The paper seeks to present how small business under Brick-and-Mortar will generate new revenue by integrating new technology through e-commerce.
The focus will be on Zippa, a brick-and- mortar business that specializes in selling of shoes, handbags, and general clothing. The firm has been in existence for a while, which makes it to have a competotive advantage in the market. Presently, the company focuses on providing low-priced designer clothing as well as accessories for both men and women. Customers will often feel satisfied when they discover stylish merchandise at an incredible value and price from exclusive national brands. Zippa seeks to venture into new business strategies to generate more revenue because most customers are desirable and straightforward in undertaking e-commerce business. The e-commerce business aims at getting more customers who prefer purchasing goods and services online.
Problem Statement
The purpose of this paper is to explore how the management of Zippa will integrate new technology to generate new revenue through e-commerce. However, the management of the store chain needs to transform and adjust to the functions and operations that will require the integration of new technology. With the introduction of new technology, Zippa will be able to expand its market size by introducing online purchasing mechanism and delivery that will be convenient to most customers across the world. Although the company is ranked among the top in terms of revenue collection, new revenues can be generated with the introduction of e-commerce after the integration of new technology. The stores anticipate dispatching more products to its customers using the online platform. Therefore, Zippa aim is to enhance the customer experience in terms of service delivery, which in turn will generate new revenues.
Technologies
The selected technologies for the business system analysis of Zippa will include big data and knowledge management and social computing. The integration of the two technologies will be play a significant role in ensuring that the firm competes favorably thus generate more revenue. Whereas big data will be concerned with the extraction of values from huge sets of the available data, social computing is mainly focus on the integration of social behaviors and trends by utilizing computerized systems. It is important to note that companies often look for business value thus the need for big data and knowledge management which provides large sets of information such as historical trends that can feed the development of new technological models.
Business Requirements
Objectives
The primary objective of this research is to show how Zippa will generate new revenue through e-commerce by integrating new technology. The paper will also seek to establish suitable technologies that will be useful in integrating with e-commerce to ensure that the stores generate new revenue as anticipated. In essence, the new online markets and wide customer base can be attributed to the fact that Zippa has embraced e-commerce through the online platform. Nonetheless, it is unfortunate that in their previous attempts to create an online platform, advancement in technology has always been an obstacle since they need to be integrated with e-commerce to enhance productivity.
Project description
The project will be aimed at improving an existing online platform by integrating e-commerce and new technologies. As earlier mentioned, the sole purpose of this project will be to generate new revenue through e-commerce by integrating new technology. Since the stores need to build a robust online presence that will eventually result to the generation of new revenues, there will be the need for integration of two technological models that include big data and managing of knowledge and social computation to the already existing system. Once the new technologies are implemented, the business will attract a wide customer base with the desire to purchase more of its products which in turn will generate new revenue thus leading to expansion of the business.
Technological Requirements
Presently, there is an increasing proliferation of data, which puts most companies in the need to manage and analyze data. Across the world, data plays a significant role in the identification of the consumers demands, which forces the organization to depend on versatile, voluminous and sensitive data (George, Haas & Pentland, 2014). Since Zippa requires integration of two technologies which include big data and knowledge management and social computing to achieve its core purpose of using e-commerce to generate new revenue, there will need to identify specific technological requirements (Rozados & Tjahjono, 2014). For instance, in benefiting from the big data and knowledge management, the stores will ensure they have technology stacks which include storage, servers, network computing, and analytics software are updated to the activities. The stores will be required to enlarge their resources to allow accommodation of new items.
On the other hand, adopting social computing technology will require helping users to imagine the possibilities, analyzing the demographics and roles, adoption and creating policies to empower users rather than highlighting the risks. Since every person will be anticipating for the change, it is essential to make every person aware of the expected changes such as the change in labor force skills and adverse ecological impacts. Therefore, the integration of big data management and social computing technologies will help J.C. Penney to have a perfect supply chain that will satisfy all the consumers.
Competitors’ Technology
Across the world, numerous companies compete with Zippa despite being in a different industry. The study will explore two main competitors with regards to the integration of big data and knowledge management and social computing. The two main competitors of Zippa include Macy’s and Kohl’s. Macy is a mid-range departmental chin store that has been able to expand across 45 states of the United States. On the other hand, Kohl is an American departmental retail chain store (Davenport & Dyché, 2013).
