E-commerce

The purpose of this paper is to explain 2 promotional strategies for Grandmas Treats. Further this paper also explains the CAM-SPAM Act and the legality and illegality of the law.

Among the various promotional strategies, available for implementation for Grandmas Treats, affiliate programs would be the most effective type of advertising. In affiliate programs the company affiliating with another has the chance to gain advantage and profit from the success of the company it has affiliated with. Mostly those companies who apply to be affiliates are aware of the affiliate company because they are already interested in the products they offer. Therefore affiliate programs by its nature cause the selection of areas of advertising that pertain to the product or service that the company offers.

Affiliate programs can be defines as programs which enable affiliates to increase their customer base and traffic and help the affiliates with increased sales (Site Nexus). Affiliate programs are based mostly on the basis of commission. Every time a new contract is secured or a sale is made by the affiliate, the affiliate is given commission (Harris).  This means that, no amount of payment is fixed. The payment will depend upon performance. As a result this meets the needs of the companies, i.e. cost effectiveness.

Every program selected must be effective if it is to succeed. The effectiveness of the affiliate program depends on amount of traffic that the affiliates receive on their web sites. However, just having traffic is not enough. The advertisement must be appealing enough, that the traffic coming on the website click on the link of the advertisement.

It is not as if affiliates can be found over night. In fact the company, who want affiliates, must first advertise about their intention to start an affiliate program on their website. This will attract companies who are interested and finally a strong affiliate program can start and go from strength to strength.

Like, everything cannot be successful similarly the least effective method of advertising would be via email. The first reason is basically a social reason. In todays world direct email advertising is considered as spam email. Spam emails take up space in the email inbox of the users and are a source of annoyance for the user, because they have not asked to be sent the emails. Moreover, users mostly mark advertising emails from companies to go directly into the Junk Mail box  (Spam abuse). This means they wont even read it.

Moreover, this frustration associated with spam email means the person has it in his mind about the unsolicited email sent by the company. This can result in the person removing his frustration by not buying the companys product. So this can do more harm than good. Only when the user has asked to be emailed will this strategy be useful.

As far as choosing a strategy for Grandmas Treat is concerned, I believe that the affiliate program is the best, because Grandmas Treat has a very narrow target audience. Affiliate programs work well when the target audience is narrowed down (Gardyne, 2003).  Grandmas Treat sells sugar free stuff hence they are targeting diabetic people. The affiliate program will work towards expanding the marketing of their product, every time a new customer joins.

By offering different incentives (such as buy one get on free etc) Grandmas treat will ensure that, not only are their existing customers retained but they will get new customers as well. This will happen when existing customers talk about Grandmas Treat to their friends and family as well as by using web site advertising that points to the Grandmas Treats web site. Moreover if the website is updated frequently and new incentives are also given the affiliate program will help a lot (100 best affiliate programs).

Likewise, certain strategies will not be appropriate for Grandmas Treat. Target market is one of them. Grandmas Treats products are purchased by people for reason that they would not like to openly discuss. Moreover in target market, Grandmas Treat will have to obtain a list of the people they want to target. This becomes difficult because, for example in case of people who are dieting, the company with whom these people have their dieting programs will not give out their customers information unless the customer has given permission. This makes it difficult and expensive.

The CAM-SPAM Act is a law that basically tells the people what is considered as acceptable spamming and what the penalties of unacceptable spamming are. Many people are against this act because they consider it as, giving permission to a spammer to go ahead and do spamming.

According to this act, spamming is legal within the definition of legal spamming. But this is not enough. Some other conditions must also be met. Firstly, legal spam must include an option of opting out from receiving the emails for the receiver  (Bick). The opt out requests must be fulfilled within 10 days.

Secondly, the source lines must be accurate and not source names. Moreover, the subject line must not be misleading and must include the real physical address of the sender of the email. Likewise, the content should have proper rating (Bick).

It can be easily be seen that, this act was difficult to prepare. It had to be such that it allowed advertising, but did not have any loop holes, which could be exploited by unscrupulous elements. It had to ensure no illegal activity was done. Moreover, it was important to protect the rights of the receiver, in that he can avoid receiving such spam mail.

Taking everything into account I would agree with the way the CAN-SPAM act was written. However, I disagree with the lack of enforcement of the Act and I believe that enforcement of this law is as important as any other law.

A1. Some providers of financial products, such as insurance policies, are happy to allow their products to be offered by independent comparison sites, (such as Moneysupermarket), while others (such as Directline) insist potential customers visit their sites directly. Critically evaluate the merits of both approaches, taking into account both online branding and intermediationdisintermediation, and using real-world examples to support your arguments.

Website comparison services cover a broad array of products. Consumers can get a comparative analysis of the various products being sold by different lenders. A buyer can see the price in the Internet and he will be aware whether he thinks the price mentioned is worth or not. It will provide full details of the costs of different companies and the quality of those products as well. It will help shoppers in doing the research work faster and makes them to do the shopping without going to different sites and different companies. On the other hand, visiting the sites directly gives the customer control on how the order gets routed to the various exchanges. Its just the customer and the market. Consumers directly buy products and services from a seller interactively in real-time without an intermediary service over the HYPERLINK httpen.wikipedia.orgwikiInternet o InternetInternet. There is immediate interaction unlike when you surf through a comparison site.

In directly purchasing a product, word of mouth has become a leading way by which people find shopping websites. When an online shopper has a good first experience with a certain website, sixty percent of the time they will return to that website to buy more.

