Professional Skills: Online vs. Offline Services and Security

This report delves into the comparison between online and offline services and products, examining the advantages and disadvantages of each in the digital age, using Marks and Spencer as a case study. It explores the global reach, customer service enhancements, cost savings, and faster delivery of online platforms, while also addressing concerns about privacy, price wars, returns, and complaints. Furthermore, the report identifies key challenges and measures related to security and privacy, including the fear of hackers, clickjacking, de-anonymization attacks, fake profiles, and identity clone attacks. It also outlines protective measures such as the use of antivirus software. The report underscores the importance of understanding these aspects for both businesses and individuals navigating the digital landscape.

Professional Skills In
The Digital Age

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK...............................................................................................................................................3
Compare and contrast between the positive and negative aspects of services and products
being sold online and offline........................................................................................................3
Discuss the challenges and measures of security and privacy that individuals and businesses
take when they go online.............................................................................................................5
Compare and contrast online services on the basis of different aspects......................................6
Digital communication skills.......................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Technology has always played a paramount role as it clearly impact on the taste and
preferences of the target market. In today’s time, technology is taking its change very rapidly and
the impact which it put on the overall purchasing behavior as the consumers like to consume and
purchase those products and services , which is in vogue into the market. Majority of the
companies are now making their shift to online due to the continuous innovation into the
technology and changing preferences of customers. when the goods and services is been
provided that online platform they reach to the maximum number of customers which increase
their productivity as well as profitability level. For reference purpose this report has taken an
example of a company, Marks and Spencer. Marks and Spencer is a British multinational
company which specialize in high quality clothing, food products, and home products. The
company shares its market worldwide having around 1467 stores. Along with the offline stores
the company has also opens its stores at online platform also. The company was founded by
Michael marks and Thomas Spencer.
This report discuss about the positive and negative aspects of services and products which is
been sold at online and offline platform. The report also includes the challenges and measures of
security and privacy that individuals and businesses take when they introduced themselves
online.
TASK
Compare and contrast between the positive and negative aspects of services and products being
sold online and offline
In this era of digitalization, where the customers are shifting towards installing their
business operations and activities online as they saves much percentage of cost when they
perform business at online platform. Majority of businesses are setting up their business
operations at online platforms. In the case with Marks and Spencer the company operates its
business activities at both online and offline platforms which gives advantage to the people as
they can see all the products which the company offers (Anderson, 2013). There are various
positive impacts to run the business at online platform, some of them are as follows:
Global access: The online stage destinations help the clients and the business to get a worldwide
access for the webpage. Here the clients can visit the site 24 * 7. Online stages permit
adaptabilities to the clients with the goal that they don't need to visit to the stores and they can
put request regardless to the spots or time they are putting request. Sites at online stage has a
legitimacy that they can be get visited at any hour and from wherever. Presently the individuals
don't need to make time from their bustling timetable to go for stores or shopping centers to buy
the items. They can profit the administrations and yet the items through online at this point.

Better customer services through higher flexibility: The business can give more
administrations through adaptability in their tasks (Baym, 2015). A few destinations have the
choices for giving blessings wherein the clients can purchase the items to blessing it to another
person. The organization would wrap that item for that individual and would make it especially
respectable for him. Aside from this, the organizations additionally give the conveyance benefits
in which the items would get conveyed at their entryway steps.
Cost savings: The business saves much cost when it introduced itself at the online platform. The
cost for store maintained like staffs, electricity, rent, warehouse and etc gets reduced too much.
Now the company does not have to pay for the above stated expenses which actually save cost
for the company. As in the case with marks and Spencer the company does have to pay for the
expenses also as they run their business activity both at online and offline platforms. Some point
but the company does saves cost as they don’t have they are limiting themselves with the number
of stores and concentrating more upon the online platforms.
Faster delivery of products: The products when placed for order by the customers it takes
maximum time of a week for delivering the products to the customers. But when the customers
need the product within a day they need to pay for extra charges for delivering the product. The
products will also can be delivered as a gift to the other person (Berry, 2016). There are many
facilities present which is available with the customers and they can choose any of them
according to their need and want. As in the case with marks and Spencer products the maximum
delivery time is 7 days under which the customer would receives his product at the stated
address.
Less wastage of paper: The introduction of technology has results into the minimum use of
papers. All the work is been done and save into the computer system so there is no need to
maintain all the transactions onto the paper. Managing the paper works involves a hard time and
efforts as storing the large number of transaction in papers is a huge manual work and taking
proper care of this paper is largely a hard task. But the use of digital technology has ease the
work and it has eliminates the use of paper. Similarly, the company marks and Spencer earlier
has to note down all their transaction in papers but now with the help of technology they uses the
management information system to stores their information and data.
Along with positive impacts of digitalization there are negative factors also which
impacts the business, some of them are as follows:
Privacy: At the point when an individual submits the request at the online stage, he enters his
own data in it to get the thing or the item conveyed to him (Clark, 2013). A few people
additionally pick prepaid strategy where they paid for the thing through their banks or cash
wallet, this action has a negative mark that this individual and private data about the client which
he ought not need to impart to anyone get spares. This data can get hacked by anyone and can be
utilized by another person. This is consistently a colossal disservice of online shopping.

