FlashMobz Report: Analyzing StarTel's Business Challenges

This report, titled "FlashMobz," examines the business and technical challenges encountered by StarTel, a mobile accessories and phone retail center, following its acquisition of MobBitz and transition to e-commerce. The report delves into the business challenges, including financial priorities, management commitment, and the need for a B2C e-commerce strategy. It also highlights the technical challenges, such as IT integration issues, data visibility, data integration, and compliance regulations. Furthermore, the report identifies barriers to implementing e-commerce, including security concerns, poor infrastructure, high setup costs, lack of understanding of the new environment, and the absence of clear regulations and standards. The analysis provides recommendations for overcoming these challenges and successfully integrating e-commerce into the business processes. The report also includes a reflective statement, equivalent contribution to the online technologies and references.

Running head: FLASHMOBZ
FlashMobz
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................2
2. Discussion..............................................................................................................................2
Business Challenges of StarTel Acquisition of MobBitz and Transition to E-Commerce....3
Technical Challenges of StarTel Acquisition of MobBitz and Transition to E-Commerce. .4
Barriers to Implement the Functionality of E-Commerce within the Business Process........6
3. Recommendations..................................................................................................................8
4. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................9
5. Reflective Statement..............................................................................................................9
Reflective Statement..............................................................................................................9
Equivalent Contribution to the Online Technologies...........................................................10
6. References............................................................................................................................12

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1. Introduction
StarTel is a mobile accessories and phone retail centre that is primarily based in
Scotland. The business had started with a strong base of users and with a single shop. In the
upcoming years, the business of the shop had grew due to an expanding base of customers.
The mobile phone business, which was primarily initiated by Sharith has expanded from a
single shop to a wide chain of five outlets within Scotland.
The initial shops had been opened on a small space and the reach of the business was
limited to a certain extent. The owner of the shop had decided to expand the base of the
business in the year 2016. The new outlets that were owned by Sharith are collectively known
as ‘MobBitz’. It is being planned by the owner that the new outlets would be operated under
the StarTel brand. This form of the expansion within the business would be considered as a
significant form of expansion within the business. This might help in gaining a position
within the European Free Trade Area market.
In order to expand the business, it is widely needed to open a warehouse within the
North-East part of England. The expanding of the base of the business would be considered
as a great opportunity to integrate the functionality of B2C E-Commerce. The integration of
the functionality of the e-commerce would be helpful for customers for the purpose of
collection and return of the stocks with the help of courier services.
2. Discussion
There are two different forms of IT systems within the retail stores of StarTel and
MobBitz. It is necessary to integrate the two different processes of the business. This would
be made possible by integrating the functionality of B2C e-commerce (Laudon and Traver
2013). In order to improve the business of the retail store and save money, it is highly
important to find the best business software.

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The businesses should be able to overcome the various business and technological
challenges that might be faced during the integration of the functionality of e-commerce. The
distributed system is responsible for the integration of applications, databases and systems
within various business so as to improve the processes of business and ensuring that the
processes would run in a synchronized manner (Chiu et al. 2014).
In the B2C E-Commerce model, the business website is the place where the entire
transactions of the business would be conducted directly between a consumer and the
organization of the business (AlGhamdi, Nguyen and Jones 2013). In this kind of the
functionality of the business, a customer would visit a particular website, select a form of
catalogue and order from that catalogue. After an order from that catalogue has been selected,
an email would be sent to the concerned organization of the business. Hence after the orders
are confirmed from the catalogue, the goods are dispatched to the customer.
Business Challenges of StarTel Acquisition of MobBitz and Transition to E-Commerce
The migration to the e-commerce platform has become an inevitable part of the
business process. In order to evolve the strategy of e-business, it is extremely necessary to
understand and accept the basic need to evolve according to the strategy of e-business along
with the challenges that are brought along with them (Turban et al. 2017).
The primary and leading form of challenge that are faced by various business is the
problem of gaining priorities based on the references of finances. The continuous flow of
funds and capitals are the main backbone of any ongoing business. Huge funds have to be
generated in order to sustain the process of the business and to fulfil the commitments made
by the businesses. The management team within any business would find it extremely
important to design a plan for the investment within the business processes for the purpose of
managing the electronic form of transactions within the business processes. The involvement

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and the utmost commitment of the top level of the management team within the businesses is
extremely important for the proper implementation of the functionality of the B2C E-
Commerce strategy (Jiang, Jun and Yang 2016).
The secondary challenge for the proper implementation of the strategy of e-commerce
and the process of transition would come with the continuous commitment of the middle and
senior level of management within the business. The transition to the e-commerce platform
would mainly involve the administrative and functional managers. They could also involve
their continuous based involvement during the process of deployment of the e-commerce
platform within the functionality of the business. In most of the cases, there is a major
challenge for the managers in order to chase the provided targets and thus prove their
commitment towards the business during the process of transition. The implementation
process of the functionality of the B2C e-commerce strategy would be needed to be owned
and thus implemented by the owners of the business and thus would not be owned by the
third party organisation (Campbell, Wells and Valacich 2013).
Technical Challenges of StarTel Acquisition of MobBitz and Transition to E-Commerce
The businesses should be able to overcome the technical based challenges during the
process of acquisition. This would be meant for the process of unification and thus
streamlining the processes of the business over the entire business enterprise. In the recent
times, it is very difficult to identify two similar companies who have the same processes of
business and run the same type of applications.
The primary technical challenges that are mainly faced by the different business
organizations are:
Insufficient Integration of IT – A proper lack of synchronization within the
infrastructure of IT could be the main reason of causing difficulties within the daily processes