With the advent and proliferation of the Internet, many aspects of business and market activities are changing. New forms of intermediation also called cybermediaries are becoming increasingly important as a coordinator of interaction between buyers and sellers in the electronic market environment. However consumers can always buy directly without intermediaries. For example, theycould buy books online directly from publishers who would ship the books directly from their printing plants. Authors can sell e-books directly to the consumer.

Branding plays an integral part behind a companys success. As in real life scenarios, a brand is the companys identity on the web and differentiates it from its competitors. Online branding decides the perception of targeted audience towards a companys e-commerce store. Consumers who rely on a particular brand wont need to do site comparisons. The customer visits the site directly.

B3. Discuss what the practical success factors are in using digital media in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), contrasting B2C and B2B relationships, supporting your answer with real-world examples.

The emergence of e-Marketplaces is causing new trading relationships to be established based upon highly competitive commercial terms. Nonetheless, for trading to commence some prior negotiations need to be undertaken between the business partners. Aside from commercial conditions, there are other matters of product quality and delivery that need to be addressed. Equally the process is driven by recognized business transactions and the supplier will most certainly demand a purchase order from the buyer to initiate the supply of goods. In business-to-consumer (B2C) markets the retailer is expected to handle many thousands of spontaneous purchasing transactions from equal numbers of anonymous consumers for which no prior commercial relationship necessarily existed. In other words, a consumer may never have purchased from the retailer previously, and certainly no preconditions existed prior to the consumer committing to the transaction by selecting the submit key on their Web browser. Since no prior commercial arrangements exist, sellers are naturally concerned to authenticate the buyer or limit their commercial risk. A fraudulent order from a non- existing customer could result in significant business resources being consumed or diverted from a genuine customer. For this reason e-tailers normally insist upon payment with order, typically by credit card, as a condition of doing business over the Internet.

B2B CRM is probably older and more established than consumer or B2C CRM, primarily because even before computers made it possible, sales reps would keep records of individual contacts, because it was worth it to do so. The difference between relationship management within the B2C space and within in B2B space is that in B2B you have just a few large customers, big organizations. And that means the statistical tools that are useful in B2C CRM are largely not relevant in B2B CRM. Another point is that, In the B2B world the channel distribution process can be extremely complex. You can have value added resellers in the IT business, for example, or you can have installers, enablers -- lots of people at different gates between the marketer and the customer.

C3. A major issue in the success of B2C retailing is consumer confidence in the security of their personal data, especially financial data, submitted to the online retailer.  Describe the threats to which online transactions are vulnerable, and discuss what controls (both technical and organisational) the retailer can deploy to counter these, balancing your discussion with  what consumers should do to protect their data, illustrating your answer with appropriate real-world examples.

Exchanging sensitive information on the internet without the appropriate security measures can make a company, as well as their clients and employees, vulnerable to phishing activities, online scams and identity theft. Security vulnerabilities typically arise in shopping cart and online payment systems because most web application developers are not well versed with secure programming techniques. Here are three of the most common vulnerabilities B2C retailers have to face

SQL  injection refers to the inclusion of SQL characters in the user input. While the user keys in the right information, it will be the attacker who queries the backend  database, and receives the correct response while the user receives an error message.  SQL injection techniques vary depending on the type of database being used. The most popular occurrences of SQL injections were on the ecommerce sites of Guess, and Petco.

Price manipulation is a vulnerability which is unique to shopping carts and payment gateways. Typically, the total payable price for purchased goods is stored in a hidden HTML and is sent to the payment gateway. Attackers can change the HTML field containing the final payable price and may go unnoticed if the volume of transactions is high. This vulnerability can be found in third party software such as 3D3 ShopFactory Shopping Cart and Smartwin Technologys CyberOffice Shopping Cart 2.0.

Buffer overflows involve the sending of large number of bytes which cannot be handled by a web application. This usually returns an error which contains the path of functions used by the database to process queries. Once this happens, attackers can now access the restricted admin folder and modify them according to their purpose. Multiple buffer overflows has been noted with software such as the PDGSoft Shopping Cart.

Fortunately, there are many ways that a company can secure its database. First level protection can involve the frequent changing of the password, and the use of unidentifiable keyword combinations. Many websites require their members to input alphanumeric combinations. Most passwords are case sensitive, and cannot be the same as the userid. Moreover, there are certain sites which prohibit the use of identifiable words as password. There are also several authentication methods which can be used by the site. Some of these include out-of-band authentication, adaptive authentication, software and hardware based one-time passwords.

Secure websites and pages will feature two important conditions that indicate they are using encryption technology and a 128-bit Secure Socket Layer certificates. This is indicated by https (letters after the http portion of the URL), and means that the server is a secure one. Microsoft Windows also offers an alert that relays a message indicating whether information over the network is secure. For customers, it is important that they check if the company they are dealing with is offering a safe checkout process. This is typically indicated by the VeriSign and TrustE logo. Companies can also signup with the Better Business Bureau to get privacy policy seals and enhance the sites credibility. Also, sites which require the input of credit card information and checking account information must have a padlock icon which ensures that the site has been assigned the authority to accept secure and protected information.

Many of the potential concerns that surround the safety of online shopping have been resolved by online payment services. The premier service of this type for example is PayPal, which has set the benchmarks for secure Internet transactions and ease of use. When purchasing something using PayPal, users simply carry out the transaction through their PayPal accounts, rather than a credit card. PayPal then charges each purchase to the individuals credit card or checking account. Because all PayPal transactions are based on the users e-mail address, and all payment processing is through the PayPal merchants never have access and store the users account information.

