IT 210: Business System Analysis

IT 210: Transition to e-commerce

Southern New Hampshire University

IT 210: Business Systems Analysis 2

Contents

Problem Statement ………………………………………………………………………. 4

Two Technologies ........................................................................................................... 4

Business Requirements ....................................................................................................... 5

Objectives ....................................................................................................................... 5

Project Description.......................................................................................................... 5

Technology Requirements .............................................................................................. 5

Competitors and Technology .............................................................................................. 6

Technology One – Mobile Computing ........................................................................... 6

Technology Two – Social Computing ............................................................................ 7

Technology Benefit ......................................................................................................... 7

Technology Solutions ......................................................................................................... 8

Technology One .............................................................................................................. 8

Technology Two ……………………………………………………………………….9

Recommendations ............................................................................................................. 10

Technology Solution ..................................................................................................... 10

Overall Benefit .............................................................................................................. 10

Decision Matrix …………………………………………………………………………11

Basic Security Considerations .......................................................................................... 12

IT 210: Business Systems Analysis 3

Security Features ........................................................................................................... 12

Third-Party Vendors ..................................................................................................... 13

Internal Safeguards ....................................................................................................... 14

References ……………………………………………………………………………… 15
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Transition to e-commerce

Problem Statement

Conducting business on a brick-and-mortar level alone puts great limitations on our

growth. In a world guided by technological advances, we need to keep up in order to compete.

Our main goals are to generate growth, as well as become more customer oriented, both of which

can be accomplished with an online presence. Our first step should be to create a website that

allows for mobile computing, which will attract a larger customer base because consumers use

their mobile devices to browse items while on the go, make purchasing decisions, and eventually

purchases. Another technological advance we need to tap into is social computing, that is using

the social networking phenomenon to further our marketing. Utilization of social computing

would help us build awareness, customer loyalty, as well as boost sales.

Two Technologies

The first thing we should concentrate on is building a mobile friendly website for e-

commerce. We want customers to have access to all our items, with pictures, descriptions

(including measurements, sizes, colors available), and prices. Allowing them to leave reviews on

products is a bonus as it creates a cohesive relationship and it will make them feel valued, while

it will also be beneficial to helping customers make product decisions.

Utilizing social computing will allow us to get closer to our customers, as well as

promote our brand. As we evolve and expand, it’s extremely important to market our business.

Social computing is a very cheap and functional marketing tool because so many people utilize

social networks. Today’s consumers depend on those social networks when making decisions

and forming opinions.

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Business Requirements

Objectives

Project Description

As mentioned above, our first step is to create a user-friendly e-commerce website. Since we

already have our products and manufacturers in place, we have what we need to build our

website and we should utilize an e-commerce platform, such as Shopify. While creating the

website we need to make sure it is social computing friendly, as well.

By doing this, we will be able to go from being simply a brick-and-mortar business, and

will be able to generate growth, become more customer oriented. At the end of this, I hope I have

presented valid changes that we can implement, ones that will allow us to not just keep up, but

compete, which is essential for our continued success.

Technology Requirements

We should use Shopify to create our website. They offer affordable software which meets

all our needs. We can choose our domain name, and design our website by utilizing one of their

many templates. From there we can add and manage our inventory, add product descriptions and

images. With Shopify, we can accept card payments, payments through PayPal, as well as

payments from outside the US, in a secure way. This will allow us to sell our products globally,

and reach an even wider customer base. Once an order is made, we are notified by email or SMS,

and data from orders is tracked and can be analyzed. As for shipments, we can choose to either

ship ourselves, or utilize one of Shopify’s partner shipment services and ship products from our

warehouse.
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For security purposes, different employees can have their own unique login to the website

with limited or unlimited access, making sure everyone has access to only the information they

absolutely need to have.

Another great benefit of using Shopify is the fact that we get our own app for an

additional charge, allowing us to further evolve and create an even more user-friendly experience

for the customer. Since so many people live their lives on the go, and make many of their

purchases while on the go, having an app would be a great asset.

Shopify will also allow us to wade into the world of social computing by linking our

stores’ social media accounts to our website. With the ability to generate discount codes with

Shopify, we can share those on our social media, while we also have the ability to email them to

our customers as Shopify tracks their email addresses and shares them with us.