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of the businesses of StarTel. Without a proper sense of integration based on the applications
of the processes of the operations and support, there would be a high level of replications and
mistakes. This would increase the level of complications within the business processes and
thus would increase distract for the companies. Hence, they would not be able to focus on the
main processes of the business that includes media, retail, and delivering insurance (Hartono
et al. 2014).
Lack of Visibility – With the merging of two parts of the business of StarTel and
MobBitz within a similar form of technology that have different IT systems, it is possible to
duplicate the information of the customer. In addition to this, if the two businesses have not
established a proper customer data integration system, there would be a huge challenge of
obtaining a single data of the customer.
Integration of Data – The integration of data within the two business processes
would be helpful in ensuring that the business would have direct access to the updated
information about the entire enterprise. This would be done irrespective of the fact that the
data would reside within the premises of the enterprise or they would be stored on the cloud
platform. The retrieval of information that are generally scattered on various systems, servers
or applications would be very difficult without the help of an effective solution of data
integration.
Compliance Regulation – The two different businesses of StarTel and MobBitz that
have two different IT based systems would face severe issues of compliance. This is due to
the fact that the two business would not have the same compliance level. In order for the
smooth running of the various processes of the business, it is extremely vital that there should
be a proper balance of contracts, proper guidelines and policies. There should also be a
consistent enforcement of the set policies and a proper control of the use of those policies

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(Mangiaracina et al. 2015). In addition to this fact, it should also be noticed that if the
acquiring company is based globally, then there would be a high need of implementing a
proper ground of education and training based on the new policies of compliance.
Barriers to Implement the Functionality of E-Commerce within the Business Process
There are many benefits of implementing the functionality of e-commerce within the
business processes of StarTel and MobBitz. These functionalities would be the primary
mechanism to break the barriers that are arising in order to implement the B2C e-commerce
strategy. There are several factors, which are able to influence the successful adoption and the
implementation of the e-commerce strategy within the business (Fang et al. 2014). The issues
of adoption of the strategy mainly relate to the various problems that are faced by the
businesses.
Some of the barriers of implementing the strategy of e-commerce within the process
of the business would include:
Security Concerns – The primary concern for the adoption of the strategy of B2C e-
commerce within the retail sector is the concern for security. The security, which would be in
the forms of availability of information and integrity of data are the major form of barriers to
the use of internet within the retail stores. The issues of the security and the privacy of data is
a major concern for the B2C type of business sectors. These problems mainly discourage the
small forms to intake the technology and their way of performing the operations of the
business.
Poor Infrastructure – The infrastructure within the different IT systems of the retail
stores would mainly comprise of hardware, software, distributors and suppliers that are
mainly responsible for dealing with the web based servers and the enterprise resource based
planning systems. The poor levels of infrastructure based on technology such as hardware

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and software malfunction, slow internet connection are the main barriers for the purpose of
adoption of e-commerce business strategy (Mohapatra et al. 2013).
High Costs of Setup – The applications that would be needed for the setup process of
the e-commerce strategy could be complicated. There are increasing costs of the internet
connection, costs of the infrastructure of hardware and software and the costs of maintenance
of the several products. There are several enterprises and small scale businesses that do not
have the necessary financial resources for the purpose of investment of the e-commerce
strategy. There are times when the investments within the business are not cost effective. In
such cases, the businesses might have to consider the outsourcing of some of the activities
(Sohaib and Kang 2014).
Lack of the Understanding of the New Environment – The business within the
retail sector are sometimes unaware of the several potential of the IS/IT for the purpose of
enhancing their strategy of the e-commerce business. This would also focus on the fact that
about the ways in which the B2C e-commerce applications would be helpful in engaging with
the globally digital economy (Hasan, Morris and Probets 2013). Although the larger retail
businesses have majorly embraced the use of the e-commerce business strategy, the small
retail sector are still trying to catch up with the pace of the new environment. There is a high
lack of the basic understanding of the internet usage within the small retail sectors. This could
be considered as a potential barrier for the growth of the business and the implementation of
the functionality of the B2C e-commerce strategy (Gangeshwer 2013).
Lack of Regulations and Standards – Another barrier to the adoption of the e-
commerce strategy within the retail sector would mainly arise from the lack of the
government set standards and regulations that are mainly meant to administrate the several
complexities of the e-commerce business model. The issues of legal and security are