Price wars: As now all the organizations are coming at the online stage they all can cut their
costs or cost which benefits them as they would now be able to give the items or the
administrations at lower costs to the clients. Yet, this has begun making a war of costs where the
business gives his items at lower costs to their clients to pull in them. This value war just has
profited the clients however not the organizations (Cronin, 2012). The equivalent is the situation
with imprints and Spencer; the organization encounters the value wars which it confronted online
as its different rivals are likewise diminishing their costs of items to pull in the clients.
Returns and complaints: When the customer shop from online platform they cannot touch or
see the product in physical form, they only can see the product in a virtual form via images and
the specification which has been provided into the sites about the product. Sometime it is likely
to possible that the product color which is been showed at the sites is not same in reality, it can
all because of some disturbance into the definition of the picture. The company sales the product
online also, it might has happened several times that the product which is been ordered by the
customers is not in the same color which he saw in to the pictures. Therefore this upsets the
customers and they also give bad reviews about the companies sometime.
Discuss the challenges and measures of security and privacy that individuals and businesses take
when they go online.
Performing the business operations and activities is a topic of concern in which the
security and privacy of both the business and of customers put at stake (Flewitt, Messer and
Kucirkova, 2015). Both the customers and the business goes through various challenges when
the topic for privacy and security arises. Some of the challenges which these parties face are as
follows:
Fear of hackers: Many a times the businesses have to be very much caution from the hackers
who can hack their sites or systems and can use their personal information for bad and mean
purposes. It is also possible that the hackers use the information of the purchases or consumers in
which they have their bank details also. This is the reason that why majority of people still
prefers to purchase the products or avail the services from offline platforms because they have
the fear of leaking of their personal details which is of paramount importance to anybody.
Click jacking: Click jacking is the point at which a client click on certain advertisements or
some other site yet that site doesn't show up which it was appear as. In this the controller controls
the client and assaults him when he opens up the site (Goldie, 2016). With the click jacking the
aggressors can without much of a stretch control the framework which additionally incorporates
the equipment like amplifiers, camera and all to record the exercises. Through this process all the
peripherals of the system get in control of somebody else which is quite an evil activity.
De-anonymization Attacks: In this all the actions of the client gets screen by the aggressors.
Here all the destinations which he has been visited, the time which he spends on each site and so
on are being seen and watched. Through this the assailant can think about the mentality, conduct,

