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ASSESSMENT DECLARATIONThis form must be completed, signed, dated and attached to each assessment task that you submit for marking.

FACULTY OF BUSINESS AND LAW

1. ADMINISTRATIVE DETAILS

STUDENT NAMES:

UNIT OF STUDY: BCO1102

TITLE OF ASSESSMENT:BCO1102 CASE STUDY PROJECT REPORT

DATE DUE: 14 May 2012 DATE SUBMITTED:

TEACHER/TUTORS NAME: TUTORIAL/CLASS TIME: T1/12.30-2.30

2. COMPULSORY STUDENT DECLARATION

Plagiarism means using another person’s intellectual output and presenting it (without appropriate acknowledgement of the author or source) as one’s own.

Plagiarism constitutes academic misconduct. Where there are reasonable grounds for believing that this has occurred, disciplinary procedures as outlined in the Policy for Academic Honesty and Preventing Plagiarism will be instituted.

PLEASE TICK TO INDICATE THAT YOU HAVE SATISFIED THESE REQUIREMENTS-

o I/we have read the policy on Academic Honesty and Preventing Plagiarism and the relevant referencing guides (or have had this explained to me by my teachers) and understand the consequences of committing academic misconduct as outlined in the policy.

o This assignment is my/our own work, I/we have not participated in collusion, nor have I/we previously submitted this or a version of it for assessment in any other Unit of Study at the University or any other institution without having obtained the approval of the teacher.

o I/we have taken proper and reasonable care to prevent this work from being copied by another student.

o So that the assessor can properly assess my work, I/we give this person permission to act according to University policy and practice to reproduce this work and provide a copy to another member of staff for the purpose of cross checking and moderation and to take steps to authenticate the assessment, including submitting a copy to a checking/detection system that in turn may retain a copy of this work on a database for future checking.

o I/we have carefully read the assessment criteria that will be used to evaluate my work as given below.

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

I/we certify that the statements I/we have attested to above have been made in good faith and are true and correct. I/we also certify that this is my/our work and that I/we have not plagiarized the work of others and not participated in collusion.

STUDENT SIGNATURES: ________________________________________________ DATE: ____/____/____

________________________________________________ DATE: ____/____/____

________________________________________________ DATE: ____/____/____

Criteria

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Consultancy report

Executive summary: Clearly describes the system, costs, benefits and recommendations in business language that could be understood by the client

0 1 2 3 4 5

Introduction & Background: Clearly describes the scenario and the problem facing the business. The introduction that provides a brief overview to the report describing what each section will cover. The background clearly describes the business, the specific concept (CRM, SCM or eCommerce and the problem.

0 1 2 3 4 5

Specific System: Major section reflecting understanding of concepts resulting from research. Clearly explains understand of the concepts of the specific system. Identifies issues and benefits. Shows understanding of current trends and/or examples of use identified in their research. All clearly communicated.

0 2 4 6 8 10

Recommendations: The recommendations demonstrate understanding of concepts, are carefully consideration and link to the scenario

0 1 2 3 4 5

System Specifications: Clearly identifies specific elements of the recommended system. Identifies data requirements, new procedures and requirements of key business personnel

0 2 4 6 8 10

Overall presentation: Report uses the template, is well written, professionally presented and of an appropriate length. Appropriate references are cited using the Harvard system and the reference list is formatted correctly

0 1 2 3 4 5

Total out of 40

Subtractions

Final mark out of 20

TEAM PEER EVALUATION FORM

The team must meet and assign scores to each team member that reflects how each team member contributed to the completion of the business consultancy report. This is an opportunity to reward the members of your team who worked hardest on the team’s behalf and it is also an opportunity to fairly reflect the effort of team members who did not perform as well or who did not make sufficient effort to participate in team activities. Individual marks will be adjusted based on the team ratings you give each individual. See the excel spreadsheet, How YOUR team’s ratings will affect YOUR marks, available under the assessment details link in Blackboard.

