Managing Information Technology at AutoTrader.com: A Business Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of AutoTrader.com, an online automotive marketplace. It begins with an overview of the company's history and current operations, followed by a PESTLE analysis to assess the external macro-environmental factors influencing the business. The report then employs Porter's Five Forces model to evaluate the competitive landscape and the company's positioning within the automotive industry. Furthermore, it examines AutoTrader.com's value chain, highlighting how the company creates value through its primary and support activities. The report explores the impact of information technology on AutoTrader.com's operations, including its use of digital platforms, customer applications, and cloud-based infrastructure. The analysis covers the use of IT for operational efficiency, customer service, and competitive advantage. The report concludes with a summary of the key findings and insights into the company's strategic approach to IT management and its overall business strategy.

Managing Information
and Technology
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Organisation overview............................................................................................................3
PESTLE ANALYSIS:............................................................................................................4
Porter five forces model:........................................................................................................5
Value chain.............................................................................................................................6
Impact of use of information technology:..............................................................................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12
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Introduction
Information technology management is a part of discipline, where all the different resources
of organisation and managed in accordance with its priorities and needs. With the external
environment there has been a complete transformation in the way organisations perceive the use
of information technology for development of competitive advantage. This aspect is related with
managing the responsibility so that company is able to entertain the basic management functions
that are change management budgeting staffing organising and further controlling (Barafort,
Mesquida and Mas, 2017). Present report is based on autotrader.com which is an online
marketplace founded in the year of 1997 for car purchases and sellers. Presently there is an
analysis of videos description of the chosen business with the brief history. Further there is
analysis of pestle factors to understand the macro analysis of organisation. Porter's five forces
model is used to analyse the competitive positioning of the business. Porter’s value chain model
is briefly presented to evaluate the way businesses can create value and there is discussion of the
way information technology can be deployed to deal with several issues.
MAIN BODY
Organisation overview
Auto trade group plc is an online automotive brand that is having classified advertising
business specialising in new & second hand automotive saes. It includes cars that are sold by
private trade dealers and sellers. It is a brand that is listed on London stock exchange and is also
constituent of DTSE 100 index.
History: Auto trader was started in year of 1975 by John Mdejski. Madejski bought the idea
from United States where he set up this business with Paul gibbons in year of 1977. The first
auto trader was established in Thames valley trader 1977. It was followed further by the second
title that is southern auto trader that was launched in year of 1981. The business then at that time
was regarded as Hurst publishing European venture capitalist has bought BC partners sake in
business from John Madejski. It was in July 1998 for 260 million pounds that is Guardian media
group that was acquired by Automat in year 1982. Further it has been merged with business
Hurts publishing in may 2000 for creation of trader media (Rebelo, Silva and Santos, 2017). In
April 2011, the business was focussed as an online petition that was by a group called motors
traders advertising union that is proposing a mass pull out by motor dealers in UK, that was
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because of increasing of advertising charges. In 2013 October, Autotradre.co.za is a subsidiary of
Auto trade group that was sold off to an independent South African company. In January 2014
Apax partners bought this business from Guardian media run for a mount of 600 million pounds.
Further in March 2014 the brand was re branded and it stated to be known as auto trader. In
March 2015, the auto trader group launched the initial public offering as part of market
capitalisation that has been about 2 billion pounds (The latest from auto trader, 2020)
The website that is autotarder.co.uk has been launched in the year 1996 that is allowing for a
platform for buyers and sellers to sell & buy the car online. The site lets its user to search for cars
& other motor vehicles with use of postcode. Autotrader.co.uk is one of the busiest web site in
UK and is attracting 10.3 million of unique every month.
Auto trade launched a mobile site in July 2008 and in July 2009 they also launched various
separate versions for various handset capability levels. Auto trader also developed the mobile
offering from March 2010. They also release some of the applications for their users for
searching of vehicles by use of windows mobile, iOS and android device.
PESTLE ANALYSIS:
PESTLE analysis is the acronym that is used for analysing various external macro factors t hat
are affecting the overall functioning of organisations. It stands for political, economic, social,
ecological, legal and environmental (Avison, Davison and Malaurent, 2018). Presently there is
analysis of such factors for the purpose of analysing the way it is affecting the functioning of
auto trade.