taste, decisions and inclinations of the client. An immense report should be possible through this
procedure on thinking about the present patterns which is winning among clients or in the
general public (Jacobsen and Munar, 2012).
Fake profiles: A few organizations additionally make false or fake profiles to make their
destinations all the more intriguing. From these locales the clients gets pulled in and buy the
items without thinking about the realness of these destinations. Furthermore, one the client has
made a profile into their site; his data would effortlessly get spilled and can be abused by the
others which would make an issue for the client too.
Identity clone attacks: Profile cloning can be performed by an attacker using theft capabilities
from a formerly existing profile, making another fake profile while using taken private
information. These assaults are known as character clone assaults the taken capabilities can be
used inside a comparable framework or across different frameworks (Kowalski and et. al.,2014).
The assailant can use the trust of the cloned customer to accumulate.
Location Leakage: The location-leakage risk is a sort of data leakage. There is an example for
various customers to get to a relational association through phones. For the most part,
applications are used to get to an online source through a phone. The use of PDAs for online
access presents the new security risk of location leakage. The usage of PDAs for online access
urges customers to share their location information.
To protect yourselves form these evil exercises there are various measures which is been
undertaken by the software companies which can protect us from all these. Some of these
measures are as follows:
Anti- virus software: To protect the system from unknown entry of nay uninvited party, a
person or the organization should use the anti virus which would protect their system. Anti virus
warns the user of the system about the unwanted entry of any element into the system by
notifying the user about its entry (Kowalski, Limber and Agatston, 2012). It also deletes the
small viruses which causes glitch into the system. In short these anti viruses protect the system
from breaking down by any uninvited party and guests.
Authentic sites: An individual should purchases the products from authentic sites only. If the
purchase is made at unauthentic sites then the owner could have saved your details for his evil
uses which might be able to include the details of your bank account. Therefore it is very
important for a person to know that the purchases should be done at authentic sites only
otherwise bad can happen.
Compare and contrast online services on the basis of different aspects
The entire world is facing this pandemic time of COVID 19. As the whole economy is
shut down, all the business operations or production activity has turned to zero. All the
production in factories has shut down, all the employees have sent back into their homes, the

whole economy is facing with this hard times (Labrecque and et. al.,2013). To run the business
now the companies are taking the help of application which enable them in conducting their
meetings and discussions. Some of these application includes Zoom, googleDuo, Skype, Go to
meeting, WebEx and the so on.
Zoom: It is a tool which provides the video conferencing facilities to the people. In this
application the host calls the other members and these members joins the meeting. With the help
of this app the companies can conduct their meetings, discussions, and the so forth so that their
activities can carry out in some percentage.
Team viewer: It is the application of proprietary software for remote controlling, web
conferencing, transferring of files among computers and so on. In this pandemic time of COVID
19 firms can use this app to communication among others from their homes only (Nedelcu,
2012).
Basis Zoom Team viewer
Features This app is very much simple
to use which uses the
adoption with techniques of
WebRTC. The major
element of this application is
that representatives can join
from anyplace or any devise.
This application support for
up to 1000 video members
and 49 recordings. This
device get to additional
highlights like talk,
telephone and online
courses.
This application has number
of highlights that can bolster
an organization to work its
business. The application is
remote help, remote
organization, remote access,
web based gathering, ready
to give instructional meeting
and online collaboration and
so forth. By utilizing this
application, a firm can move
records on another
framework.
Applications This application can be
utilized by organizations to
share data to different
representatives, to make
video assemble and arrange
conference and gathering.
Aside from this, the
organization can utilize it to
talk with workforce and
The separate application
empowers to endlessly
contact and administrate
unattended Android gadgets
to determine issues rapidly
from anyplace and
whenever. This apparatus
ready to get to PC over LAN,
WAN or the web. This

imparting screen to other
workforce (Parry, 2013).
application additionally
ready to get to cell phones
and with its assistance, the
representatives can share
data, go to instructional
course, gatherings and
meetings with their cell
phones.
Sustainability This application is
manageable in light of the
fact that by using this
application, the organization
can work its business in
current circumstance of
COVID19. Manageability is
consistently the objective of
this application and this
application has
unquestionably chopped
down movement time and
help in limiting carbon
impressions also which is the
extraordinary supportability
of this instrument. This
application is reasonable on
the grounds that
representatives can utilize it
in Android gadgets and this
makes simple to utilize this
application.
This application is
economical in current
circumstance of COVID19.
Since because of this issue
and pandemic a large portion
of organizations work their
business by offering
alternative of work from
home to their
representatives. So by
utilizing this instrument, they
reach their workforce,
orchestrating gatherings and
conferencing. This is
supportable as it giving
organizations an approach to
cut the air effect and cost of
movement (Schmidt and
Cohen, 2013).
Digital communication skills
Digital communication remember an organization's online communication endeavors for
request to expand their deals and give applicable data in the market about their items and
administrations. Huge numbers of the association utilize online channels and some have their
own application so they can without much of a stretch interface with the present clients and
potential clients also. So as to utilize online channels for offering items, organizations are
required to have digital experts who have the information about innovation and advancement of
online brand. Moreover, there are different web based life applications that permit organization

