Analysis of FlashMobz: E-commerce and IT Systems Report

This report analyzes the case study of FlashMobz, a mobile phone and accessories retailer, focusing on its acquisition of PhonesRUs and the subsequent challenges and opportunities related to integrating IT systems and launching an e-commerce platform. The report identifies key business and technical challenges, including the need for a new warehouse, integration of different IT systems, and the implementation of a business-to-consumer e-commerce platform. It explores barriers to implementation, such as verifying customer details, and suggests solutions like proper verification methods and integration of ERP systems. The report also discusses the design of the e-commerce user interface, the importance of customer segmentation, and the need for multiple payment options. The report provides recommendations for overcoming these challenges and building a persuasive argument for the business owner, Asif, to ensure the successful expansion of FlashMobz into the e-commerce market and the integration of the PhonesRUs acquisition.

Running head: ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note:

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ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
E-commerce:..............................................................................................................................2
Acquisition of Phone RUs:.....................................................................................................4
Launching of E-Commerce:...................................................................................................5
IT system of FlashMobz:.......................................................................................................6
The Key Business:..................................................................................................................7
IT system of Phones RUs and Challenges with overcoming solutions:.................................9
Overcoming the barriers:......................................................................................................10
Conclusion:..............................................................................................................................11
Recommendations:...................................................................................................................11
Reflective Statement................................................................................................................12
References:...............................................................................................................................15

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ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
Introduction:
This report is aiming at analysing the key points of the E-commerce business and the
challenges that can interrupt while implementing. In the mentioned case study, FlashMobz is
a retailer based Company which deals with mobile phones and its accessories. As the
business has been expanded to a great level within a few years, the owner of the Flashmobz
has started the business with a single shop which has now extended to eleven shops. The
location of the outlets are in Ethiopia and Belgium and for the new outlet the owner, Asif has
chosen East England.
E-Commerce is also known as Electronic Commerce which deals with the buying and
selling of the products, goods and service over the Internet (Laudon and Traver 2016). The
business of E-commerce deals with the selling of the products online. Because of the easy
and convenient features of the e-commerce, the users enjoys shopping online; therefore, for
the retailers and business owners, this can play a vital role in earning more value (Sharma and
Lijuan 2015).
E-commerce:
E-commerce is often used in terms of the Transactional processes for shopping online
(Pappas et al. 2017). There are three fields of e-commerce which are, electronic markets,
online auctions and online retailing which are supported by the electronic business. E-
commerce can be categorised into four types based on online transactions, which are as
follows:
Business to Business:

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ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
In this type of e-commerce, the interchanging of the products and services is carried
out electronically (Deng and Wang 2016). Only the companies are involved in the business,
and the customers or consumers are not involved. The retailers, manufacturers and
wholesalers are included (Gorla, Chiravuri and Chinta 2017).
Business to consumer:
The companies directly sell their products or services to the customers with instant
payment or with payment after delivery (Rouibah Lowry and Almutairi 2015). In this type of
business, the user interface of the websites serves the customers to check the products and
relevant prices online and also let the consumers read the reviews of the products before
purchasing (Ting et al. 2016).
Consumer to Consumer:
In this type of e-commerce, only the consumers or customers are involved instead of
any company (Joo 2015). The consumers trade products and services among themselves
online. In this type of e-commerce, only the platform is provided to the consumers, which
acts as a third party for enabling the transactions (Yrjölä et al. 2017). Online auctions are also
carried out in that platform.
Customer to Business
This type is exactly opposite of the Business to Consumer here the consumers make
their products or services accessible online so that the companies can bid on and buy the
products (Hallikainen and Laukkanen 2018).

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ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
Acquisition of Phone RUs:
As a member of the SBS Consultant Team, it is a great responsibility to look at the
factors that or key points that can help in business and also find the challenges that can
interrupt in the business. The warehouse would be built in East England where the raw
materials would be kept, and from there the distribution of the materials would be carried out.
Phone RUs runs a few outlets which deal with the smaller quantities of devices such as
mobile phones and accessories. From the warehouse in East England, the products will be
supplied to the outlets of the Phone RUs which is situated in Belgium and England.
Since FlashMobz is the retailer company, the consumers are not involved directly
with this company; hence, the outlets of Phone RUs can help in selling the goods to the
customers and feedback from the customers can also be used as the influencing factors to
improve. Because of the scattered network of the Phone RUs, the geographical operations can
increase faster. This strategy of distributing the retail business will assist in enabling the
expansion of the company.