Technological factors: The information technology is related with various factors such as
development of internet. In autotrader.com this is a brand that is offering services to their
customers through online platforms (Samimi, 2020). So there is more focus on use of digital
media sources for the purpose of promoting and creating awareness for the target segment of
customers. So with the changing shift of other competitors towards using of online promotional
tools has led to creation of a complete transformation for autotrader.con to adopt suitable
strategies. Earlier Autotradre.com has been part of using entrepreneurial print business where
there has been connection between the buyers & sellers through regional magazines. But now
there is transformation to a digital business by being a market leader with having 55 million
cross platforms. So, technological factors have assisted Autotarder.com in having 50 customer
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facing applications. There are 50 customer applications that are being used by Autotarder.com
the company also has a history of innovation that was created in 1996. The use if latest
technological factors have been in a way of using its own data centres by private cloud. So while
the organisation is willing to work towards improvement of its encryption and security for
creation of agile architecture to enable faster innovation via Google cloud platforms (Pager
drives auto trader UK incidental response, 2020).
Social factors: these are the factors that are part of the social environment and are related with
the emerging trends. It is very helpful for a marketer to develop an understanding of the
customer’s needs & wants. It includes factors that are part of education levels, cultural trends,
lifestyle changes, family demographic and attitude changes of customers. In auto tarder.com for
the purpose of ensuring that customers posses a seamless experience there is more focus on
mitigation of downtime risks. There is use of pager duty’s status page.io that is developing of a
integration to share all the updates with regards to issues and providing more transparency. It
also leads to resolving of incidents so that customer issues that are both buyers and sellers can
get their grievances solved. With the application of upgraded information technology there has
been a simpler process that is being used by Autotarder.com
Porter five forces model:
Porter’s five forces model is a simple tool that is used for evaluating the present
competitiveness of business environment. It is one of the most important tools that is used for the
purpose of evaluating the present competitiveness as compared to other competitors who are part
of same industry. Presently there is an analysis of some of the major factors that are affecting
auto trade.com in the present scenario:
Bargaining power of buyer’s: the overall bargaining power of buyers in case of auto trader.com
is low because it is offering a unique platform to buy and sell vehicles with complete ease. It is
offering services to customers apart from this they are having a special editorial team that is
making a proper review and providing advisors to customers via videos, social media content
and articles (Englander and Wong, 2021). All this is collectively leading towards a unique
platform of classic speciality and antique automobiles that is offered by autotrader.com.
Threat of new entrants: threat of new entrants is related with new start-ups that can enter the
automotive industry and provide a similar platform that is offered by auto trader.com (Ilmudeen
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and Bao, 2018). There are high number of barriers that are part of entering automotive sector it
includes easy access to inputs, changing government taxation and policies, production cycle and
high amount of capital requirements.
Threat of substitution: it is a threat that is related with availability of easy substitutions. In auto
trader.com the overall facilities that are offered by this automotive online marketplace is not
easily present in other competitors (Chege, Wan and Suntu, 2020). Such as, they are offering a
unique platform with a proper advisory department that is helping the customers in making right
choices according to their specifications. So, it can be said that there is high amount of
verification and authentication that is a competitive factor for auto trader.com. It is not possible
for its present loyal customer base to find such type of facilities in other competitor brands.
Bargaining power of sellers: in Auto tarder.com there is less impact of the overall bargaining
power of sellers. There is support of infrastructure by TLS authentication on isito platform that is
leading to six month engineering efforts.
Competitive rivalry: it is associated with the number of competitors that are affecting the present
functioning of Auto trader.com. Presently auto trader is offering a unique digital market place
that is creating high amount of simplification in the journey of buying and selling of cars for both
retailer and consumers. That is leading to a competitive advantage for this brand in long run
hence there is low impact of competitive rivalry.
Value chain
Porter’s value chain is developed by Michael porter for the purpose of analysing the business
management concepts. Value chain is a collection of various activities that are to be performed
by organisation for creation of value for the customers. Value creation adds value to each of the
different functions that are being performed by organisations and leads to achievement of
competitive advantage for higher profitability.
Primary activities: physical activities in organisation are related to maintenance and support of
products and services.