Competitors and Technology

Technology One – Mobile Computing

Bluefly is a company that recognizes the importance of mobile computing. Upon

realizing that while their customers browsed their mobile site, they waited until they could log in

on their computers to make purchases, which was also causing them to lose customers, Bluefly

set out to redesign their entire website. Today, their mobile site is extremely user-friendly, and

almost indiscernible from their full site. This redesign was important for meeting the needs of the

mobile generation. Their mobile app has a ton of notable features as well, and offers everything

that their website does. The changes they have implemented have also allowed them to be less
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dependent on their IT department, and everything is updated over all three platforms

simultaneously (such as if a product runs out of inventory, it is automatically updated).

Technology Two – Social Computing

Zappos is a company that does a fantastic job of utilizing social computing to generate

buzz and build relationships with their customers. They make use of their Twitter account to not

only post information about sales or discounts, but to interact with their customers, as well as

provide customer service. This is something that speaks volumes to their customer. They also

make wonderful use of their Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and Google+ accounts, using social

media to create a real social experience which is something very few companies do, especially

ones of their size.

Technology Benefit

Both above-mentioned companies have benefited greatly from not just utilizing

technology, but growing and adapting to their customer’s needs and wants as technology

advances.

Bluefly was quick to recognize how important it was to implement a user-friendly mobile

experience in order to retain more of their customer traffic, and they were right – they have

experienced remarkable success. By creating a mobile website as well as an app, they gave the

consumer what they needed – the ability to shop with ease while on the go. This is something we

need to be conscientious of, especially since we have almost no online presence. We want to go

into it in a way that would fill the needs of our customers, and would be a smooth transition for

us.

Zappos has always been dedicated to their ecommerce customer base, and have gone

above and beyond to build lasting relationships. The way they utilize social computing is
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something that any company could benefit from. They create a social experience, build

relationships, which is a great “word-of-mouth” tool. It has been my experience that there is no

marketing more profitable than word of mouth, and by utilizing social networks, that marketing

tool has such a wide reach. As we are just building our e-business presence, we need to utilize all

the marketing tools available to us, and creating a social media presence would be extremely

beneficial to us, for marketing as well as for building relationships with our customers.

Technology Solutions

Technology One

Using mobile computing, we can reach a wider range of consumers, anywhere, anytime.

Likewise, the consumer can get the product they need, when they need it, regardless of time or

place. A website or an app gives the consumer the ability to shop whenever they want to, and in

turn we can conduct business 24/7, which will result in revenue and customer base growth. By

using Shopify.com, a Software-as-a-Service application, we have the ability to create a website,

and subsequently an app, that meets almost all our needs: it will allow us to establish an online

presence through which a wide range of customers can make online purchases; it will allow us to

track and manage inventory, make changes and adjustments as needed, as well as allow for order

status tracking. Because Shopify can process card payments, payments through PayPal and other

services, we will be able to handle online payments without worry. Having the ability to link our

store’s social networking accounts to our website, we will be able to foster communication

between the employees and customers. Another way we can foster communication with

customers is by making sure that the website, and the app, allow for customer reviews. Also,

since Shopify tracks customer data, we will have the ability to use it for things like email
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marketing blasts.

Technology Two

Social computing may not meet all our technological needs, but it certainly does a lot for

building our presence, marketing our brand, and creating important, lasting customer

relationships. With Shopify, we can link all our social network accounts to the website, and use

them to interact with customers and guide them to our products. Greater customer traffic will

positively affect revenue and growth. Like Zappo’s, and many other companies, we should make

use of our social networks to engage customers, not just through sales or discounts specific posts,

but asking them for feedback, providing customer service, and simply having conversations with

them. In ”The Social Media Business Equation: Using Online Connections to Grow Your

Bottom Line”, the author, Eve Mayer Orsburn, discusses the importance of using a business’

social media in a way that will attract your customers and keep them interested. (Orsburn, 2012)

According to Orsburn, the CEO of Social Media Delivered, 20% of the social media posts should

be informal, 20% entertaining, 40% interacting, and 20% should concentrate on converting to

business. When a customer visits our social media, they should have a clear picture of what it is

we do, what we offer, how to make purchases from our website. Providing them with all the

information they need will keep them and their business. As for entertaining, it’s important that

we stay on subject, our business and products, while also making sure we post content that will

be appealing to the customer, for instance, funny or witty posts. Because humans are such social

creatures, it is important for us to interact with the customers, to listen, ask questions, respond to

theirs. Interaction will help us build lasting relationships, nurturing customer loyalty. Last, but

not least, we need to use these relationships and work on converting them into business. This can
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be something as simple as posting about new products, or sales and discounts we have. Because

we have invested so much into our customer relationships, which they will appreciate, we will

have a much easier time of attracting them to do business with us.

