Business Analysis and Information Portal Design for Honest Jim Company

This report offers a comprehensive analysis of Honest Jim, an Australian car dealer, focusing on its business model, industry background, and competitive environment. The report evaluates Honest Jim's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats using SWOT analysis, and examines the external factors influencing the business through Porter's Five Forces. It also includes an analysis of the company's value proposition and customer engagement techniques. Furthermore, the report proposes a mock-up design for a website, including home, purchase, and payment pages, designed to enhance customer experience and online presence. The report concludes with a discussion on the application of HCI and web usability guidelines and suggests additional tools for customer engagement, such as improved search engine optimization.

Running Head: BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEM
INF10003: Introduction to Business Information System
Name of the Student
Name of the University

1INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEM
Executive Summary
Automobile industry is very popular in Australia as most of the Australians prefer to purchase
and use cars. From the start of the 21st century, the automobile industry had a boom in Australia
as the car sales increased by a significant percentage. Honest Jim is one of the companies that
grew up during this time and have enjoyed massive success at a short time. This report analyzes
existing business of Honest Jim and provides suitable suggestions including mock up design of
their proposed website.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Part A: Evaluations of the Business.................................................................................................3
Industry Background, Business Model and Environment...........................................................3
Value Proposition........................................................................................................................4
SWOT Analysis and Discussion..................................................................................................5
Porter’s Five Forces Analysis......................................................................................................6
Table Creation and Discussion....................................................................................................7
Part B: Information Portal Design...................................................................................................8
Design Review and Justification.................................................................................................8
Discussion on Customer Engagement Techniques......................................................................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11
Appendix........................................................................................................................................12
Appendix 1: Excel Screenshots.................................................................................................12
Appendix 2: Mock Up Screenshots...........................................................................................13

3INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEM
Introduction
Honest Jim is a car dealer company that sells cars from various brands. Currently, the
company is looking to develop a website that will help the company to reach more customers and
allow them to purchase cars online. The target audiences for Honest Jim are the middle and
upper middle class people who generally prefer budget cars rather than internationally branded
premium cars. Honest Jim has also considered the international students and immigrants’
demands and provides cars on rental as they cannot afford to buy a new car.
This report mainly analyzes the various business aspects of Honest Jim and provides
suitable suggestions including mock up design of their proposed website.
Part A: Evaluations of the Business
Industry Background, Business Model and Environment
The industry under focus in this assignment is the cars and automobile industry in
Australia. Automobile industry is very popular in Australia as most of the Australians prefer to
purchase and use cars. From the start of the 21st century, the automobile industry had a boom in
Australia as the car sales increased by a significant percentage. The car sales and rents were also
boosted by the incoming of the immigrants who travel to Australia for education and jobs
(Conlon & Perkins 2018, pp.55). A study on the Australian automobile industry revealed that the
annual revenue generated by the industry has exceeded $60bn and has been growing even more.
Due to this, in addition to the large car dealers in the country like AHG (Automotive Holdings
Group), small and growing car deals have also rapidly grown up in various parts of the country.

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The increase in sales has boosted the growth of these companies so that they will be able to
establish an appropriate brand value.
Honest Jim is one of such car dealers that have been set up within the last two decades
and have slowly cemented their place in the market. Honest Jim is not a car dealer that sells cars
from one particular franchise – the company sells and rents cars from various manufacturers as
per the demand and popularity in the market. This allows the company to move along the trend
and generate significant revenue through sales. Honest Jim follows Disintermediation Business
Model in which, its down the long supply chain and gets cars directly from the manufacturers
through one or two middlemen. As a result, Honest Jim is able to sell cars at very low prices
compared to other car dealers and gain significant competitive advantage in the market over
other franchise-based car dealers (Valadkhani & Smyth 2016, pp.684-708). The target audiences
for Honest Jim are the middle and upper middle class people who generally prefer budget cars
rather than internationally branded premium cars. Honest Jim has also considered the
international students and immigrants’ demands and provides cars on rental as they cannot afford
to buy a new car. Thus, Honest Jim covers a large area of target audience of the automobile
industry within its area of service and thus, the use of disintermediation business model is
justified for Honest Jim.
Value Proposition
Any business requires generation of a certain value in order to maintain profitability and
sustainability. This value is not only represented by an annual profit but also annual growth,
increase in sales, popularity, customer count, working staffs and others. Disintermediation
business model allows the company to cut costs and also sell products at lower prices than the
regular price. As a result, customers are more interested to buy cars from Honest Jim once the

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company sets up its own strong brand value in the market. In order to determine the value
proposition for Honest Jim, it is required to analyze the internal and external environments of
Honest Jim, SWOT Analysis and Porter’s Five Forces Analysis are conducted.
SWOT Analysis and Discussion
SWOT Analysis is used to analyze and discuss the internal environment of Honest Jim as
follows.
Strength Weakness
The company’s business model and low pricing
strategy allows it to gain a lot of customers over
other companies competing in the market.
Cars of most popular brands in Australia are sold
by the company.
The revenue cycle allows steady growth of the
company.
The company has been operating on the same
technical set up and operational strategy for quite
some time without any modifications or changes in
between.
The company does not have any website or
informative platform for the convenience of the
customers; the customers have to know from
newspaper or television advertisements about
Honest Jim.
Opportunity Threat
The strong revenue output of the company provides
the opportunity to invest in technical upgrades and
website development that will benefit the business
of the company significantly.
The company has the opportunity to develop a
strong value if it is able to attain sustainable growth
in the market.
Market competition is a significant threat for the
company as several companies with better technical
setup and operational framework has been growing
up in the country.
Lack of technically skilled staffs in the company
can be a threat if the suggested information system
is implemented for enhancing operations and