Inbound logistics: it is a process that is related with receiving storing and then for the
distribution of inputs internally in the organisation. Supplier relationships are a major factor in
creation of value in this function.
Operations: it is related to transformation of activities by changing the input into output.
Operational system is used for the purpose of creating value in this step.
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In Auto trader, UK there is focus on development of a intelligent network operations by using of
a network intelligence centre it is working towards network monitoring for the purpose of
gaining higher visibility (Naicker and Mafaiti, 2019). The use of information technology in the
form of performance dashboard is adding value to the operations. There is saving of lot of time
by fault finding and supporting all the regular customer calls.
Outbound logistics: these activities are delivering the products and services to customers. It is
related with collection, storing and further distribution of systems it can be both internal and
external for organisation.
Marketing and sales: These are some of processes that are used for the purpose of persuade in
customers to purchase instead of other competitors.
Service: It includes some of activities that are to be used for maintaining product value after it
has been purchased.
In Auto trader.com, UK the overall service infrastructure is based on use of cloud memory store
and cloud SQL that are part of information technology aspects (Große, Nyman and Sundberg,
2019). These two aspects are used for developing of portable instances for encouraging
functioning to prevent the failure of system.
Support activities:
There are some of the activities that are used for supporting the primary function
Procurement: it is the function where organisation has to procure resources necessary for its
operation. In this there is identification of vendors and further there are negotiation activities to
get best deals.
In Auto trader.com the human resource management is working to provide a customer having
seamless experiences.
Human resource management: it is a way where company is recruiting hiring and further
training its employees. It is one of the significant sources of generating values so that businesses
are able to develop a clear advantage.
Technological development: in this function there are activities related with managing and
further processing information for the purpose of protecting knowledge base. There is some
emphasis on minimising the overall technology cost and developing with technology advances to
create effective source of value creation (Pager drives auto trader UK incidental response,
2020).
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In Auto trader.com there is application of latest technology by focusing on use of Kubernetes
engine by application of CPU and RAM optimization. It has lead to creation of 75% more
efficiency in terms of usage and there has been no impact on the overall performance.
Infrastructure: these are the support system of organisation and function that can lead to
maintaining the daily operations. It includes legal, accounting, administrative and development
of necessary infrastructure to use the advantage.
In Auto trader.com there has been more drive of accountability towards a public cloud migration
journey (Xu, 2019). Recently there has been a movement towards a development of centralised
management model. It is leading to distribution of alerts to more appropriate development teams.
The use of information technology in is in a way where there is movement from traditional on-
premises environment to Google cloud. This has created an infrastructure based on attributes of
scalability and flexibility.
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Impact of use of information technology:
Auto trader is one of the United Kingdom’s highest digital automotive marketplaces. It is
working towards development of a digital automotive marketplace. They are working for the
simplification of the journey for buying and selling cars for both consumers and retailers.
Auto trader is a brand that is highly dependent on use of information technology as they are
having completely online based functions. Recently they have migrated to Google cloud
platform and are focusing on use of kubernetes engine with Isito so that there can be
improvement of agility security and visibility. It has also lead to effective utilisation of resources
up to 75 per percent (Chen, Das, and Ivanov, 2019).
Issues: In the above discussed pestle analysis technological factor is sometimes issue for auto
trader.com. Such as there are restrictions related to not availability of proper platform for
development of higher ease for customers. So there is requirement of data oversight of
applications with Isito that can lead to 75% of efficient Ram allocation and effective CPU. it is
one of the major applications of information technology for the purpose of stealing business
issues in autotrader.com.
Since 2013, autotrader.com has been a completely digital business and one of the market leaders
in UK. They are having 55 million cross-platform visits each month and audience that is four
times greater than their other competitors. There are also offering a 50 customer relationship
applications that is one of the most effective use of information technology to provide effective
customer services.
As per views of Russel warman, head of infrastructure in Auto Trader (UK), there has been
selection of cloud provider where they are having two major courses that is increasing the
equality and second is improving the security. being one of the biggest organisations there is
sometimes difficulty in keeping pace with smaller organisations and that can lead to looking
disrupt in the market. The application of information technology measures that is Google cloud
platform there is easy to experiment with new Innovations (Google cloud results, 2020).
