Information Technology And Applications

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Electronic commerce is a type of business model or segment of a larger business model that enables an individual or firm to conduct business over an electronic network, typically the internet. It includes activities such as procurement, order entry, payment, transaction processing and non-repudiation, inventory control and customer support. This type of business conducted via the use of computers, telephones, fax machines, automated teller machines (ATM) or other electric appliances without the exchange of paper-based documents. There are several suitable application software, operating system and devices that needed for e-commerce shown in the report.

Online Bag Sdn Bhd (oBag) is a Malaysian business company which manufacturing and distribution of numerous kinds of bags through electronic commerce. There are various kinds of bags such as cellular phone pouches, camera bags, tablet cases, laptop bags which they sell through their website known as oBag Online Shopping Store.

In this report, there are some important things have to consider in implementation of oBag business. Among the important matters in this report are;

First of all, there are two main type of data discussed in this report. These data are data related to the customers and the existing stock. They can be required through the oBag’s business. These data are important to the oBag’s business which discuss as below (2.0 TYPES OF DATA & ITS IMPORTANCE TOWARDS OBAG’S BUSINESS). Secondly, there are two suitable applications software to support oBag’s business. These applications software are Yahoo Merchant and Microsoft Excel. Yahoo Merchant is ecommerce software which can support the oBag’s business. Microsoft Excel is spreadsheet application to organize, format and calculate data with formulas using spreadsheet system broken up by rows and columns. There are further information had discussed as below (3.0 APPLICATION SOFTWARE NEEDED TO SUPPORT OBAG’S BUSINESS) related to Yahoo Merchant and Microsoft Excel. Lastly, hard disk drive is the data storage device used for storing and retrieving digital data. It is able to support oBag’s daily operation. For more information related to hard disk drive are shown as below (4.0 DEVICE FOR SUPPORT OBAG’S DAILY OPERATION AND TYPE OF OPERATING SYSTEM FOR THE DEVICE).

2.0 TYPES OF DATA & ITS IMPORTANCE TOWARDS OBAG’S BUSINESS

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2.1 Data related to Customers

One of the most important data that can be required via oBag’s business is data related to customer. First and foremost, customer data can be obtained after register an account in the oBag website. Customers have to update their profile before order an item. The customer data include the basic information like name, contact number, age, date of birth, gender, email address and others which is related. Some of the data can be required if oBag run a survey. oBag may obtain a fair amount of data by inquiring details about customer profile, spending habits and their preferences as well. As such, oBag may obtain a clearer image of its overall target customer anyway.

This data is important to oBag as with this information can bring convenience to accomplish the business. For instance, customer name and contact detail are important to build a good relationship between customer and oBag, especially in the competitive commercial world on nowadays. It allows oBag to make communications personalized with customer to update the news about the products and others related information. Clients also can ask for enquiry about the products. Hence, clients can get the most recent news and make a consideration and planning. Furthermore, it would build up an even professional image for the company to build up client’s confidence through the communication service. Besides that, integrity of company is now playing an important role to a business. oBag can inform the customer via contact no. or e-mail if the order is running late or other problem. This is to preserve the company’s image and reputation among the clients and industry. Next, customer profile (age, gender, hobbies, income, etc) is useful for oBag planning an effectiveness marketing strategy. For knowing their age and income may help in pricing strategy because different types of customers have different spending habits. The more detail of oBag customer gathered, the more research and development (R&D) can be done by oBag to develop their service and products to fulfill the customer needs. Furthermore, spending habits of customer such as considered buy, impulse purchases, comparing the prices from others website and others are important to oBag business as well. For comparing prices from others website of customers, oBag can conduct some sales promotion such as percentage discount or buy 3 get free 1 promotion to attract more customer. In addition, oBag also can determine the preferences of customer which products they are most inclined to purchase. Therefore, oBag should know the customers phone model as well. This data can determine what the popular phones between the customers are. As such, oBag can develop more kinds of cases or pouches for those popular phones. It gives customer more choices for purchase the product and it may attract more customers to view the website.

2.2 Data related to existing stock

Data related to existing stock plays a crucial role in oBag’s business as well. There are a lot of data can be obtained through the oBag website. This is because oBag is a large scale of company which manufacturing of many kinds of bags such as laptop bags, tablet bags, backpacks, mobile phone cases, tablet cases and camera bags. All of the products are selling through oBag website. There are many data related to existing stock they have to record during daily operation. Those data are include the stock code, category of stock, stock level, cost price, materials made of, quality, colour, size (cm), weight (gram), shipping rates, and so on. It may cause inconvenience in operating to oBag if without the data record. This is because all of the data and information are important for oBag to operate effectively.

