IT assignment homework report help: Report writing on e-commerce in brick and click organizations 

1. Executive Summary:

The main purpose of this report is to investigate or evaluate the use of e-commerce in ‘brick and click’ organizations that integrates both online and offline presences. These organizations are referred as the incorporation of web-based information technology (clicks) with real estate infrastructure (bricks). In this particular report, Marks & Spencer has been chosen as a brick and click organization to estimate the use of the technologies involved in e-commerce. To organize the entire report, it has been continued in many parts including the background of Marks & Spencer. Firstly, an ordinary idea about e-commerce has been provided to understand its definition. Then, report describes the technologies involved and linked with e-commerce. Further part of this report highlights the use of e-commerce in Marks & Spencer organization. Subsequently, the impact of e-business in the enterprise also has been evaluated and justified through academic literature, researches and analysis. Moving down to the discussion, development and degree of expansion of e-commerce in Marks & Spencer business has been witnessed and assessed. Finally, insights for implications of security in using e-commerce in business have been provided in the next section of the report. At the end of the report, a conclusion has been drawn to review the entire discussion and details provided.

1. Introduction:

One of the most important growths industries in current times has been the escalating use of ecommerce. It has transformed many marketplaces and unlocked various prospects never before anticipated. Industries that are not discovering the use of e-commerce are in risk of finding themselves being overtaken by those who are making the most of this technology. One of the industries utilizing e-commerce is Marks & Spencer, which is a leading retail industry. It sells elegant, high quality, high value outfits and other home products, as well as exceptional quality food and reliably sourced from around 2000 suppliers globally. It continues to sell its products both online and offline. It has over 703 stores across the UK and also has the retail arks and the stations as well (Marks & Spencer plc, 2012).

Marks & Spencer sells its new products through its own launched websites for different marketplaces. It uses the online discount stores for its products, wherein it usually deals with the customers on site and offers them the discount on the products. The company makes the best use of e-commerce technologies such as internet and other computer networks.

This report starts by identifying the use of e-commerce in Marks & Spencer business such as what sort of technologies it uses for selling the products online. However, the technology used can be approached in many ways but the main point is to make their use effective and efficient in order to attain the target. Therefore, the impact of e-commerce’s use in Marks & Spencer’s business has been taken as a part of the discussion in this report. The impact can be assessed in terms of gaining the profit by exploring e-commerce or can be in negative terms as well. So, the implications have been made for the security in using e-commerce technologies.

Coming part of this report will define e-commerce precisely so that a general idea can be set out to notice and evaluate its use in the business.

1. E-Commerce:

The internet has formed a new economic network that is e-commerce marketplace and it has become the implicit avenue of the world. E-commerce utilizes the internet to construct and develop the relationships with customers, partners and other industries or businesses. This involves processing orders by electronic means, managing customer service and assisting with business partners. Nowadays, mostly businesses are carried out over the internet, most frequently via the World Wide Web.

E-commerce can be applied to acquisitions made through the web sites or to business-to-business commotions such as stock transfers. A buyer can order products from any dealer’s web site, paying with a credit card or with a formerly established cyber cash account. The transaction information is passed on by a mean to a financial association for payment authorization and to the vendor for order completion. E-commerce is seen best into practices because through this personal and account related information is kept private through the use of protected. Moreover, it is concerned as the sales aspect of e-business. It includes group buying, instant messaging, online shopping, order tracking, online banking and electronic ticketing as well. This style of buying and selling electronically is globally accepted majorly as the web sites address the customer security and privacy concerns (Ifinedo, 2012).

It is also necessary to know about the technologies involve in e-commerce because they become the source of getting the business in hand and attract the customers. Here, forth coming portion of the report will discuss the global technologies concerned to be linked with e-commerce.