Recommendations

Technology Solution

As mentioned earlier, our main objective is to go from brick-and-mortar to BAM and e-

commerce, and to become more customer oriented. The first step towards this is to create an

online presence, starting with a website that is mobile friendly, with an app to follow, to meet the

needs and expectations of the mobile generation. Embracing social computing should be our

second step, as it can be extremely important to a business, especially one that is trying to

expand, as we are. Today’s consumers depend on social networks when making decisions and

forming opinions, so it’s important we take advantage of that. And all of this can be

accomplished by using Shopify, a SaaS.

Overall Benefit

A SaaS is “a method of delivering software in which a vendor hosts the applications and

provides them as a service to customers over a network, typically the internet”. (Rainer & Prince,

2015) By using this service, we would save on our transitioning costs, as Shopify charges a

monthly fee, instead of a hefty sum. Maintenance costs are reduced as well, since the provider,

Shopify, owns the environment, and the cost is split among all customers that use that solution.

Transitioning by using a SaaS will allow us to do so in a brief period of time, as little as a couple

of weeks. The service provider, Shopify, is responsible for maintaining the software, upgrading
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the system and maintaining customization through upgrades, which is another cost saving

opportunity for us. Because a SaaS is cloud based, it only requires a browser and internet access

to connect. This makes mobile access, remote working and the sharing of information easy.

Because Shopify allows for landing pages, it would be easy to integrate our social networks into

our website, paving the way for the utilization of social computing. The Shopify app store also

has a ton of extras we could use, during the transition or after, and many of their apps are free.

With their smile.io app we can create branded rewards programs; the Consistent Cart app makes

sure that every page a customer visits on the website shows their cart, and even transfers it across

all their devices, and sends “abandoned cart” emails; the Snappt app makes it easy for our

consumers to shop our Instagram feed by outfitting every photo with a buy button, melding

together mobile and social commerce with the kind of ease a consumer would love;

NowBackInStock sends the customers emails as soon as their favorite items are back in stock.

These are just a few of many reasons why using a SaaS would be most beneficial for us

through this transition: time saving, cost saving, can provide us with all the features we need.

Decision Matrix

Technological Technological Technological Technological Technological Technological Technological Requirement

Requirement 1: Requirement 2: Requirement 3: Requirement 4: Requirement Requirement 7: Manage the current
Integrate online Manage Provide order Facilitate collaboration 5: Manage 6: Provide brick-and-mortar
Possible shopping inventory and status checking internally and customer reporting processes (sales, payments,
Technology shipping and online payment externally (with staff contacts inventory, and customer Overall benefits of this technology to the
processing and customers) contact)
Solutions: company
Through the use of mobile computing, a business can
Wireless, mobile reach its customers anywhere, anytime. Likewise,
computing, and the consumer can get the product they need, when
mobile they need it, regardless of time or place. No
commerce YES YES YES YES YES YES NO geographical limitations. Allows for customization.
Helps build relationships with customers, fostering
loyalty. It can also help promote a brand. Great
word-of-mouth marketing opportunity. Can lead to
greater website traffic, which will in turn positively
affect revenue and growth. Able to conduct market
Social computing YES NO NO YES YES NO NO research with quick results.
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IT210_DecisionMatrix
_MirnaMiljevic.xlsx

Basic Security Considerations

Security Features

Often businesses fall victim to hacking and data breaches, due to insufficient security

measures, leading to sometimes irreparable reputation and financial consequences. Therefore,

online security is vital in helping us both reduce threats to our site and avoid compromising

sensitive data. Making sure to provide security also promotes sales as consumers would naturally

choose to make purchases from a website that they believe is secure.

Acquiring a digital certificate is one way of authenticating a merchant. This lets the

customer knows that the website is the merchant, rather than a third party posing as the store.

Secure Socket Layers, also known as SSL, encrypts data from the customer to the server and

prevents third party interference, and uses digital certificates, along with Public Key

Infrastructure, also known as PKI, to ensure privacy and integrity. Configuring the website with

SSL certificate will also make it compliant with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard,

aka PCI DSS, which is a proprietary information security standard for organizations that process

credit cards.

