Impact of Digital Technology on Small Business Growth & Innovation

This project focuses on the impact of digital technology on small business growth and innovation, specifically within Carson Ltd., a UK retail store implementing an e-commerce platform. The project outlines the aims and objectives of digital transformation, including improving productivity, revenue, and customer loyalty. It details the necessary technology studies, platform creation, and lifecycle supervision for digital services, emphasizing the importance of an Agile journey. The project assesses the costs, scope, time frame, quality control, communication strategies, and potential risks associated with e-commerce implementation, categorizing risks into information, technological, and business domains. Resource allocation, including solution assurance, functional design, and technical development, is also addressed. The project further includes a work breakdown structure (WBS) and Gantt chart outlining project tasks and timelines, crucial for successful e-commerce integration. The project was completed as part of the HND Business Level 4 course.

UNIT 6 MANAGING SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS
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Table of Content
TASK 1:...........................................................................................................................................3
LO1: Establishment of a project aim, objective and time frame based on a chosen theme [P1, P2,
P3]....................................................................................................................................................3
TASK 2..........................................................................................................................................11
LO2: Conduction of small-scale research, information gathering and data collection, generating
knowledge to support the specific project [P4].............................................................................11
TASK 3:.........................................................................................................................................12
LO3: Presentation of the project and communicate appropriate recommendation based on
meaningful conclusions drawn from the evidence findings and /or analysis [P5, P6]..................12
TASK 4:.........................................................................................................................................14
LO4: Reflect on the value gained from conducting the project and its usefulness to support
sustainable organizational performance for the chosen project [P7].............................................14
Reference List:...............................................................................................................................17
Appendices:...................................................................................................................................19
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TASK 1:
LO1: Establishment of a project aim, objective and time frame based on a chosen theme
[P1, P2, P3]
❏ Overview
Carson Ltd. is a UK retail store with less than 150 staffs. The company is going to implement an
E-Commerce project in it business process. This retail store has chosen a plan for implementing
E-commerce for increasing the business span. Apart from spreading the business span, E-
commerce has some other advantage also. By implementing an E-Commerce a retail store can
faster it’s buying and selling procedure, the procedure can be maintained for round the clock
irrespective of location and time. Implementation of E-Commerce keeps hardly any geographical
boundary of a business span. The business store can run without any physical store or set up
(Fernandez and Rainey, 2016). Business management becomes also easier to the managerial
people. The main advantage of involving the E-Commerce in the business is that without visiting
a retail store physically a buyer can order the needed product from the store. Implementing E-
Commerce in the business process ha1s also some disadvantage also. Mechanical failure of the
process can happen more due to the unpredictable effect of the total process. As the business is
becoming an online retail store. The server must be strong; otherwise, it will lose all of it assets
by any severe cyber attack.
❏ Aim and Objective
Mainly digital transformation is taking place in the business process. Innovative strategy
development has to some architectural framework. The framework is described as follows:
Firstly, Identification of transformation objective:
Mainly target business outcome should look down. Redesigning and rethinking are some of the
main objectives of implementing a digital sector in a business (Gottschalk and Solli-Saether,
2016). If the customer is transferred to digital and end user will facilitate more productivity,
revenue, and loyalty. Cost reduction, productivity improvement, reduction complexity in service
management, increase the flexibility in the business operation is some of the objectives that are
essential for successful implementation of E-Commerce in a business. A transformational
objective is to be set after aligned the organizational structure.
Secondly, technology studies to enable it in the market:
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SMAC stack, heavy efficient automation, a collaboration of human-machine has to well study
before implementing the e-commerce in the business. Apart from these, the company needs to
identify the latest trends in internet technology, cyber security have to be studied. The advanced
study should be involved with the emerging technology of security. The software-driven data
center, Hybrid IT system have to be taken into consideration (Christensen and Christensen,
2013).
Thirdly, create platform and infrastructure for digital business:
On-demand, service is the main advantage of the implementation of digital business. The
concept of high distribution and high virtualization should be involved in the business planning.
Mainly by implementing new technology target business outcome should be emphasized by
proving the customer experience and simplifying management.
Fourthly, lifecycle of digital services should be supervised;
For the implementation of an E-commerce, the company should have to found an IT department
in the business management system. The IT wing has to implement the whole planning, what to
be implemented and how to be implemented (Brush, 2014). Mainly there are six approaches to
shaping an IT service. Some of them are intelligent automation, Agile, Personas and As-a as
service. Organizational mastery should be involved with interaction, digital touch [point and
interaction.
Fifthly, a Digital business innovation process should be organized:
The organization has to build block for enabling and disruptive technology. All the working
should be done based on the target business outcome. In the next some key topics are given
following which the digital business innovation process should be organized:
~An approach driven by persona should have to be practice that will support new work
preferences and patterns
~ Integration related to Omni channel should be involved and business process should be faster
(Aguilar, 2015)
~ The organization has to incorporate cloud computing, social and mobile centricity work
structure.