Figure 2.1: Data of different types of products filled with stock which stored in oBag’s warehouse. Firstly, all products are classified into different category, filled with stock code and stored in oBag warehouse. For example,

Cases and pouches bag for Apple I-phone (IP400001- 50000)

Cases and pouches bag for Nokia phones (NK10000 – NK20000)

Cases and pouches bag for Samsung phones (SS30001 – SS40000)

Cases and pouches bag for Sony phones (SN20001 – SN30000)

The figure above shows the part of data of the oBag’s products. Categories of stock and stock codes are very important to oBag business due to the convenience for oBag employees. This is because it may save their time for searching a specific product if the products are recorded systematically. As such, it may also improve the working efficiency and quality; improve personal and department’s performance. Moreover, company may lower the expend of the management indirectly if those aspect’s performance had improved. Besides that, it may increase the fame and image of oBag into a high level in industry, and attract more customers due to the excellent customer service. In other hand, products which arrange systematically with stock code can save the occupy space for each specific product. This may avoid company budget wasted in building more stores. Next, oBag can be easier in managing the storage by checking the stock code and maintaining the stock amount for the entire customers purchase. Furthermore, cost price for each stock must be recorded by oBag so that the profit can be maintained even though the promotion does exist. Besides that, the rest of data include materials made of, quality, colour, size (cm), weight (gram), shipping rates and other information can be improve the knowledge of customer which is related to the product.

In short, oBag can improve the customer’s satisfaction, keep the regular customer, and attract more new customer to fulfill the business goal if the clear information of the stock is provided.

APPLICATION SOFTWARE NEEDED TO SUPPORT OBAG’S BUSINESS

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3.1 Yahoo Merchant

Yahoo Merchant is famous application software used for conduct an e-commerce business. It brings more convenience to oBag and the customers. Why say so? This is because it has numerous functions to support the oBag business. Firstly, it has the website builder function for oBag to create a unique website such as oBag Online Shopping Store. It contains a lot of website design templates to make the appearance of oBag website better. It has the instruments that allow oBag to design its own website comprising style, colour, layout, fonts and images. Customer will be successfully attracted if the website is designed more attractive and different to others. In addition, Yahoo merchant allows oBag to sell up to 50 thousands of its products and create unlimited categories for its store. Hence, customers have various purchasing options for a specific product. With bulk upload of products feature, it allows oBag to upload all the products at once, instead of one at a time so that oBag do not need to upload few thousands of products for a long time. Furthermore, this software also provides the feature of sending an email automatically to the customer for confirming their order. Therefore, oBag do not need send the order list to customers one by one. Customers can track their shipments in real time through the website as well. Without a doubt, this feature may save the time and human resource of oBag in such of complex procedures to avoid resources wasted.

Besides that, this software has provides several payment options. The shopping cart offers its own credit card processing and is compatible with other processing programs, so that the customers can pay with credit card via online. Yahoo Merchant also provides the automatic tax and shipping calculation. It allows the oBag to figure shipping and sales taxes automatically. This service also allows the oBag and customer have many options when choosing shipping type such as international shipping, free shipping, overnight shipping and selection of shipping company. Customers allow making a payment via PayPal and it allows oBag to accept credit card payments without an account. In other hand, customers can pay with funds from a bank account or other sources. With the feature, it offers in-house credit card processing so that oBag can accept the payment through online. In fact, it has facilitated the overall operating system of oBag especially in banking and finance. Lastly, customer can select several products and view it side by side to provide a quicker purchasing experience with product comparisons.

3.2 MICROSOFT EXCEL

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Figure 3.2: Logo Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is spreadsheet application manufactured and developed by Microsolft Corporation that allows users to organize, format and calculate data with formulas using spreadsheet system broken up by rows and columns. Microsoft Excel come bundled with Microsoft Office and is compatible with other applications offered in the suite of products. It allows oBag to entry of numeric data in rows and columns to facilitate its analysis and manipulation with mathematical formulas and presentation as graphs and charts. Microsoft Excel is a popular software that oBag can utilise to create lists, manage budgets, analyse sales data, create customer records and others.

Next, Microsoft Excel is needed to track the sales trends of oBag throughout the months and years. It helps oBag notice the change in sales, so the business able to overcome the problem. oBag can utilise it to create the graphs of quarterly sales for business associates. There is a sales application to record the daily sales in Excel workbook. The daily sales of oBag will be summed up automatically and added to another spreadsheet within the workbook that totals sales for the month and the monthly sales will be added up for yearly sales as well. Furthermore, Microsoft Excel is needed to keeps the employees information such as biodata, pay scale, sales record and others. When saving private data, it is important to encrypt the document of employee’s information to secure from identity theft. In other hand, it can be used to keep track of staffs that work on commission and show their monthly sales.