Another important thing is to limit access to customer information to only those that

absolutely need to have access. Because Shopify allows for every employee to have its own

password to the website, and each login has its own limitations, this will be an easy thing for us

to do.
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Because each of our customers can create their own login to the website, it is imperative

we request that they create strong passwords because password complexity relates directly to

password security. Requesting that the passwords be at least six characters, include numbers and

symbols, as well as upper and lowercase letters will make sure that the consumers create a strong

one.

We should be sure to not collect customer data simply because we can. There is no

reason to hold on to their card information, such as card number, expiration date, CVV numbers.

If we have no information to be stolen, there will be nothing for hackers to steal. The little bit of

information that could be useful to us, such as customer emails which we can use for marketing,

will be tracked and secured by Shopify. While we may be a small company, one who is just

starting to transition into e-commerce, and it may seem like we would not be a target of a cyber-

attack, according to Verizon’s 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report, 71% of the 855 data

breaches it investigated occurred at small businesses.

Third-Party Vendors

As I’ve already proposed, we should use Shopify as our third-party vendor. Shopify

provides a lot of the above-mentioned security measures.

Shopify is certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, which extends to all online stores

powered by Shopify. They meet all six categories of PCI standards: maintain a secure network,

maintain a venerability management program, regularly monitor and test networks, protect

cardholder data, implement strong access control measures, maintain an information security

policy.
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Because they provide hosting for so many businesses, Shopify is very serious about

securely hosting online store partners and has invested time and money to certify their solution is

PCI compliant. They provide annual on-site assessments validating compliance, as well as

continuous risk management, working to ensure that their shopping cart software and ecommerce

hosting is secure.

Internal Safeguards

Securing customer information is of the utmost importance. I’ve already

mentioned some of the things we need to be aware of, that I will touch on again.

Through the use of our third-party vendor, Shopify, we have taken the most

crucial step in securing our customers’ information. Because Shopify does an excellent job of

providing secure hosting, most of the job is done for us.

Shopify allows us to have an encrypted website, which is consistently tested for

viruses and vulnerability. Through employee specific logins to the website we are able to limit

employee access to customer information, making sure access is given only to those who

absolutely need to have it.

Training the employees to understand the importance of protecting the customer

information, and understanding the company’s standards is extremely important. Everyone needs

to understand why, as well as how, to protect our customers. Customers who know their

information is protected will trust us, and trust is imperative for the growth of our business.
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References

Jaekel, B. (2016). Bluefly modernizes digital experience with revamped mobile site and app.

Retrieved from http://www.retaildive.com/ex/mobilecommercedaily/bluefly-modernizes-

digital-experience-with-revamped-mobile-site-and-app

Jao, J. (2014). 7 ways to protect ecommerce customer data. Retrieved from

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/7-Ways-to-Protect-Ecommerce-Customer-Data

Niranjanamurthy, M., Kavyashree, N., Jagannath, S., & Chahar, D. (2013). Analysis of

E-Commerce and M-Commerce: Advantages, limitations and security issues.

International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication

Engineering, 2(6). Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/6378810/Analysis_of_E-

Commerce_and_M-Commerce_Advantages_Limitations_and_Security_issues

Orsburn, E. M. (2012). The social media business equation: Using online connections to grow

your bottom line. Australia: Course PTR.

Raineri, S. (2016). How Zappos uses technology and operations to be wildly successful.

Retrieved from https://www.thebalance.com/zappos-uses-technology-and-operations-to-

be-successful-2533530

Ratcliff, C. (2014). How Zappos uses social media: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Retrieved

from https://econsultancy.com/blog/65526-how-zappos-uses-social-media-twitter-

facebook-and-instagram/

Schiff, J. L. (2013). 15 ways to protect your ecommerce site from hacking and fraud. Retrieved

from http://www.cio.com/article/2384809/e-commerce/15-ways-to-protect-your-

ecommerce-site-from-hacking-and-fraud.html

Shopify meets all 6 categories of PCI standards. (n.d.). Retrieved from

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https://www.shopify.com/pci-compliant

Trade, J. (2015). 10 ways to protect and secure your customer’s information. Retrieved from

https://www.kabbage.com/blog/10-ways-to-protect-and-secure-your-customers-

information/

Turban, E., Strauss, J., & Lai, L. (2016). Social commerce: marketing, technology and

management. Cham: Springer International Publishing.