E-Commerce Strategies of Addison Lee: A Case Study

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E-COMMERCE 2
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Analysis of current evaluation of e-business strategy and activities...............................................4
E-Business strategies used by Addison Lee to get ahead in the race..............................................4
Evaluation of Activities of Addison Lee.........................................................................................6
The growth of E-commerce and its Drawbacks..............................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9
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Introduction
Addison Lee is a private hire taxi company which has its headquarters in London. This company
was founded in 1975 by John Griffin and has its service area in Greater London. The company is
one of the largest car provider companies in Europe and is presently operating in more than 350
cities and have a reputation for transporting 10 million passengers every year. The critical
evaluation and analysis of e-business strategies are described for Addison Lee which shows the
company growth.
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Analysis of current evaluation of e-business strategy and activities
The company was a takeover by Carlyle group which is a private equity firm in April 2013 with
a huge amount of money which was not disclosed publically but assumed to be 300 million
euros. The group is now growing under the name of Carlyle group both nationally and
internationally.
It came into the e-commerce business in the year 2009 and was among the first car service
provider company to provide the SMS messaging and Mobile application. It has also set a new
bar and made the stakes high by walking ahead of its rivals by launching its apple pay and a
personalized application for apple watch. On October 19, 2015, the cycle cab was introduced
which was one of the unique idea introduced by the company and helped in grabbing several
awards to the company for the same.
E-Business strategies used by Addison Lee to get ahead in the race
 Focusing on fast delivery to change the behavior of the customers
The company has norms and policies which are customer oriented and the main focus of
this taxi and mini-cab service Provider Company is to provide the best in class facilities
to its customers by providing them satisfaction with the help of technological tools.
Nowadays, people do not like to carry cash with them they like to use plastic money or
more precisely can be termed as a credit card for their expenses. The people do not like to
waste time in picking up their phone and book the cab they just want it to be done by one
click on the phone and they also want that surety that there is someone with whom they
can talk whenever needed. The Addison Lee has taken several measures by working on
the ground policies by providing the in-demand technological advancements to its
customer and has always kept the pace with the innovation and demand.
 With the help from Application programming interface unlocking the
infrastructure and data quickly
The first Application Programming Interface of Addison Lee was built on MuleSoft's
Any point Platform and was just completed within the duration of just 6 weeks. This
platform was specifically designed for the development of websites and booking
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applications. The company assures that it has 50 full-time developers working on the
platform including the Salesforce service and bespoke allocation software to support the
development of the software. The head of Addison Lee development team named as Paul
McCabe assures that Mule soft technology provides best services and gives the best
connectivity and provides healthy and supportive mobile strategies. The current work is
going on the advancement of the mobile application so with the help of that mobile
application the customer will be able to book a car globally and does not have to call the
contact center.
 The reduction in integration time with the help of Mule Soft from weeks to days
Addison Lee believes in the interrelationship of components, by getting or working
together with various backend systems and the offering provided by the third-party with
the help of Application programming Interface connectivity. The time required for
integration previously was very high but with the involvement of the Mule soft, the
integration time of the backend systems has reduced dramatically. As the integration are
advancing so as the complexity of the system is advancing but with the help of Mule soft,
the pace required to match up the advancing integration is attained. The offerings of
several new products and services have become easy and quick. At Addison Lee, the
mule soft is considered as the backbone for new service-oriented architecture and global
integrations.
 Opening the suggestion portal for new services
Addison Lee is London's highly rated and most loved car service provider company but it
tries to improve its existing feature with the upgraded ones and runs with technological
advancement. Up in this direction, the company has opened a platform where the next
services are asked by the people and if the people want to comment something about the
existing technology or want some upgradation in the existing technology then they are
free to comment. This step has increased the stakes of the company and also given the
user friendly environment to the customers that their voice will have listened seriously
and the implementations will be made by taking care of the needs of the customers.
 Tracking the journey
This feature is one of the most in-demand features in this technical advancement era as
people want to track the journey they or their loved ones are going through. For example,
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If a boy is traveling in some cab and his parents want to track his location and the
progress of the journey that they can track it with the help of tracking facility provided by
the company and can be assured by getting the information of the location of their child.
The tracking of the journey can also be used to check the progress of the journey one has
made and with the help of google maps, the time required to reach the destination can be
fetched.
 Linking up with several industries
The company is the car service provider company so it has to link with several industries
to get ahead into the race. The several industries include Airports, Railway stations,
Restaurants, Hotels, and Events as most of the crowd gathering is used to happen at these
places only. An Airport is an important place as people use to travel with the airplane and
do need some sort of transport to get to their desired location so when the company uses
to tie up with the airports so they refer the cab provided by the company. Some tickets
like the first-class ticket include the traveling from the airport to the hotel or desired
location in its billing so when the company has tied up with the airport the cab will be
booked of that company only. The restaurants are also one of the major clients of the taxi
service provider companies because when people use to go on for some holidays then
they use to travel a lot so they ask for the cabs or taxi to travel (Singh & Srivastava,
2019). When the restaurants are linked with the taxi service providers they refer the taxi
service to the clients and the pick and drop facility which is offered by the restaurants
nowadays is also given to the linked service provider company.
