanding E-business Capabilities
Introduction
Through use of, and developments in the internet technologies, both small and big
enterprises have been given the opportunity to expand their markets sizes, reach more customers,
and conduct businesses everywhere on a 24/7- 365 day basis (Murray & Donald, 2002). And
in order to position themselves in the e-business industry, and to provide value added services,
enterprises need to carefully strategize on, plan and manage e-business platforms and software
applications including cloud computing platforms and hardware resources (Dr. S. Victor,
2014). This paper is a guide to one Dr. Wagner who want to transit his business from an odd
mail-order business to a present-day e-business. This was as a result of them being impressed by
our firm’s system at the Queen of Sheba wedding Emporium Database Management System and
Decision Support System that utilizes Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel respectively. It is
with no doubt that ICT functionalities and capabilities serve both as a marketing platform,
contacting and reaching clients and potential clients (Heeks & Duncombe, 2001).
The availability of a good and well-established technology is a haven for new
opportunities, and the increasing demand for faster, secure and cheaper transactions is forcing
business across the globe to revise and business models and processes. Strategies being used
include but not limited to selling their products cheap, and improving products’ quality. Usually,
these strategies directly correspond to measures meant to reducing operational costs and
optimization of business processes (Jurgen & Lutz, 2004).
Our client business model is based on the traditional mail-order method, also called direct
mail marketing- a merchandising method in which enterprises make public their offers through