Introduction
This paper discusses the case of Fresh & Go Ltd in light of the theories and models of E-Commerce. The theoretical framework has been applied to come up with the strategies for the business. It explains that if Fresh & Go adopts e-commerce, it will help in their plans about expanding the business. It also discusses the types of an information system for the company to consider in implementing a successful E-Commerce solution. Moreover, how Fresh & Go will use information system in their plans to expand the business.
E-commerce
What is E-Commerce?
E-commerce is to do business electronically. It means to communicate to the people all around the world without meeting them face to face. It involves deals and conversation among the customers and the business dealers online on different platforms. It involves different paths like emails, inline websites, online videos all of them are a part of e-commerce. It can be said that e-commerce is selling goods online.
Use of E-Commerce in Business
Today in this era e-commerce has become a thing without which business is not possible. To expand the business internationally, it is not possible to open stores and offices everywhere in the world because it will be so much costly. Therefore, the best alternative then is to operate your business using the internet which will communicate about the businesses product and services to the customers all over the world and will make the product famous among everyone. E-commerce has brought the world closer. It has improved the relationships between customers and dealers. As customers can easily inform the producers of the goods and bads of any product and help the dealers to provide good quality to its customers and satisfy them.
Fresh and Go background:
Fresh and Go is a company that was established a few years ago. The company used to sell many of the products in the start but now it only deals in fruits and vegetables. The company also have planned to expand the business by establishing shops in different areas of the world. The company has a large number of employees for different services. The company uses information systems to perform only a few activities. Many people have given the manager idea to make the use of information technology, but the manager found it more costly and do not use those systems.
E-Business
E-Business is the border term of e-commerce. E-business not only includes the buying and selling of the products or services, but it also helps the business to communicate with the customer. With the help of it, Fresh & Go can easily communicate to their customers and provide services to them which help the business to expand their business. With the help of it, Fresh & Go can collaborate to their employees and conduct an electronic transaction within an organization. It will enable digital transaction and processes. It helps the company in generating more profit and targeting a large number of customers and can also provide services in many areas (Gordijn & Akkermans, 2001).
Advantages of e-commerce
Emails:
Emails have become a very important and major part of any business. In these days, there is hardly any employee who do not have his personal email account. Emails are very helpful as companies can send their employees the projects and can get work from the employees even if the employees are not in the offices. E-mails also help the customers to give different suggestions regarding their use of the product.
Example: The use of email in universities of different countries can explain this. If the students are from another country, then they can easily contact through emails and can get information as it is the best formal source of communication. The student can also send its major details to the University for Admission.
Electronic Banking:
It is also an important thing in business these days. Sometimes when the company from where the customer is getting the product is not in that particular area where the customers lived than the best and trusted the source of sending money is through electronic banking. It also prevents from the problems of delay in the receiving of payment by the companies.
Example: If any employee is doing the online job for any company then it will be difficult for both the employee and the company to have a face to face meeting to get the money. Then money can be sent through electronic banking.
Video conference Technique:
This technique can also be used in E –commerce. With the use of this technique the employee and the customer can have met if there is not any possibility of their face to face meeting. This technique can also be used for hiring of employees from other countries.
Example: The multinational companies sometimes use this technique to take the interviews of their employees before hiring them or before setting face to face meeting with them because with that it will get the idea that either employee is suitable for them or not then it sets a face to face meeting with the employees which saves time.
Why should Fresh and Go use E-commerce?
Without the use of E-commerce fresh and Go will not be able to exceed its competitors and will be left far behind in the market which will be dangerous for its success. Some of the factors that give evidence that why Fresh and Go should use E-commerce are following:
Brick & mortar vs. E-Commerce
Brick and mortar describe the physical existence of building or other structure. Fresh & Go is currently as brick & mortar because it possesses physically existing shops, warehouse, and offices. However, it increases the cost of any business. It increase the cost of Fresh & Go in many ways like it has physically existing 30 shops, one warehouse, and office. It records transactions manually which takes a long period (Chaffey, 2007).
Interaction with customers
These days most of the people are too much busy with their routine that it is very difficult for them to visit the shops and purchase necessities. So they prefer online shopping. By using E-commerce Fresh and Go can deal with a large number of customers and can attract the. It can also get reviews about its products by using online system which is difficult to get face to face at the time of sale of the product. It can make an online page and can get the ideas from the customers and can get some customers there. When the needs of customers are satisfied, they will become more loyal.
Global and international markets
It is difficult for any company to go to all the countries of the world and then inform the people about its existence. Also moving physically to any country requires too much understanding of its culture and norms which is not so much important online. So Fresh and Go can attract the customers from different areas of the world by presenting their product in a good way which will increase their profits. (Remenvi, Money & Sherwood-Smith, 2000).
It does not need any cost to travel to those areas and train their staff the languages of that place rather it can deal with them sitting in its country and can sell its product in a very good manner.
E-Commerce Information Systems
An information system is any system which is used to transform the raw data into useful information. It uses different sources like people, inputs, and outputs and provides meaningful information. Fresh and Go can make its performance better by using information systems. The information system that needs to be used is such that they provide output in the form of proper information to Fresh and Go, which can be used further for decision making. (Bakos, 2001)
Information System in Business
Information Systems are of great importance in the business world. These days business is not possible without them. The companies which are dealing at very large scale cannot maintain everything by the labor force. Technology is necessary for this purpose. So information system will then reduce the workload.
