Business Analytics: Strategy, Benefits, and Challenges in E-commerce

This report offers an in-depth analysis of business analytics within the e-commerce industry. It begins with an overview of the e-commerce landscape, exploring the drivers behind adopting business analytics and the perceived benefits, such as improved marketing strategies and fraud prevention. The report then examines the various business analytics strategies employed, including the use of Google Analytics and data mining techniques for customer targeting and predictive analysis. It also addresses the challenges faced in implementing these strategies, such as data quality issues, model complexity, and the high costs associated with implementation. Furthermore, the report highlights the actual benefits achieved through business analytics, including increased efficiency and the ability to anticipate future challenges. The conclusion provides recommendations for making business analytics strategies more effective. The report is a comprehensive exploration of the application and impact of business analytics in the e-commerce sector.

Running head: BUSINESS ANALYTICS
Business Analytics
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Executive Summary
The report has helped in analysis of the implementation of the business analytics strategy in
the entire e-commerce industry. The proper implementation of the BA strategy along with
benefits of implementing the same has been discussed. The different kind of challenges has
been described that can caused due to the implementation of BA strategy in the different
organizations.
The main aim and purpose of the report is to identify the different kind of issues related to the
business analytics strategy along with recommendations has been provided to reduce the
issues in an appropriate manner as well.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Overview of e-commerce Industry.............................................................................................3
Drivers to adopt Business Analytics in E-commerce Industry..................................................4
Perceived benefits to achieve from Business Analytics.............................................................5
BA strategy employed by the e-commerce industry..................................................................7
Challenges to BA strategy in E-commerce Industry..................................................................7
Actual benefits achieved through the implementation of BA in e-commerce industry.............9
Drawback of the selected BA strategy in e-commerce industry..............................................10
Conclusion................................................................................................................................11
Recommendations to make more effective BA strategy..........................................................11
References................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
The report helps in identifying and analysing the different kind of drivers of business
analytics in the e-commerce industry. The perceived kind of benefits to achieve from BA will
be discussed in an effectual manner along with analysis of the strategy that is required to be
employed by the e-commerce industry. The different kind of actual benefits has to be
identified in an effectual manner along with analysis of the drawbacks of the selected BA
strategy.
Overview of e-commerce Industry
The entire e-commerce industry is comprised of the different organizations that
produces and sell software to the business along with different corporations of all the sizes.
The proper range of goods and services are offered and this helps them in expanding and
improving the customer’s information technology capabilities as well with the enhancement
of the tracking purchases of the different customers along with operations and inventory
management.
There are different kind of key factors that has to be focused in order to gain proper
understanding of the entire organization along with the shares of the respective company. The
future and current aspects of the economy play a prominent role in analysing such equities as
well. Furthermore, new product releases are continuous in nature with the help of other
companies that are providing similar kind of services and offerings. It has been seen that
there is huge competition in the entire market and this is leading to aggressive fight for the
customers along with market share (Agarwal and Dhar 2014).

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Drivers to adopt Business Analytics in E-commerce Industry
Business Analytics is referred to the different skills, technologies, practices for the
continuous iterative exploration along with investigation of the performance of the businesses
as to gain proper insight and drive planning of the entire business. In the e-commerce
industry, it has been seen that Amazon uses the native analytics platform, there are different
divisions wherein the analytics are utilized that are as follows:
 Customer analytics
 Seller analytics
 Supply chain analytics
 Trust analytics
For instance- It has been commented by the Rajeev Rastogi, Director, the machine
learning has helped the different customers in providing them with seamless services and it is
the unique selling prospectus of Amazon that is the e-commerce-based organization. With the
usage of the machine learning, it helps in identifying the correct defective packages that can
be delivered to the different customers on a timely basis.
Main drivers of Business Analytics are as follows:

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 Proper and clear initial use case is one of the main driver of the business analytics
wherein the focus is narrowed down and the customers with the initial kind of focus
are able to focus mainly on the deployment of the business intelligence solutions. The
initial focus speeds up the entire deployment along with providing visible for the
entire team and makes the change management with the end users
 The other main driver is the outcome focused and it is not feature focused as this will
help in providing the main focus on the tools development that will help the
customers in using the analytics platform and this helps in providing advantage by
automating the certain kind of capabilities by making it flexible in nature
 Right team has to be built in order to guarantee success and the different kind of
successful customers helps in ensuring the two key roles are covered that includes
strong champion that understand about business value and data and it includes the
analysis of the valuable analytical problems in an effectual manner
 Proper and right utilization of the resources helps in transforming the business
wherein the resources are appropriately used in order to gain long term success. Well-
funded initial implementation of the different analytics program is to resource the
initial project at appropriate level to ensure rapid speediness in the work
Perceived benefits to achieve from Business Analytics
There are different kind of perceived benefits to achieve from Business Analytics
from the entire e-commerce industry. According to Calof, Richards and Smith (2015), the
entire e-commerce market is utilizing the business analytics strategy that helps in gauging the
effectiveness along with increase their marketing strategies in an effectual manner. With the
help of the big data analytics, wherein the big data is the large amount of the content that is
varied and it is produced in a quick manner as well. Big analytics can help the different
companies in an effectual manner:

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On the other hand, Dubey and Gunasekaran (2015) has commented that it helps in
examining the google trends in the entire e-commerce industry as the entire analytics of the
big data helps the business by providing opportunity to examine the different trends on
Google site. The trend kind of data helps in showing the terms along with the keywords that
has been searched in an appropriate manner as well. This kind of information is helping us in
checking the number of public who are interested and they are allowing to adopt that kind of
specific market as well.
Secondly, it helps in preventing fraud through the analysis of the large sets of data.
With the help of this big set of data, it helps the e-commerce companies in identifying the
fraudulent activities and the extent of the frauds that are prevalent in nature. It can be seen
that the online companies can help in analysing the states or countries that is affected by the
different kind of credit card frauds or wherein the cash on delivery commitments are not
honoured in nature (Gandomi and Haider 2015). With the usage of the big data analytic, this
will help the companies and allowing them to not become victim of the fraud and this will
help in implementing anti-fraud measures in specific areas and this will avoid doing the
business in such areas as well.
Thirdly, introduction of the new products and services helps the e-commerce
companies in developing new trends in the creation of the products. The big data analytics
helps in allowing examining the new kind of trends along with upcoming trends through the
use of the search engines along with other kind of online networks as well. It has been seen
that the by filtering the different kind of data with the different kind of characteristics of the
customers, this helps the different companies in targeting the markets along with new
products as well (Ragsdale 2014).

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BA strategy employed by the e-commerce industry
There are different kind of business analytics strategy that can be employed by the
entire e-commerce industry. The E-commerce tracking module of the Google Analytics is
one of the most powerful strategy that can be employed by them to analyse the direction
wherein the business is heading and this will help in analysing the correct direction as well.
The data that is available to the different users include total amount of revenue along with
number of unique kind of purchases as well.
Furthermore, the tracking module helps the respective e-commerce industry in
understanding the moves of the other competitors and this will provide them different
directions to perform the entire task in an effectual manner as well. Data mining along with
analysis helps in targeting the better customers and increasing the entire marketing
productivity in an effectual manner as well. The business analytics help in predictive kind of
analysis to streamline the experience of the customers effectually (Shmueli, Bruce and Patel
2016).
Furthermore, the online shopping companies can make big kind of predictions and
this helps in receiving in-depth look at different channels in the company. This kind of
information will help in increasing the visibility of the products and services along with e-
commerce customized solutions (Laursen and Thorlund 2016). The business analytics
strategy will help the online shopping organizations in preventing the shipping breakdowns
along with better targeting the customers effectually as well. Lastly, proper business analytics
will help in improving the internal processes of the entire company with data and this helps in
diagnosing the issues effectively (Wang et al 2016).

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Challenges to BA strategy in E-commerce Industry
There are different kind of challenges in the BA strategy in the entire e-commerce
industry that includes the following:
 Formulation of the concrete data strategy is one of the major issues wherein
haphazardly data gathering as there is lack of the coherent kind of strategy of data.
Furthermore, the quality of the data is the other issue in the e-commerce industry
wherein it is seen that there is lack of trust and fraud is huge in such areas as well. It
can be seen that there are employees in the organization who do not have much
knowledge on the technical skills along with integrity of the data (Riggins and
Wamba 2014)
 Secondly, the complexity of the model is the other issue in the business analytics in
different kind of e-commerce business. The security of the data along with
maintenance is lacking in different kind of organizations and this is one of the
challenges in the organizations (Riggins and Wamba 2014). It has been seen that there
are employees who do not have much knowledge on accessing the relevant
information in the specific period of time as well
 The entire maintenance along with the data security is a huge issue in the business
analytics implementation in the e-commerce industry as there is inability among the
employees to address the different issues appropriately (Loebbecke and Picot 2015)
 Lastly, the implementation of the business analytics strategy is costly in nature and
there are other kind of hidden costs in the implementation of the business analytics as
well.
Therefore, from the different kind of analysis of the challenges, it can be seen that
there is dearth of the professionals in the e-commerce industry who are well-equipped in