Wondering about how to start as an entrepreneur The process involved in starting a new business isnt rocket science for sure. What seems difficulty is the procedure one must follow eventually With technology booming like nobodys business the best possible way to make things work in ones favor would be to take advantage of something known as the internet. Lets start with the basics of starting with a business. First and foremost make sure that your capital is in place and device a business plan which answers the five important questions namely- who, where, when, why, and how What is essential for a business in any genre is the method you follow to accomplish the task of detailing the competition and forming a marketing plan to establish the companys proposed plans.

What can make life simpler would be to get hold of a web designer who can help you write the content and design a decent website since technology is what drives growth these days. Every company which aims at being successful someday, as far as the present scenario is concerned, understands the concept of marketing through the internet.

What takes the cake is that nowadays every single detail can be uploaded on the internet to give a better perspective about a firms services catering to various customers. Choose the business structure in a manner which appeals to everyone you are trying to cater to. Get all the licenses and permits and include them on the website so that people are aware about the authenticity of your organization. Prefer email marketing over anything else to ensure that the best deals are available for your organisation and you reap the benefits of good opportunities. Build upon your site traffic through advertisements, offline marketing, direct mailing, video and audio podcast.

You might end up collecting all the data possible of clients you would like to cater to but what is essential is to keep them updated about your companys growth as well. Send useful information maybe through a newsletter. The main aim of performing this exercise would be to turn prospect clients into permanent clients and then into ambassadors for the company or any of your products. Something as beautiful as sending designed virtual invitations or cards through emails also works wonders in keeping a tab on the responses you get from customers. The most vital thing would be to do a thorough research on your competitors and analyse their growth graph which will help you in determining yours.

Steps seem simple but what you need to be careful about are certain simple complications. Make sure that the website is designed in such a way that it does not derogate anybody elses business plans. Check for all developments in the internet world and keep refreshing your website pages to help get more people attracted towards your offerings and products. Hackers wont pose many problems once you learn how to play safe. And keep the spirit going, as there is no end to what might turn out to be lucky for you. Be safe while enhancing upon your online business because along with being the best tool available these days it might harm in a small way.  

Introduction of Business
Company X specializes in the production of electronic spare parts especially spare parts that are used in computers and its peripherals. Thus, this company can improve its position and operations through utilization of e-commerce (Latimer,  CCH Australia Limited, 2008). The architecture of the new e-commerce suite may be called collective architecture that is able to take into consideration various areas that includes catalog, content and checkout allows it to be utilized by different delivery channels through means such a email software and storefronts (Schneider, 2008). This means that the new architecture allows for channel management requirements such as promotions, store administration and content management. This type of architecture could provide a foundation that presents duplication of data (master point of data and no consistency) and cross-organization chimneys, and hence ensures general efficiency of the site. Moreover, the new technology is capable of replacing features such as CRM  ERP.

Applications Needed
E-commerce is a technology that requires numerous hardware and software components to ensure the requirements of e-commerce are achieved. Some common and important applications that could play a major role include

Database software  current consumer requirements is increasing and they require different means that allows for payments and accessing the required information.

Website  designing and features of a website defines the extent in which an e-commerce approach could be successful.

Security software  this application champions on security and privacy measures. It ensures that confidentiality of information is maximized while negating threats associated with e-commerce activities (Schneider, 2008).

Appropriate Interfaces and Necessary Standards
Experience is crucial for consumers who access general websites and there is special requirement for consumers who utilize e-commerce websites during the time of purchase. This is because a poor consumer experience may result in frustration during shopping, difficulty in moving around the website, resulting in loss of sales.

Difference with current application
Advancement in technology and organizational requirements shapes the way a product is viewed and its contribution towards fulfilling organizational requirements (Rich, 2008). E-commerce systems require high-level security measures. Many people especially hackers and eavesdroppers looks for means to access information regarding other companies or gain financialmonetary system. Moreover, information stored in these systems require high levels of privacy and confidentiality. Generally, it means that the security requirements should be of high standards. In the traditional and other applications, security is not an important requirement since these is no confidential or private information that is stored (Rich, 2008).
Another issue that makes it different is adaptability, functionality and operation of the e-commerce requirements. E-commerce requires centralization of data and hence requires a large storage means (Schneider, 2008). Moreover, the storage media should be capable to back up details to ensure that in the cause of any eventualities, the information and data can be retrieved. Traditional systems usually have small amounts of information and data, and hence usually require small amount of storage. In addition, e-commerce information should be stored for a longer period comparative to current systems that does not require long term (Latimer,  CCH Australia Limited, 2008).

E-commerce site should be secure and easily updated. Many organizations present information on their websites and due to competition, the prices keep fluctuating (Darie  Watson, 2009). This means that information posted ion the website should easily be updated while ensuring high levels of security (Latimer,  CCH Australia Limited, 2008). In the case of current systems, information can stay for long periods while issues of website security are minimal. It generally means that a website that is easily updatable and has high level of security should be utilized in e-commerce transaction (Darie  Balanescu, 2008).

Benefits
Some of the benefits associated with this new e-commerce architecture includes
It allows a favorable and convenient means or moving to a new e-commerce platform when compared to current e-commerce technologies.

This new architecture provides a means in which back end systems can operate together. This means that it provides foundation in which components can easily be swapped out and swapped in without interfering with the operational integrity.