Sixthly, in the future platform it is important to execute an Agile Journey:
For the implementation of new IT world, execution of a hybrid platform is essential. If the
business organization wants to maintain their present work procedure in near future, co-existence
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of other material should be integrated. The main important topic is the managerial people have
not change the business from grass root level rather than him; lamenting a change management
in the business process (Sarasvathy et al. 2016).
Apart from the above-written objective, in brief, some steps can be concluded. Such as planning
for implementing E-Commerce strategy, business audit, Selection of technology, Acquisition of
customer, Engage of the customer, retention of customer, key metrics optimization is essential.
★ Cost: E-commerce implementation is involving the process of booking of the
current order, service after sales, business structure changing and retraining,
development of several prototypes and rests other activities. The whole process
will cost approximately 5 million dollars.
★ Scope: the main objective of implementing an e-commerce in a business is to
meet the requirements of individual customers. By implementing an Ecommerce
system in a retail store it will facilitate the consumer from the interactive fitting
room, which upgrades the overall shopping experience of the customers
(Leymann and Altenhuber, 2015). Apart from this digital POS system should be
involved in this process by the implementation of E-Commerce. Check in and
check out the system in the kiosk would be automated in this process. Apart from
the implementation of POS system the sales staffs ar54e to be employed for
customer satisfaction. The main advantage is with the implementation of E-
commerce process the online apps are connected in offline stores. In this location-
based technology, online customer is identified. And after identification, the
greeting is sent to the customer to attract them towards the specific retail store.
★ Time: as designed above, the total implementation of E-commerce in a small
scale business organization will take approximately 6 months,
★ Quality: for control and quality assurance of the implementation process some
practice is to done. Such as monitoring the strategy, deliverables repeated testing
of the plan, and functionality of the whole system (Ritter et al. 2014).
★ Communication:
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★ Risk: the risk of an Ecommerce can be categorized into three topics. First one is
information risk. The second one is a Technological risk and the third one is the
business risk.
Risk type Impact
Information Risk For any type of unauthorized access of
server, customer personal information
be stolen, digital morphing and
scanning should meet the privacy
suits, no defamatory statement should
contain in secret infringement,
electronic bulletin board should not
contain any nasty information,
information on the credit card should
be not be disclosed to any
unauthorized person. Intellectual
property should be lighted due to
moving of the company staff towards
its competitor (Davenport and Short,
2015).
Technological Risk In software design, no error should be
neglected unless it will create an error.
The website may be deformed due to
unauthorized access. There is a risk of
crashing the internet service provider.
Software error due to Unauthorized
access can happen. Third party
interception is also incorporated in this
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study (Archer and Yuan, 2016). The
poor performance of ISP service
provider will also count as a risk of
implementing E-Commerce. Poor
performance and poor design of the
website will also be counted as a
failure of E-commerce
implementation.
Business Risk Any defamatory statement containing
in the electronic bulletin board will be
counted as a risk factor for E-
Commerce implementation. Any type
of break in between the developer and
the clients will be counted as a risk of
ecommerce implementation. Poor
communication due to our stock of
product will be treated as a risk factor.
For online use, the unprotected domain
name will act as a risk of Ecommerce
implementation. Insufficient designing
in supply chain channel will be treated
as a risk of implementation of E-
Commerce. By the wrong
implementation of E-commerce,
customer relationship management
will also be hampered and return
policy is inconvenient (Anupindi et al.
2015).
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Table 1: Risk Assessment
(Source: Created by author)
★ Resource: for implementing a new strategy in the ongoing business strategy the
main need to analyze the resource working. For Implementing an E-Commerce
system in a business process, the following are would new work as a resource for
the taken project:
➔ Assurance of Solution: if a situation occurs where cross team
design takes place, then the team will be skilled sufficient for
solution assurance.
➔ Design of the function: E-commerce implementation is not
someday project. It is a long-term process. For proper
implementation of this project, the work and responsibility of each
team will be distributed. For practicing this, functional designing is
highly important (Neely et al. 2014).
➔ Technical development: the main objective of implementation of a
E-commerce project is to technically upgrade the whole system.
For proper implementation of this thing, the company staffs, the
employee should be technically upgraded.
➔ UX design: for proper implementation of E-commerce process,
document's functional specification is highly essential. UX design
is such a topic that will do the pre-assigned job and satisfy teg
business requirement.
➔ Lead the project: for successful implementation, the requirements
of a team leader and a business project leader are highly solicited
(Helfert and Helfert, 2015).
➔ Change the managers: it is evident with the proper and successful
implementation of an E-commerce project; the end user will be
facilitated a lot. Therefore from the starting of the journey, the end
user should be involved in the implementation process also.