1. Technologies involved in E-commerce:

E-Commerce can be performed by the means of internet, intranets, extranets or a grouping of these. It becomes essential to identify the technologies needed to operate and networking required for an e-commerce method to be put into practice. Following technologies can be recognized linked with e-commerce (Laudon &Travor, 2009):

• Hardware & Software
• Web servers & browsers
• Server software
• Web authoring tools
• Database/file system
• TCP/IP addresses
• Ports and modus operandi/protocols
• Several registration of domains
• Programming requirements
• Platform compatibility

Along with these technologies, internet, intranet and extranet are the core part of business through e-commerce. From gathering news, information, knowledge and online shopping is one of the promising activities of the internet world.  Internet helps in connecting online shopper with various vendors or wholesale merchants and makes it very easy task. Moreover, a key requirement in a business framework is the competency to communicate effectively with the customers and provide the right and accurate information. In this context, intranet comes forward as a private-internal-business network that enables an enterprise to share the items related information to the customers. Whereas, it is also required to communicate and collaborated with preferred third-parties, partners, suppliers and customers associated with e-commerce business. Thus, extranet plays a vital role in this framework in improving business relationships and developing supply chain management.

It is not only enough to identify these technologies, but this also has to be assessed that which of these will be the most preferred technology used in e-commerce and why. Frankly, it is not just the first choice of the technology which is counted but scalability and sustainability of the platforms also matters. The companies using e-commerce in their business should focus principally on organization software like ERP, SFA, CRM and ORM as mechanization of the business. Similarly, precision in the transactions also becomes an important aspect of the business (Laudon &Travor, 2009).

Once, the technologies are identified, the organizations that are regarded as ‘bricks and clicks’ implement these to operate the system of e-commerce. Afterwards, to see the use of these technologies in business, Marks & Spencer’s e-commerce practices have been highlighted and evaluated in the next section of the report.

1. Use of E-Commerce in Mark & Spencer:

The fundamental role of e-commerce in Marks & Spencer can be witnessed on the basis of their corporate profile. It offers all of its customers a flawless and high class shopping experience which they would not get anywhere else. Marks & Spencer provides the schemes and various offers to the customers through various sites that it has created for e-business purpose. It basically uses commercial and analytical judgment to make the schemes and the items attractive to the customers (Marks & Spencer plc, 2012).

Furthermore, the report of Marks & Spencer reveals that it enters e-commerce with the new online version of M&S outlet. Supplementary to this, it opened up an online discount store, oulet.marksandspencer.com, to offer its products. Through this site, customers can get discount up to 40% on menswear, women’s wear and children’s wear. This site is not a part of M&S website, but is operated by Amazon. It was clearly stated that customers can use this site to avail the offers but cannot return the items purchased to M&S outlet and stores located on high street (Retail Angle, 2012).

More use of e-commerce can be seen by M&S as per the press release of demand ware. It states that Marks & Spencer uses demand ware for international websites, which is a leader in on-demand commerce. Further, it dictates that M&S uses Demand ware commerce platform to strengthen its new launched international websites including Ireland website www.marksandspencer.ie, which is followed by its first launched website www.marksandspencer.fr to serve the customers all across France since October 2011 (Mass, 2012).

Moreover, new media knowledge revealed the specific use of e-commerce by M&S. It stated in its study that M&S automated their operations and inventory practices, so that third party sites can be delivered the accurate and rich product information for which M&S turned to online channel marketing specialists named FusePump. It extorts the data from the front end of M&S site to make an exact data feed which includes the entire online stock (Lee, 2008).

Therefore, on the basis of above discussion, the vast use of e-commerce can be noticed in the business of Marks & Spencer. After evaluating the use of e-commerce in their business, impact can also be assessed in terms of business profit and expansion.

1. Impact of e-commerce:

The practice of e-commerce in M&S’s business has witnessed impressive results. Despite facing difficult trading conditions, it represented 4.2 percent sales increment in 2010-2011. Additionally, throughout the first six months of working with Fuse pump, M&S noticed the significant increment in return on investment by 150 percent for some categories within the paid hunt increase by 32 percent (Lee, 2008).