It allows means for innovation it has numerous business specific services and brand definition and these features can be easily developed in house.

The architecture can allow commoditization of service, and these services can be outsourced e.g. customer reviews and payment processing (Darie  Balanescu, 2008).

It reduces the periods in which e-commerce functionality can be marketed (Darie  Watson, 2009). This means that the marketing and business department may require changes in certain functionality and should be implemented by IT department, but the information technology will not be required to deliver since the service already exists within the architecture. Hence, the e-commerce architecture allows for consumption and utilization of the services available (Latimer,  CCH Australia Limited, 2008).

Measurements of benefits
Metrics should clearly be developed that would be utilized to measure the success of e-commerce initiatives. The metrics should be based on business functions and units of individual sectors of an organization (Latimer,  CCH Australia Limited, 2008). This means that it is paramount to monitor both the specific aspects of e-commerce and the overall performance of e-commerce. Different techniques and tools can be utilized to measures the success of e-commerce may include polls and online surveys to determine whether this initiative improves on revenue generation or operates like other e-commerce sites. After the collection of data from this perspective, statistical approaches can be utilized to analyze the data that may include multiple regressions so that validity of the site can be understood (Darie  Balanescu, 2008). Utilization of these measures could determine whether the new e-commerce strategy is beneficial to the organization.

Generally, e-commerce applications come with different requirements and capability to accomplish e-commerce requirements. An example of such technology is the collective architecture that integrates different organization functions into ensuring the organization revenues are championed with profitability is maximized. The new architecture comes with numerous benefits that can be measured through utilization of online survey and polls, and later analyzed by the use of statistical tools such as multiple-regressions.

E-business which means electronic business is the process of conducting business activities on the Internet, which is not only to the conventional buying and selling, but includes servicing customers, managing relationships and collaborating with other business partners, such as suppliers. It can be thought of as information technology based Business Process Re-engineering.

Super-Pride Investments was a company founded by Jimmy Berry, with a core purpose of offering computing solutions such as computer sales, repair and maintenance, computer training, assembling, internet access, networking and computing consultancy. The company targeted the local market since it was opened in 2002 it has grown from a simple office to enigma in the computing field, boasting of more than twenty branches in the countries major towns. With no clear cut policy on adopting technology and innovations , the firm utilized the technology of yesteryears, for example, it was not uncommon to find the employees of the firm using Pentium one computers, utilizing Disk Operating System while elderly  fax and telephones,  this affected the operations of the company due to low employee performance, coupled with the increasing market competition, the company suffered several challenges such as poor communication within the employees, poor communication with the customers, with collaborating firms and even within the management. The effects were immense such as reduced customer loyalty and financial losses which prompted the owner to hire a professional consultancy firm, to recommend a remedy to the situation which was getting out of hand.

The consultancy firm having analyzed the firm, realized that the chief cause to the under performance of the company was poorineffective communication within the organization, within the different branches, with the customers and suppliers, with other collaborating companies and with the government agencies, this was chiefly caused by the utilization of legacy communication systems which were time bared. He therefore recommended that the company adopts electronic business by implementing an open source based collaboration functionality such as Bricolage which is a Content management system, EtherPad which is a Collaborative drafting with chat, Wiggio system which is focused on simplicity - group communication and content management toolkit, phpGroupWare which includes a project collaboration module and Plone which is a powerful, flexible Content Management that is Enterprise and web 2.0 tools for effective communication.

Migration plan 
Due to the apparent obsolescence of the legacy systems being used by the firm, there was need to migrate to the new collaborative communication system.  As argued by Tayntor (2007) the first step involves the requirement specification, where the firm shall develop the expected deliverables of the new system, this shall

Impacts to the organization 
The implementation of the collaborative communication system has several impacts in the organization, the impacts range from implementation process, impacts to the departments, stakeholder impacts total impacts to the entire organization, employment impacts, impact on information access, impacts on the individual employee and impacts and financial impacts. As regards to impacts during implementation,  the collaborative e-business system, shall require the firms members to arrive on to an agreement on which e-business system to implements, for example whether the system should be open source based, or whether it shall be implemented, by use of proprietary software. The members should also arrive at a conclusion on the specific type of the software to be used, this requires intense consultations, and therefore results to restructuring of the organization to utilize the new implemented communication structure, the e-business system therefore results to organizational restructuring.

The system also impacts on the departments and branches in the organization. Since the e-business implementation shall encourage communication between the different aspects of the organization as pointed out by Chaffey (2006), challenges and difficulties encountered in the different departments and branches in the organizations shall be availed within a click of a button to all concerned parties, hence improving the departmental performances hence improving the total organizations output. The system also has impacts on the stakeholders, this includes the business owners, the customers, the collaborating firms and the employees, since information access shall be fostered and improved, and this shall in the end affect the relationship between all the stakeholders. Whereas the systems have high initial set up costs, the system in the long run shall effectively lower the running costs in terms of communication. On employment and employees, the system shall provide opportunities for persons conversant with the technology to be employed, will improving the technical understanding of the new technology to other employees in the firm. The system shall also alter the employment dynamics in the industry, as more open source experts shall have to be hired, in order to achieve the success in the development and deployment of the collaborative system. This shall also affect the firm members work patterns and responsibility since, their work delivery and communication shall be web based. The members shall also have diverse information in their finger tips, hence enabling them to make informed decisions.