INSTRUCTIONS

1 List the name and ID of each team member.2 Agree to a team rating for each individual to reflect the contributions of each person to the

completion of the project by distributing 100 percentage points among them. If the team had three members and all team members performed equally then all would receive 33 points. If one person receives more than 33 points then one or more others will need to receive less than 33 points.

3 Include a comment justifying the team’s allocation for each person.

NAME of Team Member ID Number SCORE COMMENT

1.

2.

3.

DECLARATION AND SIGNATURES OF EACH TEAM MEMBER

By signing below I am indicating that I agree to the team allocation of scores above and that I understand that the percentage score above will be used to adjust the team mark for the assessment to arrive at my individual mark.

NAME of Team Member ID Number SIGNATURE DATE

1.

2.

3.

VUIS Consulting

CASE STUDY PROJECT REPORT

STANDOUT SHEDS PTY LTD

PROJECT TEAM MEMBERS:

- ALMIRA LAUTAN (3902603)- KONG CHIEN YI (3905579)- VIVI (3902592)

21 MAY 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents...................................................................................................................1

Glossary..................................................................................................................................2

Executive summary...........................................................................................................3 -4

Introduction............................................................................................................................5

Background............................................................................................................................5

eCommerce Systems...........................................................................................................6

The meaning of eCommerce .......................................................................................6

Issues and Benefits......................................................................................................6

Current Trends and Examples in insert specific concept eCommerce.....................7-8

Recommendations.................................................................................................................8

System Specifications......................................................................................................9-10

Conclusion...........................................................................................................................11

BCO 1102 <Project Title> Page 1

GLOSSARY

Term Definition

Misleading or deceptive conduct

An unethical behaviour shows by a company which untruthfully in all the business dealings and the company will be punished by the law.

Technology Burnout

An interesting counter-trend has emerged in the aftermath of the technological revolution in recent times. That of professionals seeking to literally switch off or unplug.

Project Brief <Project Title> Page 2

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The purpose of this report is to advice Standout Sheds on how to overcome their declining

sales which are mostly done from their offices by implementing electronic commerce in their

business. In this report, background of the company, definition of electronic commerce (EC)

and how it works, disadvantages and advantages of EC, the system specifications and how it

would benefits Standout Sheds.

Standout Sheds is a company which provides their customers with prefabricated steel

sheds, garages and also carports. This company is located at Melbourne and they focus a lot

on providing high quality designed goods and sell their products at very competitive prices.

Standout Sheds is interested in implementing this type of service (EC) to their

customers as many people does a lot of shopping at home these days via the internet. They

are losing many businesses as they usually provide their services to their customers from the

offices. An EC site has brochures of the items or services that a company provides and once a

customer has decided what she wants to purchase, all she has to do is to add the items to her

shopping cart. Once payment is made, the seller will then start delivering the chosen items.

EC is capable to provide a company with the easy access to the global market. People

from all over the world can purchase the items they want from a web site which provides

online shopping services. EC helps an organization to save cost as the owner does not have to

pay any rental fees. Besides, online shopping can be done whenever and wherever a person

wants which will then increase the satisfaction of the customers.

Everything has its pros and cons, same goes to EC. EC raises many ethical and legal

issues which then lead to the downgrading of the effectiveness of EC. To mention a few, the

problems that might affect an organization would be, employees resist to change to adapt

themselves to the new technology, customers would have to reveal their personal details, and

also customers would be spammed by newsletters and also various kind of notifications.


To solve the problems that Standout Sheds is currently facing, they are advised to

implement the electronic commerce technology. The company must provide online

purchasing services to their customers to reach out to as many customers as possible as some

might not be able to purchase at respective physical store. Maintenance must be done from

time to time to fix the problems faced and last but not least, Standout Sheds must be aware of

the competitors from the same industry. In order to overcome the problems that might arise

from the implementation of EC, Standout Sheds is advised to upgrade their company from

time to time to catch up with the trend in the market.