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nature in handling the different kind of technological advancements objectives in the
organizations.
Furthermore, it has been seen that the different business analytics professionals are
taking up different kind of corporate roles in different sectors that included insurance,
marketing along with finance or lifestyle sectors. However, it has been noticed that there is
still hesitation among the individuals in using the different kind of statistics along with trends
in taking major decisions in business as well.
Actual benefits achieved through the implementation of BA in e-commerce industry
There are different kind of benefits that can be gained by e-commerce sector as this
will help the different organizations in different manner that includes the following:
The business analytics help in accurately transferring different kind of information
wherein this helps in bringing consequent kind of efficiency in the entire system of the
organization. The implementation of the business analytics strategy will help the companies
in the e-commerce sector to help in portraying the future challenges and takes steps regarding
the same in the present itself.
Secondly, the implementation of the business analytics will help in making the
different kind of strategic decisions as this will create a perfect kind of blend of the data
analytics along with science. With the implementation of the data analytics and science
blend, this will help the companies in reducing the costs of different techniques and the
decisions can be taken in much improved manner as well (Sharma, Mithas and Kankanhalli,
2014).
Lastly, with the implementation of the business analytics, the different online
shopping organizations that falls under the e-commerce industry can share the different
kind of essential and relevant kind of information with the larger group of audiences and

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this will help the companies in attracting larger group of audiences by introducing different
kind of new products and services in an effectual manner.
Furthermore, the business analytics implementation can help in sharing the valuable
kind of information with the different stakeholders of the organization effectually and this
will help the organization to increase the business of the different organizations in a much
appropriate manner (Phillips-Wren et al. 2015).
Therefore, from the above, it can be analysed that there are different kind of
advantages of implementation of the business analytics in the different e-commerce
organizations. It has been seen that there are different kind of organizations who lack such
kind of business analytics and this is making them lack in providing and sharing the
information to the different audiences and shareholders of the company as well in a much
effectual manner.
Drawback of the selected BA strategy in e-commerce industry
There are few disadvantages of the selected business analytics strategy that has been
implemented in the entire e-commerce industry. It has been seen that E-commerce tracking
module of the Google Analytics is one of the most powerful strategy is generally the most
powerful strategy, however the companies need to provide proper training to the different
kind of employees who are working in different organizations.
Furthermore, it has been seen that the companies need to incur separate kind of costs
on the training of the employees in making them learn the different technical skills of
identifying the customers to whom the delivery is required to be done and this will increase
the cost of the organizations to a huge and great extent as well. It has been seen that there are
different companies wherein the employees lack different kind of knowledge on using the

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technological advancement equipment and this can create huge trouble to the organizations in
the entire respective e-commerce market as well.
Lastly, the e-commerce companies are the ones that require business analytics to be
restored and implemented in the different organizations to a huge extent as they deal with
different customers and the main purpose of the company is to identify the target groups and
deliver the products and services to them in an appropriate manner as well. Lastly, the e-
commerce industry is the fastest growing industry that is required to be grown in an effectual
manner, however these kinds of limitations will create huge issues in the market as well.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that proper business analytics strategy is essential in
the e-commerce industry as this helped in understanding the advantages and the
competitiveness that can be brought in the different organizations as well. Furthermore, it has
been seen that the implementation of the Business Analytics strategy has helped in reducing
the costs of the companies along with sharing the different information to the larger
audiences as well. Lastly, the implementation of the strategy of Business Analytics helped in
easing the entire process of sharing the information with the different stakeholders of the
company and gained competitive advantage in the market as well.
Recommendations to make more effective BA strategy
Therefore, it can be recommended that proper implementation of the business
analytics strategy is essential in nature in different e-commerce organizations in the entire
market. Proper implementation of the business analytics will help the business to grow at a
faster pace and this will help the business to gain profit as well.
Furthermore, the e-commerce-based companies need to provide proper training to the
employees on the technical skills that is required to improve the security of the data and