Changes to infrastructure 
Implementation of the e-business in envisioned offering a complete alteration to the firms total infrastructure in areas such as application infrastructure. This will require an overhaul of the operating environment in order to suit the new collaborative system, such as alteration of the physical environment like cabling, altering the office structure to suit the new system and the furniture in the working environment. The data management infrastructure in concerned with effects on the way the organization organizes, manages, retrieves and utilizes the available data. For example, the collaborative system shall enable the organization to outsource non core functions and commodity services, therefore the infrastructure shall be altered to accept communication with several parties.

Benefits of the e-business collaboration system
Workflows can be streamlined, this is because there shall be a centralized common system for communication in the entire organization, the collaboration system involves all the firms members communicating their needs and activities, and this shall help to ensure that there is a synchronized information flow, hence synchronizing the operations of the organizations. This can be measured by the quality of information it the organization as argued by Kimmons (1989), which must be accurate, Accuracy is concerned with data being sufficiently accurate for the intended use and should be captured only once, even if there exists several uses and should  be captured at the point of activity, the Validity of data is important, where data should be recorded and used in compliance with relevant requirements easy to comprehend by all the concerned parties, and the information should be supported by evidence to avoid repudiation Redundant data entry can be eliminated, the implementation of the system, shall ensure that validation procedures are used so that data is  data shall only be entered once from  any office or branch, this eliminates the existence of data redundancies as argued by Mochal (2007), existence on non duplicated and uniform information in all the branches and departments shall be used to gauge the effectiveness of the benefit, this is in addition to the fact that Information can be shared quickly and easily between departments and branch offices. In addition the online collaboration shall ensure that projects can stall be effectively be implemented even if the organization has different branches located in distant locations, this is ensured by the fact that persons can effectively communicate.  Moreover it helps to save on the available office space, since the firm members can hold online meetings rather than in a physical location. The system shall also enable the company to get up to date market information and utilize the information to gain competitive advantage, which can be measured by how effectively the organization utilizes the available information to beat market competition. Timeliness and reliability of the data is the main measurement metric.

Identify major risks
According to Greer (2002),  risk are future uncertain events with a probability of occurrence and a potential for loss, There exist several risks in the implementation of the project such  as schedule Risk, where the  project tasks and schedule release risks are insufficiently gathered for, this can cause ripple effects on the on the collaboration project and in the entire firm, this can lead to project failure,  this is usually caused by improper time estimation, inefficient resource tracking, and unexpected project scope and alterations, this can be minimized by  having a proper time plan, which should be adhered to . Financial and budget risks caused by unforeseen expenditure and improper budget estimation, with limited resources by the firm to gather for the extra costs, this can be minimized by having monetary contingency plans. Operational risks which can be caused by ineffective process implementation or some unforeseen external situations, failure to resolve responsibilities and poor team communication and resource utilization can be minimized by having a proper chain of command and span of control in the project implementation team.  Technical risks are another type of risks, which involves functionality of the system this may be caused by extremely complex project implementation, lack of proper technology and too much modularization.  Another risk is Programmatic Risks which as argued by Kerzner (2009) are risks beyond the scope of the project management team, can be minimized by having a provision for unpredicted situations.

Question two
Contributions made are about the concern of customers as it relates to personal data used in banking services, whereas banks are at the forefront to assure the clients that all is well with their records, critical examination of the same reveals otherwise. The existence of several data breaches in banks records worried customers that their personal data may be compromised, analysis have shown that more than records of ten banks are compromised annually worldwide, however, analysis reveals that this represents a small percentage of the entire banks in the world and that the breach rates have not reached alarming ratios, and  therefore. The unaffected banks just hope that they will not be the next victim of the attack and that the clients have no cause to worry. Analysis further reveals that the banking sector is a signatory to several legislations which ensures that banks have legal obligations to implement data security procedures, past researches have however the sufficiency of the obligations since whereas the banks may maintain the legal obligations, there may be elements such as hackers, former employees or organized underground software criminals who may maneuver and compromise the established procedures.

The client data is also in safe haven since there is regulatory supervision the bankers argue that their activities are generally subject to regulatory supervision by the Central Bank. In most countries however, central banks lack the capability and resources to effectively monitor and regulate the baking sector, the information about clients in the banks database can therefore be compromised intentionally for the benefit of the bank, without the realization of the regulating authority.  Technology changes also can be a cause to worry, whereas there may exist laws and regulations, banks may be using technologies e.g. encryption technologies that can be compromised by the current advanced decryption techniques, cases have existed such as in the HSBC private banking client accounts breach, where allegedly a former Information Technology employee compromised the records. According to the investigating experts, the relationship manager was rated as the weakest link since they have massive access to all the customers information.

In addition, banks have been sending unencrypted messages to the clients, this offers a possibility of compromising the information, by cyber stalking, moreover banks fail to inform and warn the clients the dangers of sending unprotected emails. The fact that security comes with a cost such as affecting on system performance and efficiency, as well as diverting the resources from the core objectives, has made some banks to compromise on security at the expense of improving system performance, this coupled with the high demand for confidential data has complicated the issues further for the banks, since there are underground organized criminals who utilize the stolen data.