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extremely sensitive for the retail sector. This would urge the basic collaboration of the
government bodies for the purpose of enacting the general rules and regulations for their use
on a global basis (Li and Karahanna 2015).
3. Recommendations
As described above Sharith can run into several obstacles throughout the development
and merging process. StarTel and MobBitz have different IT systems which can turn to big
challenge and increase complication for lack of proper data integration (Rosaci and Sarnè
2014). There are two different forms of IT systems within the retail stores of StarTel and
MobBitz. It is necessary to integrate the two different processes of the business. This would
be made possible by integrating the functionality of B2C e-commerce. In order to improve
the business of the retail store and save money, it is highly important to find the best business
software (Chen et al. 2015). There are several aspects which needs to be consider to avoid the
challenges. They may face several issues in the business and technical areas. To solve this
issue there are certain aspects to consider as recommended:
Data warehouse - The implementation of a precise data warehouse can be useful to
full fill various business requirements and services. Data warehouse can also assist the
company in data utilization. Gathering and managing data from different sources can be quire
tender generally. Data warehouse also allows to access advanced and typical database
through query language (Chaffey 2015).
Manpower - Individuals plays a vital role in the proper execution of data integration
process. An expert data manger is more than enough to handle this merge. However, he or
she must have required experience and field knowledge. It is highly recommended to be
careful while choosing the proper candidate (Toufaily, Ricard and Perrien 2013).

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Systematic Preparation - Systematic preparation approach can be adopted to ensure
proper completion of any desired process or achieve any goals. It can be useful to overcome
the operational challenges and doubts. The company should plan, target for smaller goals step
by step. Instead of planning for bigger targets accomplishing small targets step by step makes
the task easier and much simpler (Morganti et al. 2014).
4. Conclusion
The company can face several obstacles to merge two brands together. Some
challenges are more complex than other as described. This possible challenges can be
overcome through proper implementation of the IS. For proper implementation of IS
technologies several aspects needs to be consider. Most of the technical issues are
complicated while the business issues are less complicated. Sharith must consider several
approaches before finalizing any particular approach. The implementation process of the
functionality of the B2C e-commerce strategy would be needed to be owned and thus
implemented by the owners of the business and thus would not be owned by the third party
organisation. They could also involve their continuous based involvement during the process
of deployment of the e-commerce platform within the functionality of the business. In most
of the cases, there is a major challenge for the managers in order to chase the provided targets
and thus prove their commitment towards the business during the process of transition. It can
be concluded that the IS development is a crucial process which must be completed with
proper authenticity.
5. Reflective Statement
Reflective Statement
Information system is the new revolution in the world and is one of the most
advanced technology that have been developed in the last years. I have been looking for the

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most advanced changes that have been taking place in the last few years in the field of
Information systems in a business retail sector (Almousa 2013). I came to know that
information system can be called as the collection, storage and communication. Further more
accurately it can be explained as the process by which an organisation can collect, filter,
process, create and disturbed a specific data for the benefits of an organisation (Cui and Pan
2015).
I learned about the five main components of information system in an organisation.
These five components that are the core of information system are hardware, software,
database, network and people. The hardware of the systems consist of the input and output
devises while the software consist of the application that are useful for the process of the
business process. Other than this the databases such as the mongo DB are some of the most
used and databases in the sector of the business information system. One of the major thing
that I learned throughout this process is how information system works for an organisation.
Cost is one off the major factor which affects a day to day business model and it can be
optimised with the help of the information system.
Other than this I learnt why the information system is important in the file of the
business. These points are namely are Operational excellence which helps in the process of
constantly improving the efficiency of a business. New products services and the business
models. Customer and supplier intimacy and the providing proper competitive advantage.
These are some of thing that I have learned in the past days about the information system and
services.
Equivalent Contribution to the Online Technologies
E-commerce is a growing sector within the retail sectors. Based on the understanding
of the topic, I have understood that there is a high need to meet the expectation of the

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customer within the B2C e-commerce business. In order to meet the expectation of the
customer, there would be a high need for the right set of capabilities. I have also learnt that a
proper balance of good management of fundamental skills of leadership, capital for the
business and the branding of the retail sector. This form of balance would vary from one
retail sector to another. The right form of balance of these skills would change on a daily
basis. Hence, these retail sectors would highly focus on the factor of flexibility (Adeleke et al.
2015).
Based on the topic, I have understood that the IS professionals have to assess some
confidential data. Hence a proper knowledge about the networks and the systems of the
companies, would give them a great amount of power. The proper training and education of
the IT professionals would primarily focus on the skills of technical based knowledge. I also
understood that many of the IT professionals work on the security of the information from the
perspective of a hacker (Gambrill and Gibbs 2017).
I also think that the ethical considerations should also be considered when designing
an IT system. The IT professionals have the primary rights of accessing most of the data on
their systems of the network. Other ethical issues that are needed to be considered from my
perspective of the ethical dilemmas is that the products, which needs to be delivered should
be delivered as per the promises made to the clients. Based on these considerations, I think
that this would help in enhancing the future impact on the practice as the professionals of
information security (Ellinger and Ellinger 2014).

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6. References
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Ellinger, A.E. and Ellinger, A.D., 2014. Leveraging human resource development expertise
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