Use of Information System by Fresh and Go
The information systems can be useful for any business in following ways:
Transaction support System:
Transaction support system helps the organizations to deals with different transactions methods and to enter payrolls and paychecks. This system can be used by Fresh and Go to make all the records of the transactions that take place within the organization. This system is also used to maintain the record of account balances of the company (McLeod & Schell, 2001).
Example
The use of transaction support system by multinational companies can explain this system. By using this system, the organizations do not need employees to keep the record of salaries of workers rather this work will be done by transaction support system.
Management Information system
This information system is used by the companies to get the information about the sales, inventory sold and the inventory left of any organization. This system helps to get the detail about the management process of any company. This system helps to get information by showing the data in the form of graphs and different charts. (Gordon & Loeb, 2002).
Fresh and Go can use this system as it will save the time of counting the inventory after sales rather the information can be obtained immediately by adding data and then can get the complete report of the performance of the company.(Laudon & Laudon, 2004).
Example:
For example, big organizations and factories who deal in a variety of products use this system. They then don’t have to keep registers for the entry of their stock. Management support system will do this.
Human Resource Information system
This information system is used to keep the record of the skills and the performance of employees within the organization. It also discusses different plans for the betterment of employees and different benefits for them. If Fresh and Go uses this information system, then it will help it to improve the performance of its employees and get better results because of training them.
Example
This methods implications in schools can explain it. The senior’s employees now don’t have to circulate within the organization to keep a record of how each employee is performing. This system will do all this work and assess the employees.
Decision support system
It will help Fresh & Go in organizing a collection of people, software, databases, and devices used to support problem-solving and decision making which will help Fresh & Go in handle handling a large amount of data from different resources. It will help that what is to be done and how to increase the progress of the company It will support drill down analysis (Gefen, 2000).
Example
This method is used in organizations. For the organizations who use this, there is no need of meetings every week to discuss the decisions. This system will do more of the work these days. It will decide the plans and then will convey them o the employees thus saving time.
How use of IS will benefit Fresh and Go
When Fresh and Go use the information system, it will bring many positive changes in the company. It can then make its daily transaction record by using those systems instead of making them by hand. It can also then reduce the number of employees which are not giving too much output and save the cost because more of the work will be then done by the information systems which perform different tasks for different departments.
Recommendations
The benefits that have been discussed above of the E-commerce suggest that:
Fresh and Go should increase the use of E-commerce as it will cut down cost.
Fresh and Go should establish different information systems within its company for better performance.
Fresh and Go should train its employees to use the E-commerce so it will increase the working skills of employees.
It should establish an online page or create an application for mobiles by the use of which it can increase its online sale.
It should make its product’s reputation good online so that more customers should be attracted.
It should also perform its day to day activities using E-commerce.
CONCLUSION
Fresh & go should adopt e-commerce to cut down its cost in many ways like it do not need physically existing buildings and labor to look after shops &warehouse. It will help to expand business on a wider scale. E-commerce will help Fresh & GO Ltd in lowering down their cost which will lead to higher profits. The company should consider information system which helps the company in improving their services and doing business with excellence. It will help in making better decisions to expand the business efficiently.
References
Bakos, Y., 2001. The emerging landscape for retail e-commerce. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 15(1), pp.69-80.
Bhatt, G.D., Grover, V. and GROVER, V., 2005. Types of information technology capabilities and their role in competitive advantage: An empirical study. Journal of management information systems, 22(2), pp.253-277.
Chaffey, D., 2007. E-business and E-commerce Management: Strategy, Implementation, and Practice. Pearson Education.
Delone, W.H. and Mclean, E.R., 2004. Measuring e-commerce success: Applying the DeLone & McLean information systems success model.International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 9(1), pp.31-47.
Gefen, D., 2000. E-commerce: the role of familiarity and trust. Omega, 28(6), pp.725-737.
Gordijn, J., and Akkermans, H., 2001. Designing and evaluating e-business models. IEEE Intelligent Systems, (4), pp.11-17.
Gordon, L.A., and Loeb, M.P., 2002. The economics of information security investment. ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC), 5(4), pp.438-457.
Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2004. Management information systems: managing the digital firm. New Jersey, 8.
Mahadevan, B., 2000. Business models for Internet-based e-commerce: An anatomy. California management review, 42(4), pp.55-69.
McLeod, R. and Schell, G., 2001. Management Information Systems 8/e.Chapter-17" Marketing Information System" published in.
Ngai, E.W. and Wat, F.K.T., 2002. A literature review and classification of electronic commerce research. Information & Management, 39(5), pp.415-429.
Norris, G., Balls, J.D. and Hartley, K.M., 2000. E-business and ERP: Transforming the Enterprise. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Remenyi, D., Money, A.H. and Sherwood-Smith, M., 2000. The effective measurement and management of IT costs and benefits. Elsevier.
Steinfield, C., Adelaar, T. and Lai, Y.J., 2002, January. Integrating brick and mortar locations with e-commerce: Understanding synergy opportunities. In System Sciences, 2002. HICSS. Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 2920-2929). IEEE.
Turban, E., King, D. and Wang, J., 2003. Introduction to e-commerce (p. 537). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