to mindful greatest number of individuals towards the brand that legitimately prompts increment
in client base and deals of the association (Steelman, Hammer and Limayem, 2014). The digital
communication skills are as per the following:
Flexibility: Technology is changing quickly and persistently and for this it is basic for
administrators who flourish in digital communication ought to be profoundly adaptable. What's
more, adjusting changes will help organization to decrease the degree of hazard and issues
related with the adjustments in technology. According to Marks and Spencer, it has an innovative
group who have cutting-edge data about the technology that help organization to offer items
online in a powerful way.
Passion for story telling: It is establish that item that is offered by organization must include a
string stories as it help organization to pull in enormous number of individuals and gain higher
benefits. Along these lines, the craft of narrating expertise is required by Marks and Spencer so
as to expand proficiency and profits.
Empathy: For a decent communicator, it is imperative to have feeling of thankfulness with the
crowd as it helps them to impact client to buy their item adequately. Furthermore, being
sympathy permit an organization to make a string association with individuals that help in
building up a positive outlook of clients towards the item and administrations offered by
organization.
CONCLUSION
From the report discuss above, the positive and negative impact of performing the
business operation online has been mentioned. Some of the positive aspects includes global
access, better customer services, cost saving, faster delivery of product and the so forth. And the
negative impacts includes privacy, price wars, returns and complaints and so on. The report also
includes the challenges of using online platform like hacking, clones attacks, fake profiles,
location detectors and so on. Apart from this the repot discuss about how these online platforms
helping the companies in bridging this communication gap with the help of some applications
like Duo, Zoom etc.
REFERENCES
Books and Journals

Anderson, C. W., 2013. Rebuilding the news: Metropolitan journalism in the digital age. Temple
University.
Baym, N .K., 2015. Personal connections in the digital age. John Wiley & Sons.
Berry, D., 2016. The philosophy of software: Code and mediation in the digital age. Springer.
Clark, L. S., 2013. The parent app: Understanding families in the digital age. Oxford University
Press.
Cronin, M., 2012. Translation in the digital age. Routledge.
Flewitt, R., Messer, D. and Kucirkova, N., 2015. New directions for early literacy in a digital
age: The iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. 15(3). pp.289-310.
Goldie, J. G. S., 2016. Connectivism: A knowledge learning theory for the digital age?. Medical
teacher. 38(10). pp.1064-1069.
Jacobsen, J .K. S. and Munar, A. M., 2012. Tourist information search and destination choice in
a digital age. Tourism management perspectives. 1. pp.39-47.
Kowalski, R. M., and et. al.,2014. Bullying in the digital age: A critical review and meta-analysis
of cyberbullying research among youth. Psychological bulletin. 140(4). p.1073.
Kowalski, R. M., Limber, S. P. and Agatston, P. W., 2012.Cyberbullying: Bullying in the digital
age. John Wiley & Sons.
Labrecque, L.I., and et. al.,2013. Consumer power: Evolution in the digital age. Journal of
Interactive Marketing. 27(4). pp.257-269.
Livingstone, S. and Sefton-Green, J., 2016. The class: Living and learning in the digital
age (Vol. 1). NYU Press.
Nedelcu, M., 2012. Migrants' new transnational habitus: rethinking migration through a
cosmopolitan lens in the digital age. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 38(9).
pp.1339-1356.
Parry, R. ed., 2013. Museums in a digital age. Routledge.
Schmidt, E. and Cohen, J., 2013. The new digital age: Reshaping the future of people, nations
and business. Hachette UK.
Steelman, Z. R., Hammer, B. I. and Limayem, M., 2014. Data Collection in the Digital Age. Mis
Quarterly. 38(2). pp.355-378.