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ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
Launching of E-Commerce:
As mentioned earlier, the Business to Business e-commerce deals with the trading
among the companies; hence, it helps in enhancing the effectiveness of the sales efforts. In
this case, the warehouse will be opened where the raw materials will be kept for the
investment and these materials will be shipped to the outlets and will be sold on the brand
name of FlashMobz. Therefore, for this case, White labelling and manufacturing is suitable,
in which the rebranding of the products is carried out. A white-label product can be defined
as a product that is manufactured by one company and is sold after rebranding the appearance
by other company so that it would appear as a product the other company.
Phone RUs has been considered to be profitable retail outlets, and it is not
overcrowded. After doing all the researches, it has been found that it is quite popular among
the customers; hence, investment can gain benefits. And the idea of selling the products with
the brand name of FlashMobz can help in achieving the profits. FlasMobz itself has the
expanded business the consumers will not hesitate to buy the products of this brand. Hence
the e-commerce will be launched under the name of FlashMobz (Goswami et al. 2015), and
the user interface design should be attractive to launch the e-commerce site few steps are to
be followed, which are:
 Business needs to be registered so that the legal protections and tax benefits can be
included.
 Name of the site is also need to be registered, which has been selected that is
FlashMobz.
 For launching an e-commerce website legal licences are the most important part of
starting a business; hence, a business license is essential.

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ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
 Approval of the licenses is also an important step to operate an online site where
transactions will take place.
 The vendor is Phone RUs which can survive in the competition and also the e-
commerce software should consist of the shopping cart.
 The appearance of the e-commerce site needs to be attractive.
 After all these steps, the Information system of e-commerce is required to be focused.
IT system of FlashMobz:
The designing of the user interface needs to be carefully developed, to build it as a
successful e-commerce site (Travis 2017). The design of the site on the perspective of the
architecture should consist of the sales that will increase the sales department; hence,
consumer engagement is necessary with the reputed brand name. The functionality of the site
should be efficient and should not interrupt during usage (Sobihah et al. 2017). Regular
testing and modification can assist in developing the structure of the website to deliver strong
sales.
The planning for the User Interface design will be implemented after the resources for
the site are assembled so that the goals can be set for the planning. Information architecture is
the core of the site to create an easily accessible user interface. Therefore the architectural
design consists of the domain names of the URL, organizing the content, the navigation
system of the site, and the domain names should be registered (Paea and Baird 2018). Then
select the software for developing the site few things to be prioritized, which are: features,
compatibility, loading speed, payment gateways, web developer skills, etc.

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Another important feature that can be added to the site is to create a chatting platform
so that the consumers can directly have the conservation regarding the products or the e-
commerce site. With the help of e-mail marketing, consumers can be kept attracted.
Moreover, faster responses will attract customers.
The Key Business:
The e-commerce business makes it simpler for the customer and helps the
organizations to save time and also helps in selling more products because of the exposure
(McDermott and Payvision 2015). To select an appropriate solution for e-commerce is
necessary (Barreira et al. 2016). There are few features of e-commerce to serve the Business
to Business platform.
 In Business to Business, the companies should have the capability of categorizing the
customers into groups. After the classification of the customers, price setting is
allowed with minimum order requirements for each category that has been segmented.
 If the customers can be classified according to the profiles, then this can be an
excellent addition to the key Business (Huang and Benyoucef 2015). The group of the
profiles can be categorized according to the reorder frequency, quantity of products
that are ordered, order volume and geographical location.
 Business to business e-commerce offers to sell the products at different prices based
on the type of customers. Because of the segmenting of the customers mentioned
previously, special offers can be provided to the most demanding clients (Azam
2015). The feature of customizing the prices of any product and offering them to a
few specific clients will help in fulfilling the orders.

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ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
 The retailers generally deal with the products in bulk or wholesale (Lin and Wang
2015). Hence, the e-commerce platform should have the ability to accommodate more
quantities with bulk discounts.
 The access of the site should be restricted; only the pre-registered clients can access
the content of the products and relevant prices. The functionality should be
maintained by setting the platform to be password protected and can only be accessed
after the login or registration. The admin of the site should have the accessibility of
the back end processing as well as modifying the content of the website.
 Setting the specification of minimum order quantity can be profitable for the business.
If the client orders some specific quantity, then only the order can be placed.
 Taxation is something very significant in gaining permission from the authorities. The
business owners have to assess the sales tax within some period of time (Basu 2016).
Moreover, to achieve the benefit of tax exclusion, the associated clients have to
provide a yearly exemption certificate (Abdulkarimli 2015). The Business to business
offers to have a transaction of reselling the goods that are purchased.
 ERP system can help in integrating the e-commerce platform, and this ERP system
helps in calculating the statistics of the sales from the clients. Therefore, installing an
ERP system can help in estimating the percentages, discounts, total orders, revenue,
etc. within a specific time frame.
 Bulk order can minimize the selection of the products one by one; hence, this feature
can enhance the shopping experience by adding the simple selecting methods to place
the bulk orders.
 Reordering the previously bought products can lead to quick order placing. The
reordering facility can be provided in to the account of the clients through the
customization facility.