Word Counts: 468 words


INTRODUCTION

The internet has became an important way for both business-to-consumer and business-to-

ecommerce. Nowadays, every company are being linked electronically. Companies are

focusing on business-to-consumer aspect of e-commerce to enhance success of doing

business online. E-commerce or online transaction is to make and change the value of the

connection among or between organizations and individuals which electronic

communications and by using digital information processing technology in business (Sarkar,

S 2011). There are five types of E-commerce model; Business to consumer, business to

business, consumer to consumer, peer to peer, M-commerce. E-commerce consists of E-

commerce built the trade-off between needs for providing personal information to complete

an online transaction and the consequence of providing the information. Most e-Commerce

company collect personal information to enhance the marketing strategies and gain

individual’s behavior to meet their needs and wants effectively.

The purpose of this essay is to advice the Standout Sheds Company how to increase

the sales by using electronic commerce.

BACKGROUND

Standout Sheds is an independent business company which was founded in1990s by

two Australian close friends and this business has been operating for over 20 years since then.

It provides prefabricated steel sheds, garages and carports in Melbourne. Their products are

often used for workshops, horses, car storages or any other similar applications. Their

products cannot be purchased at usual large stores like Bunnings and Mitre 10. Standout

Sheds focuses more on providing high quality designed goods and subsequently delivering

their products at competitive prices as selling of sheds, garages and carports is a highly

competitive business.


E-Commerce Systems

THE MEANING OF ECOMMERCE

E-Commerce (EC) is actually a method of doing business transactions via the

cyberspace (Gawady 2005). Companies found that e-commerce offers a big opportunity to

increase their sales and create awareness to the customers. Nowadays, every company has

their own website. The website is aim to reach potential customers. It provides information

about the products, online purchase, and online customer service. It also creates two ways of

communication and customers find it is more efficient and not time consuming. E-commerce

system also builds a continuing relationship between company and customers. Because in the

time of online purchasing, customers are required to fill their information such as name, date

of birth, address, email, credit card number. The system will automatically save the data of

customers and will send any promotions announcement through email.

ISSUES AND BENEFITS

E-commerce raises many ethical and legal issues, questions, and responsibilities. The

company is required to be able to answer all the questions asked by the customers to convince

them that the company’s website is trusted. Some issues that influence the effectiveness of e-

commerce are privacy, misleading conduct, spam, intellectual property rights, consumer

protection, and technology burnout. (Elliot, Rundle-Thiele & Waller 2012). The most

common problems which can be found in every customer hesitation are privacy and customer

protection. Customers may found that it is not safe to give the credit card number while doing

an online transaction. They might be think of hackers who could get their private information

easily and for free. Therefore, in order to cover the problem of privacy, the company has to

mention in the bottom of the website that their website is trusted.

Customers also wish to be protected from the first time their visit a website. A company may

offer some options, such as suggest them to install a firewall, email filters to delete spam,

anti-virus software, personal details protection, and asking for secondary email address when

registering for online service.


The issues not only rise from outside the organisation but also inside the organisation. For

instance, staff may resist changing. It could affect Standout Sheds Company to move another

step forward. The employees may be misunderstanding of what the company wants to change

and they also might be think it would against their individual needs (Kalakota & Whinston

1997).

A company is not suggested to use e-commerce to increase their profit if the company has

unstable economy. The cost of e-commerce cannot be predicted due to the technology has

changed rapidly. The company should monitor the change frequently in order to keep on up

dated.

In other hand, e-commerce brings some benefits that have been recognised by many

companies. Through e-commerce, an organisation is able to access to the entire global

market. They can sell their products to overseas customers via online. It also helps a company

to reduce costs. Having a website means having a new branch that is no need to pay for rental

fees every year.

Customers also get some benefits through e-commerce. It gives customers convenience to

make a purchase from their house. It is open for 24 hours and 7 days a week. Customers can

save their time by online shopping. This strategy can increase the satisfaction of customers.

Standout Sheds Company may give any offers to their online customers. Such as free

delivery fees, point collection, and discount.