The banks on the hand, have taken several steps to ensure that client information is kept confidential and safe, this includes the reduction use of recovery point objective, which is the duration of time at which systems and data must be recovered after a compromise, and recovery time objective which is the duration during which applications should be recovered after a compromise, so as to minimize the effects of the loss. Several banks have also implemented continuous data protection (CDP) where data are updated and backed up on regular basis. These are be used with policies and procedures aimed at improving data integrity and avoiding compromising of data, these policies include the limiting of the number of persons who can access the customers data, having clearly stipulated procedures on safeguarding the data and information of the customers, and ensuring that the data and information are backed up on regular basis.  Banks have also utilized tested, proven and reliable systems such as Database management systems, which are immune to flows and bugs, banks have avoided the use of cheaper systems which can be easily be compromised, but rather utilized reliable object oriented databases whose security can be guaranteed, this is in addition to using the latest security and encryptions technologies, and investing in the latest software and hardware. However, from the above from the above analysis, it is therefore apparent that whereas banks have immensely invented on the security of client data, several breaches have been reported, it is therefore evident the security of the customers data in the banks database cannot be hundred percent guaranteed, clients therefore have a cause of alarm.  

Question 3

What is the effectiveness of the application of e-business in reverse auction
The question above deserves further research and is interesting because it presents knowledge and ideas, which are in contrast to the universal belief on the on how the market operates, this question deserves research in order to obtain how effective e-business can be in a situation where the purchaser advertises that they require certain goods and services, and the suppliers place bids on what they expect to be paid in order to supply the good, or offer the service, in reverse auction there are several dynamics which influences the outcomes of the transactions, unlike conventional auctions where the factors influencing the market and the transaction can easily be determined, this calls for a further study, in order to establish the correlation, between the conventional factors, affection conventional auctions and the factors influencing reverse auction. Moreover, the practicality of the reverse auction, and the convenient situation, in which the auction can be applied is a question which demands further research..

To achieve the above, the research method involved is case study research, where an in depth investigation shall be carried out in a small representative sample population, in order to determine the underlying principles of the entire population, this shall involve the use of structured questionnaires, where the chosen respondents such as reverse action providers, purchasers and sellers shall be given questionnaires, and their responses analyzed for correlation, by use of statistical software such as STATA and SPSS.

Question one
E-business which means electronic business is the process of conducting business activities on the Internet, which is not only to the conventional buying and selling, but includes servicing customers, managing relationships and collaborating with other business partners, such as suppliers. It can be thought of as information technology based Business Process Re-engineering.

Super-Pride Investments was a company founded by Jimmy Berry, with a core purpose of offering computing solutions such as computer sales, repair and maintenance, computer training, assembling, internet access, networking and computing consultancy. The company targeted the local market since it was opened in 2002 it has grown from a simple office to enigma in the computing field, boasting of more than twenty branches in the countries major towns. With no clear cut policy on adopting technology and innovations , the firm utilized the technology of yesteryears, for example, it was not uncommon to find the employees of the firm using Pentium one computers, utilizing Disk Operating System while elderly  fax and telephones,  this affected the operations of the company due to low employee performance, coupled with the increasing market competition, the company suffered several challenges such as poor communication within the employees, poor communication with the customers, with collaborating firms and even within the management. The effects were immense such as reduced customer loyalty and financial losses which prompted the owner to hire a professional consultancy firm, to recommend a remedy to the situation which was getting out of hand.

The consultancy firm having analyzed the firm, realized that the chief cause to the under performance of the company was poorineffective communication within the organization, within the different branches, with the customers and suppliers, with other collaborating companies and with the government agencies, this was chiefly caused by the utilization of legacy communication systems which were time bared. He therefore recommended that the company adopts electronic business by implementing an open source based collaboration functionality such as Bricolage which is a Content management system, EtherPad which is a Collaborative drafting with chat, Wiggio system which is focused on simplicity - group communication and content management toolkit, phpGroupWare which includes a project collaboration module and Plone which is a powerful, flexible Content Management that is Enterprise and web 2.0 tools for effective communication.

Migration plan 
Due to the apparent obsolescence of the legacy systems being used by the firm, there was need to migrate to the new collaborative communication system.  As argued by Tayntor (2007) the first step involves the requirement specification, where the firm shall develop the expected deliverables of the new system, this shall

Impacts to the organization 
The implementation of the collaborative communication system has several impacts in the organization, the impacts range from implementation process, impacts to the departments, stakeholder impacts total impacts to the entire organization, employment impacts, impact on information access, impacts on the individual employee and impacts and financial impacts. As regards to impacts during implementation,  the collaborative e-business system, shall require the firms members to arrive on to an agreement on which e-business system to implements, for example whether the system should be open source based, or whether it shall be implemented, by use of proprietary software. The members should also arrive at a conclusion on the specific type of the software to be used, this requires intense consultations, and therefore results to restructuring of the organization to utilize the new implemented communication structure, the e-business system therefore results to organizational restructuring.

The system also impacts on the departments and branches in the organization. Since the e-business implementation shall encourage communication between the different aspects of the organization as pointed out by Chaffey (2006), challenges and difficulties encountered in the different departments and branches in the organizations shall be availed within a click of a button to all concerned parties, hence improving the departmental performances hence improving the total organizations output. The system also has impacts on the stakeholders, this includes the business owners, the customers, the collaborating firms and the employees, since information access shall be fostered and improved, and this shall in the end affect the relationship between all the stakeholders. Whereas the systems have high initial set up costs, the system in the long run shall effectively lower the running costs in terms of communication. On employment and employees, the system shall provide opportunities for persons conversant with the technology to be employed, will improving the technical understanding of the new technology to other employees in the firm. The system shall also alter the employment dynamics in the industry, as more open source experts shall have to be hired, in order to achieve the success in the development and deployment of the collaborative system. This shall also affect the firm members work patterns and responsibility since, their work delivery and communication shall be web based. The members shall also have diverse information in their finger tips, hence enabling them to make informed decisions.