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ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
 Reliability during the payment transactions can build a strong relationship between
the clients and the business owners. The e-commerce site should have multiple
payment options in order to provide the best service to all the clients.
IT system of Phones RUs and Challenges with overcoming solutions:
The portal that is used by Phone RUs does have the feature to verify the customer details.
When the customer details are filled up in the form of the site, then the verification feature is
absent; hence, it can lead to confusion while delivering the orders. When the Cash on
delivery purchases are dealt, then this can cause huge losses.
Therefore, to resolve the mentioned issue, proper verification of the details of the
customers need to be carried out. Suspicious activities need to detect first then the backend
process of the form should be coded with the validation features so that the details can be
verified. Zip-codes can be checked whether these are correct or not, email addresses, phone
numbers can be verified by sending the one-time password links. For validation of the client,
the verification links can be sent to the email address. This is how this issue can be resolved.
In today’s era, customers can be communicated from any corner with their phone
numbers. The appropriate technology should be used so that the staffs of customer support
can contact the customers via their phone numbers. A live chat feature should be there to
provide immediate assistance, calling option should be there in the system so that the
customers can call up to confront their issues (Kang et al. 2015). The IT system of Phone
RUs have this feature and to develop the existing feature, the tracking of the customer
conversation can be added by creating the user profiles.

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ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
Overcoming the barriers:
Assuming that the customers come to the store every day to know the offers or deals
that are being offered, then that is the total wrong assumptions. Proper mails should be sent to
the customers regarding the targets, deals, offers by displaying ads on the apps they are using.
Messages can be sent to the customers to develop the market program. If the customers are
not communicated via these channels, then the customers will not be aware of the offers that
are dealt with. Therefore to satisfy the customers, these need to be done.
Communication barrier can slow down the business; everything regarding the website
should be conveyed to the customers so that they would be able to know the features and
products that are serving. Failing to get things clear can create a communication barrier.
Therefore, as a solution, there should be proper emails that must be persuasive. The emails or
messages that are sent to the customers should be catchy enough to attract the customers to
visit the stores to check the products. The reviews can be viewed to the customers in order to
gain loyalty. The blogs can be maintained to feature the efforts and profits of the e-commerce
site. Social media platforms can also help in communication; hence, creating pages in
Facebook and other Social media applications can help to spread the business.
Not using social media can act as a barrier for the e-commerce site to a build strong
relationship with the customers and clients. Social media can act as a source to search for
new clients and even the reverse (Yan et al. 2016). The clients can get knowledge about the
e-commerce site through the social media platform. By linking the blogs with the social
media pages, by viewing the growth status to the customers can positively affect the business.
Moreover, the feature of showing reviews about the product to the customers can give the
assurance of the products.

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Conclusion:
Thus from the report, it can be concluded the e-commerce has multiple benefits which
can increase the value in the market. Despite a few barriers, there are proper methods to
mitigate the challenges. Customer or Client benefits should be focused first in order to
develop the business. Easy access to the e-commerce site will help the users to use more and
also recommend other users to use this for buying the products. Moreover, the products also
need to be genuine to build a strong bond between the Customers and the business owner.
Recommendations:
As a member of the consultant, I would prefer Asif to invest in promotional offers by
creating loyalty programs so that the existing clients do not lose their interest from this
business. The conducting of loyalty programs can be done through social media platforms.
The business owner, Asif should always be aware of the products that are getting outdated
and also about the products that are getting into the trends.
The E-commerce site is based on the Internet; therefore, that need to be protected
from online threats. I would also recommend using two-factor authentication, in which the
verification method is carried out. Whatever data is uploaded or kept in the system should be
in the encrypted to protect from the cyber-attack. I would suggest using Zone-Alarm Free
firewall which will serve for computer security because a secure firewall can protect the
system from the traffic that can invade into the network. Security should always be
maintained by backing up the data or information relevant to the business. Monitoring the
system and network required to be checked regularly, and Hard disk can be used to store
huge number data for back up purpose whenever there is a data breach, the back-up will help
to retrieve.