CURRENT TRENDS AND EXAMPLES IN INSERT SPECIFIC CONCEPT ECOMMERCE

Standout Sheds Company has to be aware of the new trends of e-commerce. If the

company cannot follow the trend, they might lose their customers. There are some trends

which predicted will be growing in future. There are mobile business, price competitions, and

videos attachments. The features of mobile phones keep updating to the latest technology.

Customers can do an online shopping and make a payment directly with a mobile phone. A

company may create an official application for mobile phone to facilitate their customer to

access their website.


Low price also be one of the future factor that might influence customers to buy a product.

They will search more information about the product before they buy. They also will find the

lowest price which offered by a company. Therefore, Standout Sheds Company should be

creative by giving price to their product. It should be lower than others but keep earn profit.

A video given in a website can encourage customers to buy the product. The video usually

shows how great the product produce by the company and how to use it correctly. Customers

found its helpful to get better understanding about the product. The survey in 2011 showed a

website with a video increase 64% of the sales. Standout Sheds should create a video of their

product, therefore customers more interested to buy than only read the articles about the

products.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Standout Sheds Company is suggested to upgrade their company website in order to follow

the trends in the market. The company should provide an online buying, and online customer

service. So that the customers are able to reach the information anytime. It might cost a little

bit expensive because Standout Sheds needs to hire additional staffs for control the website.

But the cost of upgrading the website can be cover by the increase of quantity demanded.

Online purchase is the best alternative for a customer to buy a product without wasting time.

The company also needs to pay more attention towards their new website in the future. They

have to be aware of website maintenance, and if it happens it should be fixed as soon as

possible.


SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS

E-Commerce (EC) is actually a method of doing business transactions via the

cyberspace (Gawady 2005). An EC site is similar to a mail-order business. An EC site has a

brochure of the items or services provided by that particular company to be evaluated. Once a

buyer has decided what items to purchase, he or she can add the item to the shopping cart.

Once the buyer is done with her shopping, she would need to provide the payment manager

her shipping and billing information. Once the payment is approved by the Visa Net

authorization center, then the seller will start delivering the items the consumers have ordered

(Oregon 2012).

There are various kind of EC models like the Business to Affiliate model (B2A) and

Business to Portal model (B2P) to mention a few. But the two major EC models that are

widely use today are the Business to Consumer (B2C) model and also the Business to

Business (B2B) model (Adeyeye 2008). B2B are the transactions between companies via the

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) whereas B2C is an EC model where the company EC

activities focus on customers rather than on business (Gawady 2005).

Transaction of products, services and information through computer networks.

Transaction or trading of business can be done via two methods. The first method is

electronic mail or in short, E-mail. E-mail can be defined as the interchange of computer-

created and computer-stored messages through a telecommunications system. Online service

users or public networks can also be used to exchange E-mails. E-mail makes it convenient

for the buyers and sellers to communicate and exchange information between each other

(Gunasekaran, Marri, McGaughey & Nebhwani 2002). The second method would be via

electronic data interchange or in short, EDI. It is a computer-to-computer exchange of

business without the involvement of human. It is proven that EDI speeds up the purchasing

process, lessen the transaction cycle times, inflates the inventory turnovers and most

importantly increase the rate of order comebacks from the suppliers and requests from the

customers (Gunasekaran, Marri, McGaughey & Nebhwani 2002).

Both these methods cannot be used if it is not for the help of internet. Internet helps in

spreading of one organization's trading communities. Internet technologies implementations

are trouble-free and it is easy for staffs to catch up with the way it is used. Usage of internet

benefits an organization as it helps to reduce cost and time and make it possible to reach out


to the global market at a very cheap cost (Gunasekaran, Marri, McGaughey & Nebhwani

2002).

A complete set of web server hardware is the key to the success of EC. The total

storage volume and computing power needed by the web server depends on two things which

are the software that is used to run on the server and also the capacity of EC deals that must

be operate. Therefore, a powerful personal computer is required for an EC server (Rob n.d.).