Changes to infrastructure 
Implementation of the e-business in envisioned offering a complete alteration to the firms total infrastructure in areas such as application infrastructure. This will require an overhaul of the operating environment in order to suit the new collaborative system, such as alteration of the physical environment like cabling, altering the office structure to suit the new system and the furniture in the working environment. The data management infrastructure in concerned with effects on the way the organization organizes, manages, retrieves and utilizes the available data. For example, the collaborative system shall enable the organization to outsource non core functions and commodity services, therefore the infrastructure shall be altered to accept communication with several parties.

Benefits of the e-business collaboration system
Workflows can be streamlined, this is because there shall be a centralized common system for communication in the entire organization, the collaboration system involves all the firms members communicating their needs and activities, and this shall help to ensure that there is a synchronized information flow, hence synchronizing the operations of the organizations. This can be measured by the quality of information it the organization as argued by Kimmons (1989), which must be accurate, Accuracy is concerned with data being sufficiently accurate for the intended use and should be captured only once, even if there exists several uses and should  be captured at the point of activity, the Validity of data is important, where data should be recorded and used in compliance with relevant requirements easy to comprehend by all the concerned parties, and the information should be supported by evidence to avoid repudiation Redundant data entry can be eliminated, the implementation of the system, shall ensure that validation procedures are used so that data is  data shall only be entered once from  any office or branch, this eliminates the existence of data redundancies as argued by Mochal (2007), existence on non duplicated and uniform information in all the branches and departments shall be used to gauge the effectiveness of the benefit, this is in addition to the fact that Information can be shared quickly and easily between departments and branch offices. In addition the online collaboration shall ensure that projects can stall be effectively be implemented even if the organization has different branches located in distant locations, this is ensured by the fact that persons can effectively communicate.  Moreover it helps to save on the available office space, since the firm members can hold online meetings rather than in a physical location. The system shall also enable the company to get up to date market information and utilize the information to gain competitive advantage, which can be measured by how effectively the organization utilizes the available information to beat market competition. Timeliness and reliability of the data is the main measurement metric.

Identify major risks
According to Greer (2002),  risk are future uncertain events with a probability of occurrence and a potential for loss, There exist several risks in the implementation of the project such  as schedule Risk, where the  project tasks and schedule release risks are insufficiently gathered for, this can cause ripple effects on the on the collaboration project and in the entire firm, this can lead to project failure,  this is usually caused by improper time estimation, inefficient resource tracking, and unexpected project scope and alterations, this can be minimized by  having a proper time plan, which should be adhered to . Financial and budget risks caused by unforeseen expenditure and improper budget estimation, with limited resources by the firm to gather for the extra costs, this can be minimized by having monetary contingency plans. Operational risks which can be caused by ineffective process implementation or some unforeseen external situations, failure to resolve responsibilities and poor team communication and resource utilization can be minimized by having a proper chain of command and span of control in the project implementation team.  Technical risks are another type of risks, which involves functionality of the system this may be caused by extremely complex project implementation, lack of proper technology and too much modularization.  Another risk is Programmatic Risks which as argued by Kerzner (2009) are risks beyond the scope of the project management team, can be minimized by having a provision for unpredicted situations.

Question two
Contributions made are about the concern of customers as it relates to personal data used in banking services, whereas banks are at the forefront to assure the clients that all is well with their records, critical examination of the same reveals otherwise. The existence of several data breaches in banks records worried customers that their personal data may be compromised, analysis have shown that more than records of ten banks are compromised annually worldwide, however, analysis reveals that this represents a small percentage of the entire banks in the world and that the breach rates have not reached alarming ratios, and  therefore. The unaffected banks just hope that they will not be the next victim of the attack and that the clients have no cause to worry. Analysis further reveals that the banking sector is a signatory to several legislations which ensures that banks have legal obligations to implement data security procedures, past researches have however the sufficiency of the obligations since whereas the banks may maintain the legal obligations, there may be elements such as hackers, former employees or organized underground software criminals who may maneuver and compromise the established procedures.

The client data is also in safe haven since there is regulatory supervision the bankers argue that their activities are generally subject to regulatory supervision by the Central Bank. In most countries however, central banks lack the capability and resources to effectively monitor and regulate the baking sector, the information about clients in the banks database can therefore be compromised intentionally for the benefit of the bank, without the realization of the regulating authority.  Technology changes also can be a cause to worry, whereas there may exist laws and regulations, banks may be using technologies e.g. encryption technologies that can be compromised by the current advanced decryption techniques, cases have existed such as in the HSBC private banking client accounts breach, where allegedly a former Information Technology employee compromised the records. According to the investigating experts, the relationship manager was rated as the weakest link since they have massive access to all the customers information.

In addition, banks have been sending unencrypted messages to the clients, this offers a possibility of compromising the information, by cyber stalking, moreover banks fail to inform and warn the clients the dangers of sending unprotected emails. The fact that security comes with a cost such as affecting on system performance and efficiency, as well as diverting the resources from the core objectives, has made some banks to compromise on security at the expense of improving system performance, this coupled with the high demand for confidential data has complicated the issues further for the banks, since there are underground organized criminals who utilize the stolen data.