Technology One
Big data and knowledge management
Over the past few years, Macy’s has been able to employ the use of big data where they have been able to establish a central online fulfillment center that coordinates data from its customers across its retail stores (Davenport & Dyché, 2013). For instance, the recently adopted merchandise pricing optimization application has shown the efforts the firm has employed in using big data analytics. The application plays a significant role in reducing the time for large-scale analytical calculations.
Technology Two
Social Computing
Kohl’s is a departmental retail chain store in America is faced with a lot of competition from various firms. The firm had laid out strategies that are intended at tapping into the popular social media content and social media computing mechanism to drive the handbag sales. The firm has in recent years embarked in the use of social media influencers to super-head the drive for the sale of their products to increase revenue. In addition, the firm embarked in creating an interactive website linked with different social media accounts to attract more consumers through its wide online platform.
Technology Benefit
From the above examples of competitor's technology, it is quite evident that the two firms have significantly benefited from the incorporating big data and knowledge management and social computing technologies. For instance, Macy's has employed the use of big data which has enabled the firm to reduce the time taken in conducting analytical calculations. This would apply to Zippa which will ensure effective online presence is established and works efficiently to attract more customers who will, in turn, generate more revenue for the firm. For the firm, the implementation of big data and knowledge management technologies ensures that the company formulate appropriate decisions that will attract more customers thus generate more revenues.
Technology Solutions
The use of big data and social computing can meet the technological requirements of Zippa. For instance, the use of big data technologies meets the technological requirements of the firm which includes having technology stocks such as storage, servers, networking capacity, and analysis software. The use of big data presents a massive opportunity to find new efficiencies by incorporating a robust infrastructure for technology stacking. On the other hand, the use of social computing meets the technological requirements of the firm which includes helping users to imagine the possibilities, analyzing the demographics and roles, adoption and creating policies to empower users rather than highlighting the risks. In adopting the two technological solutions, the firm will be able to generate new revenues through e-commerce.
Recommendations
Although the two technological solutions work best for the firm, the use of social computing technologies outweighs the use of big data and knowledge management technologies because the creation of social media accounts that can be integrated with the firm's website will lead to more satisfied customers which in turn will result to increase in revenue generation.
Technology Solution
The integration of the two technologies will only be achieved if Zippa meets all the requirements in order to have an effective impact in e-commerce, which will lead to the generation of new revenues. Upgrading of technologies within a particular firm translates to customer satisfaction which in turn leads to the generation of revenues for the firm.
Overall Benefits
Going online is a dream of almost all business globally. Therefore, integration of technologies within a firm to digitize the sale of products and services will aim at establishing customer satisfaction which in turn will lead to an increase in revenue. Besides creating value for Zippa, it will benefit more from cost reductions, time and in the decision-making process, which will make the firm compete domestically and globally.
Basic Security Considerations
Security challenges will often arise whenever a firm ventures into the use of big data and social computing technologies, which include lack of infrastructural data security (Michael & Miller, 2013). Zippa needs to ensure that secure computation frameworks are put in place to avoid any form of cyber-attacks.
Security Features
The applications used by the firm should be secured with passwords in the use of social computing while block chain technological framework should be used in the management of big data (Terzi, Terzi & Sagiroglu, 2015).
Third-Party Vendors
Regarding the vendors of Zippa, the firm need to make sure that the security and privacy policies are put in place. Moreover, the third-party ventures have to conduct regular security assessment for the integrated technologies.
Internal Safeguards
Management of Zippa in together with the third-party vendors need to make sure that every piece of data used in the form is encrypted, which will ensure the company’s and customer’s data are kept safe from hackers.
References
Davenport, T. H., "Dyché, J. (2013). Big data in big companies. International Institute for Analytics, 3.
George, G., Haas, M. R., " Pentland, A. (2014). Big data and management.
Kohl's taps trendy social media content to drive handbag sales. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.retaildive.com/ex/mobilecommercedaily/kohls-taps-trendy-social-media-content-to-drive-collaboration-sales
Michael, K., " Miller, K. W. (2013). Big data: New opportunities and new challenges [guest editors' introduction]. Computer, 46(6), 22-24.
Rozados, I. V., "Tjahjono, B. (2014, December). Big data analytics in supply chain management: Trends and related research. In 6th International Conference on Operations and Supply Chain Management, Bali.
Terzi, D. S., Terzi, R., "Sagiroglu, S. (2015, December). A survey on security and privacy issues in big data. In Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (ICITST), 2015 10th International Conference for (pp. 202-207). IEEE.