❏ Work Breakdown Structure:
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An E-Commerce project management team should be organized internally for in time
implementation of the project.
The team has to identify the work package of the project beside of identifying the project
deliverable and requirement of the stakeholders. The total amount of daily work that is necessary
for producing them in the meantime deliverables will also be analyzed. An upper level
decomposed work should be created. For this separate work responsibility for every staff will
also to be organized.
Some techniques are to be followed, as followed:
~ Current situation is to be determined
~ The requirement of ten users and the requirement of the system are to be determined\
~ The database have to designed according to the user requirements (Aguilar, 2014)
~ A work interface should be designed
~ The implementation process should be involved with the security, database and system
integration.
Apart from creating WBS, the creation of process breakdown structure should also be created.
The first step of process breakdown structure is proper website designing for E-commerce
implementation. The network diagram structure is to be created for the proper implementation of
process breakdown structure (Goldman, 2016).
❏ Gantt Chart:(Time Frame and Stage)
In the process of providing the deliverable following working should be completed. The steps
are:
1. Documentation of the Project esteem
2. Assignment of the project staff
3. Development of scope management
4. Work breakdown structure creation
5. Plan breakdown structure creation
6. Network diagram should be created (North and Macal, 2016)
7. Milestone creation for in time completion of the project
8. Risk assessment
9. Evaluation of the current business situation
10. Analysis of the system
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11. Full analysis of the system
12. List the hardware \and software requirements
13. Required database should be designed
14. The interface of the webpage should be created
15. The security should be implemented
16. The system which is involved in the process should be analyzed regularly
17. User guide should be created for the newly implemented technology (Velasquez and
Velazquez, 2014)
18. Weekly report should be taken to analyze the response of the newly implemented system
19. Finally, a project management report should be prepared
20. Further development should be done to eradicate the existing problem
Based on the taken actions, in the next a Gantt chart is prepared so that the project can be
completed in time.
Figure 1: Gantt chart
(Source: Created by Author)
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TASK 2
LO2: Conduction of small-scale research, information gathering and data collection,
generating knowledge to support the specific project [P4]
Project execution phase
Methods of information gathering and data collection are discussed below:
● Registration:
Registration process can be used to obtain whole enumeration through legal requirement.
Before making data collection, there should be accurate knowledge of data size and type of the
data.
Registration data types:
In most of the country, fishing vessel and contract fishing vessel is used for registering the
information as these are registered with fishery authority. Data on vessel type, country of origin,
size of the vessel and engine horsepower should be available for registry. Companies who are
dealing with this issue are registered for various issues (Goldman, 2016).
Registry design:
A company cannot access data if they are not registered. They should have registration license
for accessing the data. In this portal, the data or the records are updated on yearly basis. The
company needs to renew their license every year. Vessel register is the most complex system of
data collection.
● Questionnaires:
This is the second phase of the execution process. This process is more like interview
process. In this process, the enumerators pose direct question. Questionnaires mainly used for
collecting regular or infrequent data.
● Interviews:
Two types of interview process are used for data collection. These are:
Open-ended interviews: many types of data gathering activities are used in open-ended
interview. In focus group method mainly 5 to 15 participants participated in this process.
However, in panel survey, the number of participants is not fixed.
Structured interviews: this process is well designed where data collection and analysis is done
based on the structure provided.
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● Direct observation:
Process inspectors, scientific research and data logging are part of this process.
● Reporting:
In this process, report is made as per the report of data collection. This report has been
made after analysis of shorting data. Harvest and postharvest are two part of reporting
(Velasquez and Velazquez, 2014).
Qualitative and quantitative research method:
Qualitative research:
This one is exploratory research method. This method is used to understand the
underlying reasons, motivation and opinion. It helps to develop new ideas for potential
quantitative research. Qualitative research is highly used to uncover trends in opinion.
Qualitative data collection method is used in structured and semi-structured techniques too. This
method also used in the individual interviews and group discussion.
Quantitative research:
This method is used for generating numerical data. Quantitative research helps to
quantify the problem while generating transformed data. This research method is used to
quantify attitude, opinion and behavior. This process used measurable data while collecting and
analyzing data. This method is based on paper search, online data surveys, mobile surveys and
kiosk surveys. Apart from these, this process can be hugely used in telephonic interview
processes, face-to-face interview, longitudinal interview panels and systematic observations
(Crane and Matten, 2016).
Snap survey software is ideal for doing quantitative data collection. Other platforms are
also available like online software where the developer provides structure of the format for data
collection.
TASK 3:
LO3: Presentation of the project and communicate appropriate recommendation based on
meaningful conclusions drawn from the evidence findings and /or analysis [P5, P6]
For successful implementation of the E-Commerce consistent approach should be practiced.
Mainly if any type of system dispute affects the customer the problem should be immediately
eradicated. In the next, some upgraded method is given following which, the E-commerce can be
well implemented.
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