Besides that, Microsoft Excel 2008’s Elements Gallery makes the program easy to use for business like oBag. The Reporting feature allows oBag to create a new page in the workbook for the reports. oBag can begin the report by completing the date, record number, transaction notes, price amount of products and total profit. In addition, Invoice is important to oBag business. It is a non-negotiable commercial instrument issued by a seller to a buyer. It identifies both the trading parties and lists, describes, and quantifies the items sold, shows the date of shipment and mode of transport, prices and discounts (if any), and delivery and payment terms. Microsoft Excel offers a worksheet for invoicing. oBag can mark the priority of the product by clicking the arrow below the column title and selecting the appropriate option. After that, oBag needs to enter the transaction date, record number for transaction, customer and category. Next, oBag can utilise Microsoft Excel to store data. oBag can create schedules that keep track of staff hours automatically, as well as inventory lists for easy access. It can be used to keep track of customer data for mailing. Microsoft Excel has built-in mechanisms that can reduce errors in data entry to ensure list accuracy. Lastly, Microsoft Excel provides calendar which allow oBag to create quick and easy customizable 1 year calendar for special events, staff meeting and important dates.

DEVICE FOR SUPPORT OBAG’S DAILY OPERATION AND TYPE OF OPERATING SYSTEM FOR THE DEVICE

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Hard disk drive is the data storage device used for storing and retrieving digital data using rotating discs (platters) coated with magnetic material. It has become the standard configuration of the computer due to its small size, large capacity, fast and easy to use.

Due to the nature of business in oBag, oBag may require a large amount of data during the daily operation. They need a storage device to backup all of the data related to customer and existing stock. The employee of oBag can utilise hard disk drive to backup the data and keep it safely. Hard disk drive is a good data storage device because it has the protection of data loss. Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T) is a monitoring system for hard disk drive to discover and report on several indicators of reliability, in the hope of expecting failures. When a failure is expected by S.M.A.R.T, the oBag may replace the drive to prevent unexpected data loss and outage. Next, Drive Fitness Test (DFT) is the hard disk data protection technology by IBM. It allows oBag to detect the operational status of the hard disk quickly and easily.

Besides that, data backup is important to an ecommerce company like oBag. This is because even if the staff had deleted the data or information, there are still have the backup data so that oBag do not need to waste their time to get all of the data again. Or corporate website failure occurs, the original data is lost or damaged, the backup data can restore the original data and enabling the oBag’s business to continue operates normally.

Due to the large amount of oBag data, hard disk drive has the large storage capacity to keep it. It stores and retrieves data much faster than a floppy disk or CD-ROM so that oBag do not need to take a long time for storing the data. Next, data will not lose if there are no electric supply or switch off the computer. In addition, it is cheap on a cost per megabyte compared to other storage media and it can be replaced and upgraded if necessary so that oBag able to save the cost for purchase another storage device with high price.

Lastly, an operating system is a program designed to run other programs in a computer. It is considered as the backbone of a computer, managing software and hardware resources. Hard disk drive is suitable with single user, multi application operation system. Single user operating system can be split into two types as follow:

Single user, single application operating system

Single user, multi application operating system

Single user, multi application operating system is designed mainly with a single user in mind, but can deal with many applications running at the same time. For example, oBag is able to store and retrieve data simultaneously. Hard disk drive is an internal storage device in a computer. However, it is unable to run with other operating system such as multi user or multi processor operating system because it is only for the specific computer. Fortunately, it is also brings several advantages to oBag business. Firstly, there is only a staff to store and retrieve the oBag data and oBag is able to lock the document. Thus, there is no one can go on to steal the data. Besides that, oBag may save time to find out whose fault if there is only a staff in charge to store the data. oBag will never know whose fault if there is a multi-user for storing data. Lastly, the possibility of damaging the system will be low if the hard disk is run with single user operating system.

CONCLUSION

oBag will receive and manage a lot of data during the daily operation especially data related to customer and existing stock. These data are important to oBag’s ecommerce business. Next, Yahoo Merchant and Microsoft Excel are the application software needed to support oBag’s business. It brings a lot of conveniences for conducting its business. Lastly, hard disk drive is important to support oBag’s daily operation as well. It provides a large storage capacity for storing data. It is better than using a floppy disk or CD-ROM. In other hand, it is suitable for run with single user operating system. In this case, there is only a staff to store and retrieve the oBag data and oBag is able to lock the document. Thus, there is no one can go on to steal the data.