Every EC webpage requires a web server software to provide customers with several

basic services like the security and identification, website development and also web page

construction to mention a few. In order to display items for sale and to provide online

shopping services for the customers, a particular company needs to implement EC software to

provide the five basic elements, namely, catalogue management, product configuration,

shopping cart, EC transaction processing and also the web traffic data analysis (Rob n.d.). In

order to solve the overloading of information that a customer must consider about before

purchasing an item, recommender system is used. A recommender system recommends

products that a customer wants from a site by making full use of the customer's demographic

characteristic and also the purchasing history of the customer. This system allows automation

personalisation on the web which then enables individual personalisation of each customer

(Schafer, Konstan & Riedi 1999).

There are three ways in which the recommender system enhances an EC site. The first

one would be it is capable of helping the customers to find the items that they wish to buy.

Secondly, this system is beneficial as it suggests customers additional items for the customers

to purchase. For example, a customer might see list of suggested additional items to purchase

in the check-out process. The most crucial thing about this system is that it improves

customers' loyalty by creating an enhancement of relationships between the customers and

the sellers. This system is used after a site learns everything that they need to know about

their users and then provide them with what they demanded (Schafer, Konstan & Riedi

1999).

There are many web pages out there which are using this system like for example,

Amazon.com, eBay and also Levi's online store. Amazon.com has many interesting and user-

friendly features like the eyes feature which enable customers to be notified whenever there is

any new items that are added into the catalogue. Another interesting feature that this web

page has would be the book matcher feature where customers can review about the books that

have read. A Levi's online store has its own special feature like the style finder where a


customer to receive recommendations on articles on Levi's clothing (Schafer, Konstan &

Riedi 1999).

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, Standout Shed found an opportunity to boost up their sales and create

awareness to customer by implementing e-commerce to reach the potential customer by offer

product information, online customer. Ecommerce is the cheapest way of doing business

commerce because the transaction through electronic payment is cheaper than conventional

type of counter transaction. And, it also can reduce the transaction cost from the payment of

rental fee that paid. Therefore, in order to increase the sales, Standout must know who is the

potential customer, how to suggest the customer for purchasing items and create the

relationship between customers and buyers.

WORD COUNTS: 2,162 WORDS


Reference List

Adeyeye, M 2008, ‘e-Commerce, Business Methods and Evaluation of Payment Methods in

Nigeria’, Journal Information Systems Evaluation, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 45-50, viewed 28th

April 2012, < http://www.ejise.com/volume11/issue1>.

Collin, S 2000, Work The Web: E-marketing, Wiley, Chichester.

Elliot, Thiele, R, & Waller 2012, Marketing, 2nd edn, Wiley, Australia.

Gunasekaran, A, Marrib, HB, McGaughey, RE & Nebhwani MD 2002, ‘E-commerce and its

impact on operations management’, International journal of production economics, viewed

27th April 2012, pp. 185-197, < http://www1.umassd.edu/charlton/birc/ec_om.pdf>.

IT BusinessEdge 2012, ‘Top 2012 Ecommerce Trend: Retailers Need to Move to Mobile’, IT

BusinessEdge, viewed 09th May 2012, <

http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/trends/article.php/3939771/Top-2012-Ecommerce-

Trend-Retailers-Need-to-Move-to-Mobile.htm>.

Kalakota, R & Whinston, AB 1997, Electronic Commerce: A manager’s Guide, Addition

Wisley Longman, USA.

Kroenke, DM 2008, Experiencing MIS, Pearson Education International, USA.

Misr University for Science and Techonology 2005, ‘The Impact of E-commerce on

Developed and Developing Countries’, Case Study: Egypt and United States, Misr University

for Science and Techonology, viewed 24th April 2012, <

http://www.must.edu.eg/Publications/Businees_Res5.pdf>.

Sarkar, S 2011, E-Commerce and Digital Models for Business; (Managing Information

Technology in A Global Economy), Arise, New Delhi.


http://www.ejise.com/volume11/issue1

University of Houston-Clear Lake n.d., Electronic Commerce, Management Information

System, viewed 28th April 2012, <https://mis.uhcl.edu/rob/Course/MIS/Lectures/Electronic

%20Commerce.pdf>.


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