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Evaluation of Activities of Addison Lee
The Addison Lee is a taxi service provider company which has a fleet of over 4000 vehicles. It
also operates as a private coach company with a fleet of over 100 coaches of different sizes. The
annual revenue of Addison Lee is over 900 million euros.
 Technology used
The company is very much dependable on the information technology to streamline and
automate the management of the huge number of jobs and drivers with the help of driver
Personal Digital assistant which is helpful in getting in touch with the company officials
and is beneficial for the company to track the activities of the driver. The global
positioning system is also one of the important factor associated with the e-business of
taxi service provider companies as it helps in tracking as well as provide the exact
location of the users and with the help of mapping. Online text messaging is also one of
the important factors as it updates the database about the information and location of the
driver and the user.
The software of Addison Lee is also applied to some other industries with the help of
companies software partner Haul mount Technology (Goyal et al., 2019).
 Importance of Global Positioning System
The Addison Lee use to operate in an online sector of taxi providing business which
means it has to deal with various clients who want to travel from one location to another
and with this business one major problem is the tracking of routes. The routes are tracked
with the help of Global positioning system with the help of which the service and
application of the company use to run. The drivers of taxis are not that much aware of the
local routes sometimes so they do need some expert advice to track the right path. The
global positioning system works with the help of satellites, in this system the location
which is provided on the application is tracked with the help of satellites and the tracking
is precise.
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The growth of E-commerce and its Drawbacks
As the technological era is increasing day by day so the mobile e-commerce is expected to grow
with tremendous speed because nowadays no one likes to carry cash the transactions are made
from mobile itself. The Addison Lee provides the facility to the customers so they can transfer
the money with the help of mobile banking and the transaction is made quite hustle free. The
transactions are made with the help of mobile banking on which the bank account can be
accessed with the help of online banking application it is very secure and a faster way of
transacting the money from one person to another (Kang and Namkung, 2019). The online
transactions are secured with the help of several encoding applications and provide a secure
banking environment. The man gets fascinated with the new technology introduced and gets into
the application of that technology without knowing the other aspect of that technology which are
the bad impacts of the technology on society. The e-commerce platform provides online
transaction facility to the users but it has its drawbacks such as the bank details are on the
internet which is not impossible to hack and get the access to the bank account and results in
huge losses (Rana et al., 2019). There are some technical limitations associated with the e-
commerce such as for better performance advanced technological platforms are required and
other limitation includes lack of proper network, domain and software issues. Due to some
software issues sometimes the transactions are not made properly and does lead to major
problems such as transaction to the wrong address and many more.
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Conclusion
The Addison Lee has made a tremendous growth in the taxi service providing sector due to its
adaptability to new technologies and by working on the ground platform to make a good
reputation of the company among the users. The company uses an application programming
interface to adopt new technological advancement in the domain. It also offers a platform to its
users where they are free to suggest the next technology which needed to be implemented in its
ongoing technology to make the services better for the customers. It is involved in several
advancements and is one of the trendsetters in the domain by launching its apple pay and a
personalized application for apple watch. Due to all these services, the customers are satisfied by
the company and the company is growing day by day and has revenue of more 900 million euros.
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References
 Abdullah, L., Ramli, R., Bakodah, H.O. and Othman, M., 2019. Developing a causal
relationship among factors of e-commerce: A decision making approach. Journal of King
Saud University-Computer and Information Sciences.
 Singh, S. and Srivastava, S., 2019. Engaging consumers in multichannel online retail
environment: A moderation study of platform type on interaction of e-commerce and m-
commerce. Journal of Modelling in Management, 14(1), pp.49-76.
 Rana, N.P., Barnard, D.J., Baabdullah, A.M., Rees, D. and Roderick, S., 2019. Exploring
barriers of m-commerce adoption in SMEs in the UK: Developing a framework using
ISM. International Journal of Information Management, 44, pp.141-153.
 Goyal, S., Sergi, B.S. and Esposito, M., 2019. Literature review of emerging trends and
future directions of e-commerce in global business landscape. World Review of
Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development, 15(1/2), pp.226-255.
 Gonçalves, R., Rocha, T., Martins, J., Branco, F. and Au-Yong-Oliveira, M., 2018.
Evaluation of e-commerce websites accessibility and usability: an e-commerce platform
analysis with the inclusion of blind users. Universal Access in the Information
Society, 17(3), pp.567-583.
 Kang, J.W. and Namkung, Y., 2019. The information quality and source credibility
matter in customers’ evaluation toward food O2O commerce. International Journal of
Hospitality Management, 78, pp.189-198.
 Li, J., Feng, L. and Zhai, J., 2019. Multicriteria Evaluation of the Emotional Intelligence
of Small Retail E-Commerce Network Firms. Mathematical Problems in
Engineering, 2019.
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