The banks on the hand, have taken several steps to ensure that client information is kept confidential and safe, this includes the reduction use of recovery point objective, which is the duration of time at which systems and data must be recovered after a compromise, and recovery time objective which is the duration during which applications should be recovered after a compromise, so as to minimize the effects of the loss. Several banks have also implemented continuous data protection (CDP) where data are updated and backed up on regular basis. These are be used with policies and procedures aimed at improving data integrity and avoiding compromising of data, these policies include the limiting of the number of persons who can access the customers data, having clearly stipulated procedures on safeguarding the data and information of the customers, and ensuring that the data and information are backed up on regular basis.  Banks have also utilized tested, proven and reliable systems such as Database management systems, which are immune to flows and bugs, banks have avoided the use of cheaper systems which can be easily be compromised, but rather utilized reliable object oriented databases whose security can be guaranteed, this is in addition to using the latest security and encryptions technologies, and investing in the latest software and hardware. However, from the above from the above analysis, it is therefore apparent that whereas banks have immensely invented on the security of client data, several breaches have been reported, it is therefore evident the security of the customers data in the banks database cannot be hundred percent guaranteed, clients therefore have a cause of alarm.  

Question 3

What is the effectiveness of the application of e-business in reverse auction
The question above deserves further research and is interesting because it presents knowledge and ideas, which are in contrast to the universal belief on the on how the market operates, this question deserves research in order to obtain how effective e-business can be in a situation where the purchaser advertises that they require certain goods and services, and the suppliers place bids on what they expect to be paid in order to supply the good, or offer the service, in reverse auction there are several dynamics which influences the outcomes of the transactions, unlike conventional auctions where the factors influencing the market and the transaction can easily be determined, this calls for a further study, in order to establish the correlation, between the conventional factors, affection conventional auctions and the factors influencing reverse auction. Moreover, the practicality of the reverse auction, and the convenient situation, in which the auction can be applied is a question which demands further research.

To achieve the above, the research method involved is case study research, where an in depth investigation shall be carried out in a small representative sample population, in order to determine the underlying principles of the entire population, this shall involve the use of structured questionnaires, where the chosen respondents such as reverse action providers, purchasers and sellers shall be given questionnaires, and their responses analyzed for correlation, by use of statistical software such as STATA and SPSS.

Electronic business strategies may be defined as the strategies that govern businesses via information system technology through calculated information dissemination techniques. This concept entails B2B which is basically businesses buying from and selling to each other on the internet (Stephen, Paige, Amy, 2005, p.319) and B2C which is basically a business selling to the consumer directly (Ray Wright, 2006, p.29)
According to IBM (2010) some of the available B2B applications available include
Buy side applications This is also known as the e-procurement application which may be used by a business establishment to purchase supplies, parts and materials from another Business (Trade partner). These applications provide pre-negotiated prices, connections to approved catalogs and they prevent maverick buying.

Sell side application These applications enable business customers and distributors to purchase goods and services via digital technology e.g. catalog  order entry systems.

Trading partner agreements This is an application that enables organizations to integrate their late order entry system and the legacy order system which makes it easier to synchronize the ordering of products-shipping-logistics.

E-Market places This is a B2B application that supports buyers and suppliers at the same place simultaneously and they are accessible via web browsers. E-market place work by routing product inquiries and purchase requests to the pre-approved sell side applications. Some of its functions may include auctions and exchanges.

Grandmas treats may proceed on a develop web based store that sells it products online and the store should integrate modern features such as shopping carts, online payment system to receive the funds from customers. The site should also be properly marketed via various online marketing channels such as pay per click, pay per play, banners, referrals and affiliates.

Due to the increasing business competition, Grandma Treats has embarked on an initiative that will enable it to sell its goods and services anytime, anywhere over the internet rather than relying on the traditional face to face selling.

However, there are different business models of online selling, which may include storefront, auction, portal or a combination of both.

According to Susan Royer (2005, p.16), storefront model can give organization such as Comp USA, an immediate advantage of the global basis on their first day of operations, they do not necessarily have to distribute their goods physically which engages them on an international e-business activities from the start.

With storefront, organizations that sell online such as Comp USA, are likely to generate more revenue with a unique customer shopping experience, this is because customers are able to navigate through their website while viewing products  services and comparing prices in a single, centralized platform, at their own conveniences (EFI). Other notable advantages may include order status, history, re-ordering mechanisms, shopping carts, multi lingual capabilities among others.

There is also the auction model such as the Ubid auction where the goods and services do not have a specific price, people place their bids for goods and the bids may be higher or lower than the market value.

However some of the drawbacks associated with this concept are that buyers whom are the bidders may be impatient in the sense that they want the goods immediately (Terrence Hendershot, 2006, p.324).

Other disadvantages may be related to the declining price anomaly whereby the organization may lose revenue just for the sake of maintaining its status as a legitimate organization.

For grandmas treat, CompUSA website concept would be the most ideal, this is mainly because there is no declining price anomaly, prices are fixed and it becomes easier for the organization to anticipate on its revenues.

According to Michael Schwind (2006, p.28)Dynamic pricing is applicable to the concepts employed by organizations such as CompUSA because it allows the adaptation of resources in the resource system according to demand function and current system load which makes it easier to price goods according to seasons such as Christmas, Easter and back to school offers.

In addition to this, the storefront model is easier to set up because there are hosted solutions available which can be bought as a package, you just load your products and things are up and running, the organization may sit and let their service provider do everything for them or go for a hosted solution in order to incorporate their website into their existing I.T infrastructure. There is no declining price anomaly hence easier to anticipate and plan for the future.