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business.
The SWOT Analysis of the internal environment of the company suggests that the Honest
Jim has been a very successful business entity in Australia till now due to the selection of
appropriate business model, pricing strategy, branded and popular cars, rental system and others.
However, the analysis also identifies the main issue with the company – lack of strong
information system to back up the operations. The internal operations are mostly manual and it
was sufficient till now due to controllable amount of sales. However, with increasing sales as
well as growing concerns regarding accounting, promotions and other factors, information
system can play a critical role in determining the success of the company’s business. Lack of
information system means Honest Jim is already behind the newest competitors who entered the
market will fully upgraded information system.
Porter’s Five Forces Analysis
Porter’s Five Forces Analysis helps to analyze the external business environment of the
company as follows.
Supplier Bargaining Power – Honest Jim depends on the manufacturer and the
middlemen for the supply of the cars they sell to the customers. The business model of Honest
Jim allows it to break the supply chain and get the cars directly from manufacturers through
middlemen at minimum extra costs. Hence, suppliers are not necessarily attached with the
business of Honest Jim. Thus, supplier bargaining power is low.
Buyer Bargaining Power – The pricing strategy of Honest Jim means that the customers
can purchase the cars already at a much lower cost than the general market price. As a result, the

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buyers do not need to bargain with the company regarding the prices of the cars. Hence, buyer
bargaining power is low.
Substitute Threat – Substitute requires providing the customers with alterative products
at lesser prices. However, Honest Jim sells only the most popular and latest car models to the
customers and once a model is out of trend, the company selects new models for sale. Thus, there
are not many substitutes for the cars Honest Jim sells. As a result, substitute threat is low.
New Entrant Threat – Several new entrants have grown up in the industry in Australia
that have better efficient internal set up that help them in sales, marketing, customer service and
others. As a result, they have been building their market share much faster than Honest Jim.
Hence, new entrant threat is high.
Rivalry in the Industry – Considering the threat of new entrants as well as number of car
dealers already existing in the country, it can be said that the rivalry in the industry is very high
for Honest Jim. Hence, the company needs to upgrade internal operational system in order to
ensure they can enhance their competitiveness in the market.
Table Creation and Discussion
In the attached excel sheet, the data has been rearranged to give a particular sequence in
arrangement. Furthermore, from the excel sheet, the following data has been calculated.
Wholesale price discounts % below
Retail
Toyota Utes 13%
All hybrid cars 8%
All other Utes 15% Profit 15.22%
All pre 2012 cars 16%
All other cars 11%

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Part B: Information Portal Design
Design Review and Justification
As per the requirements of Honest Jim, a mock up design has been developed for three
main pages of the proposed website – home page, purchase page and payments page. The review
and justifications of the pages developed are as follows.
Home Page – The home page takes the customer into the informative portal where he can
view the cars that are sold by the company. In addition, the customer can also create a profile
using Facebook, Google or personal email / phone number. The profile feature allows the
customer to receive exclusive updates about the offers and updates from the company (Hasan
2016, pp.224-230). The home page also allows the customer to select an option of purchasing
cars, renting cars or purchasing car parts. Finally, the home page provides the option for the
customer to contact the customer service of Honest Jim or check the company background. This
is the primary page of the company and the UI needs to be attractive and the contents need to be
clear and understandable for the customer.
Purchase Page – If a customer selects a car to purchase online, clicking on that particular
car redirects him to the purchase page. Here, the customer gets the options to pay immediately
for booking a car or he can book a car and pay later. Other contents of the page includes the
customer care link and other links that contain detailed information about the various
specifications of the selected car.
Payments Page – In this page, the customer has the option to make online payment. Here,
the customer needs to enter his personal information like name, address, phone number and
email id and then he has to enter his card details that will be used for making the online payment.

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Discussion on Customer Engagement Techniques
Using HCI and web usability guidelines, the elements of the website are explained as
follows (McDowell, Wilson & Kile 2016, pp.4837-4842).
Consistency – The data in the website are consistent with each other.
Visibility – All elements of the website are clearly visible to the customer.
Feedback – The customers can provide feedback after they register in the website.
Home Page – The homepage is very informative for customers.
Navigation – Navigation is very easy for the customers in the website.
GUI – The website has a very attractive GUI.
Some additional tools and engagement methods that can be deployed by Honest Jim are
as follows.
Better Website Search Engine Presence – Honest Jim can perform search engine
optimization so that the search engine refers the website to more customers who search for
online car purchase deals.
Customer Help – Honest Jim can insert an online chat option in the site so that the
customers can interact with customer care without hassle of phone calls.
Link Website to Social Media – This will allow Honest Jim to interact with more
potential customers in social media.

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Conclusion
Finally, it can be concluded that the proposed website can be utilized by the company to
enhance its operations as well as increase the customer engagement by attracting more of them
and promoting online purchase of the cars. Honest Jim is assures the customers that their
information include personal data and card details will be protected completely in the portal.

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References
Conlon, R. & Perkins, J., 2018. Wheels and deals: The automotive industry in twentieth-century
Australia. Routledge.
Hasan, B., 2016. Perceived irritation in online shopping: The impact of website design
characteristics. Computers in Human Behavior, 54, pp.224-230.
McDowell, W.C., Wilson, R.C. & Kile Jr, C.O., 2016. An examination of retail website design
and conversion rate. Journal of Business Research, 69(11), pp.4837-4842.
Valadkhani, A. & Smyth, R., 2016. The effects of the motor vehicle industry on employment and
research innovation in Australia. International Journal of Manpower, 37(4), pp.684-708.

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Appendix
Appendix 1: Excel Screenshots

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Appendix 2: Mock Up Screenshots

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