In addition to the impact of e-commerce on M&S’s business, it was pointed out that Marks & Spencer achieved four titles in the e-commerce awards for excellence in 2010. It was named as the best multichannel trader of the year among all (Chloe, 2010).

At the first quarter of 2012, supermarket chain Marks & Spencer reported strong increment in its sales from the online stores. It presented the customer’s option to buy anything online for their own convenience an also an opportunity to find the products at discounted price. After noticing the online sales growth, Marks & Spencer offered online vouchers to develop the purchasing power of the customers (McGrath, 2012).

Going forward, if positive impact of e-commerce is observed by the enterprise, it promotes them to develop the strategies for e-commerce.

Therefore, development of e-commerce strategies has been discussed in further part of the report.

1. Development of e-commerce:

“Being truly multi-channel means making it possible for customers to shop ‘M&S’ in their way. This has been stated by Laura Wade-Grey, the executive director of multi-channel E-commerce. By making this statement, they have been running their marketing and other pay-per-click (PPC) programs for long time which has become an important part of their online acquisition mix.

Marks & Spencer has been developing its business by using e-commerce largely.

Annual report of M&S reveals that, they installed Wi-Fi in ten stores in 2012, so that the consumers could more easily approach the correct product information via QR codes on store décor. Additionally, it created style online by using multimedia technology to develop the reach of their sub-brands of clothing into smaller stores. It made the customers capable to purchase the items through order points.

Furthermore, e-commerce makes a business more accessible and helps in its expansion throughout the world but some implications are also made for its use in terms of ethical, moral and legal security.

Therefore, some of the inferences for secure use of e-commerce have been discussed in the forthcoming part of the report.

1. Implication of security for using E-Commerce:

At the time of using e-commerce, it is necessary to remember that there are some ethical and moral issues to be concerned. Talking about ethical implication, it should be kept into consideration that nothing is sold fake or poor quality product online. It doesn’t matter that which route you chose for online buying and selling but the security is recommended generally. That can be in terms of policies and procedures, perimeter security, virtual private networks and authorization for both data and applications (Paul, 2000).

Not only ethical and moral implications are the general requirement for security in e-commerce’s use, but legal implications are also taken into care. Although, e-commerce has shown a big effect on the global business that usually takes place on internet through sites and portals, on the other hand government also has an effect on the e-commerce by regulating it accordingly. In this context, legal implications have been set in following terms: (Debbie, 2001).

• Privacy and security
• Copyright and trademark
• Online terms & conditions, policies and laws

These implications propose to ensure proper online contracts, record retention obligations, original documentation in terms of TAX and VA, import/export rules and regulations, exchange control regulations and foreign data protection law.

1. Conclusion:

An insight can be provided on the basis of overall discussion of this report. The report mainly emphasized on the use of e-commerce in a brick and click organization. For that, Marks & Spencer has been taken to exemplify the utilization of e-commerce through its linked technologies. E-commerce is the online buying and selling of the products or items in general words. It takes place in a business with the help of internet, intranet, extranet and many other technologies. Afterwards, report highlighted the use of e-commerce in M&S through online marketing using Fuse pump and pay-per-click (PPC) strategies. It detailed the use of e-commerce via online outlets, style online stores and other online websites. Moreover, it proposed discount offers on menswear, women’s wear and kid’s wear through online sites.

Accordingly, report also discussed about the impact of e-commerce on the business and described the increment in return on investment and other benefits. Marks & Spencer shown 4.2 percent growth even after trade related difficulties going on in the market. It depicted that e-commerce has expanding their business on an average basis. In contrast, M&S was named as the multichannel retailer of year 2010 and was awarded by e-commerce award for excellence. Furthermore, report discusses about ethical, moral and legal implications for security in use of e-commerce. Ethical and moral inferences suggest the business to produce right quality products and to offer them genuinely. Legal implications make the marketers abide to follow the regulations set to use e-commerce in business.

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