In Auto trader there was previously deployment of their own data centres by using of private
clouds. With changing time the organisation is willing to improve its encryption and security for
creating of more flexible architecture. So, that there can be faster innovation by choosing of
Google cloud platform.
Creation of agile infrastructure:
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Auto trader is willing to upgrade the security layers and for the implementation of a mutual
transport layer security. It is a tool that can lead to authentication between applications and also
retrofitting these changes to the previous infrastructure that was difficult to handle.
So, in present scenario of dealing with the issues of security issues as per views of karl stoney
who is delivering engineering lead at auto trader UK. He says that the organisation is willing to
use and implement mutual transport layer security so that there can be modification of hundreds
of application. This up gradation of information technology system will help in building up of
complicated additional elements that would lead to more transparent for the team. The
organisation is willing to use the information technology measures for creation of security goals
by migrating from a virtual machine based infrastructure and 2A containerized in the public
cloud. This will also lead to words making system with better features and improvements.
The organisation will have the confidence and applications are working on new platform with
Isito so that they are able to optimise the applications with migration. The data security of both
buyers and sellers on this common platform is one of the metre motives of this organisation.
Another issue has been of the memory leak. There have been issues of slow memory leak in one
of the key search applications that was perceptible when the run the application on new GCP
infrastructure.
For this the organisation is willing to develop solutions by not just respecting themselves to use
of Java applications (Tomanek and Lis, 2020). The use of Isito is going to lead towards planning
of a complete migration and focusing on consolidation of infrastructure based on GCP. Auto
trader.com has 500 logical services and among these 140 is already in the production on GCP.
So, the organisation is further planning to migrate over next year by building and managing
everything to a different platform.
There has been use of information technology for building up of brilliant new products as a retail
accelerator. This facility is also going to provide rich data inside for the customer’s vehicle
stock.SS father going to lead towards saving of lot of time for the overall workforce as there will
be a proper availability of customer related information.
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CONCLUSION
It can be summarised from the above made discussions that the external environment is
changing very fast and having an impact on the overall functioning of organisations. With the
changing nature of information technology there has been a complete transformation in the way
organisations are pursuing their regular functions. There is use of various latest up gradations for
the purpose of developing a working culture of experimentation and technological innovation.
Organisations are having interest in technology as it offers them lot of capabilities to move and
further driving forward.
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REFERENCES
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Barafort, B., Mesquida, A.L. and Mas, A., 2017. Integrating risk management in IT settings from
ISO standards and management systems perspectives. Computer Standards &
Interfaces, 54, pp.176-185.
Chege, S.M., Wang, D. and Suntu, S.L., 2020. Impact of information technology innovation on
firm performance in Kenya. Information Technology for Development, 26(2), pp.316-345.
Chen, H.Y., Das, A. and Ivanov, D., 2019. Building resilience and managing post-disruption
supply chain recovery: Lessons from the information and communication technology
industry. International Journal of Information Management, 49, pp.330-342.
Englander, I. and Wong, W., 2021. The architecture of computer hardware, systems software,
and networking: An information technology approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Ghosal, A. and Conti, M., 2019. Key management systems for smart grid advanced metering
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Ilmudeen, A. and Bao, Y., 2018. Mediating role of managing information technology and its
impact on firm performance. Industrial Management & Data Systems.
Naicker, V. and Mafaiti, M., 2019. The establishment of collaboration in managing information
security through multisourcing. Computers & Security, 80, pp.224-237.
Rebelo, M.F., Silva, R. and Santos, G., 2017. The integration of standardized management
systems: managing business risk. International Journal of Quality & Reliability
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Rehm, S.V. and Goel, L., 2017. Using information systems to achieve complementarity in SME
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Samimi, A., 2020. Risk Management in Information Technology. Progress in Chemical and
Biochemical Research, pp.130-134.
Tomanek, M. and Lis, A., 2020. Managing information on the physical education research field:
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Online
The latest from auto trader, 2020[online], Available through<https://www.autotrader.co.uk/>
Google cloud results, 2020 [online], Available
through<https://cloud.google.com/customers/auto-trader-uk>
Pager drives auto trader UK incidental response, 2020[online], Available
through<https://www.pagerduty.com/customer/auto-trader-uk/>
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