Challenges Faced By E-commerce Industry And Mitigation Through Information Systems

Challenges Faced by E-commerce Industry

E-commerce websites have emerged as one of the favourite destination for the people for different purposes from transaction to shopping. With the surge of internet users are the traffic on the e-commerce sites are increasing and witnessing at the demand for e-commerce multiple organisations have jumped in the field of e-commerce. The competition and huge traffic has also created problems for the e-commerce organisations. However, the challenges for the online business are mitigatable and one of the technology that can offer its assistance in the mitigation process is the Information system. The devised report will discuss the challenges faced by the e-commerce industry and how IS can assist in mitigating the identified challenges. To pursue with the discussed objective, the paper will take consideration of an online furniture shop and attempt at developing a suitable plan for the IS.

Online businesses are witnessing a major surge in their sales however, some products are available which the customers believe they should buy through traditional means and one of such means is furniture. Hence, the online furniture websites are not succeeding fulfilling their organisational objective. Additionally, the process from purchase to delivery of the furniture is also very complexed and various other challenges are also involved in it. However, the deemed challenges can be mitigated through the adoption of IS. According to the need of online furniture business’s needs The IT infrastructure must be developed. Hence, the IS that will be pursued in the discussed paper should support SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to surge the traffic over the websites. Additionally, the system should also be capable of mitigating the complexity involved in the purchase to delivery process for which supply chain management, customer relationship management, inventory management and accounting information along with several other factors must be supported by the system. The support for data analytics to predict the needs and desires of the online visitors would also enhance the sales of the organisation. Hence, taking the above facts in consideration the system for the online furniture shop will be devised.

The objective of the proposed paper is to devise a plan that could mitigate the most prominent that an online furniture website faces. Hence, taking the above-stated fact into consideration the problem statement for the proposed paper is to devise an IS system model that could mitigate the challenges for an online furniture shop and in the process offer the organisation a competitive advantage while maintaining its sustainability.

Information Systems: A Proposed Solution

The proposed report has played its focus on the IS to mitigate the challenges faced by an online furniture shop. The reason for suggesting the IS as the most appropriate solution to mitigate the challenges faced by the online furniture website lays basis on the fact that IS is an umbrella under which different technological achievements rests. The accounting information systems which falls under the umbrella of IS will assist the deemed organisation to omit the challenges associated purchase to delivery process. It will automate the purchasing process reducing the chances of error and will also be able to maintain the supply chain adequately to deliver the organisational offering to the consumer in-time and in proper condition which will enhance the goodwill of the organisation. Followed by the inventory management which will ensure that the organisation is capable of delivering the goods in-time and even ensures that the organisational resources are well maintained. The online furniture website does not witness a regular flow of customers because furniture’s are not purchased every day and hence, it becomes mandatory for the deemed organisations to maintain a sound consumer base by providing different offers and adequate service. The IS can even offer assistance in the discussed area through it CRM (customer relationship feature) which will collect the data of the customers and devise strategies that may include loyalty programs, discounts and others to keep the customer happy and satisfied.

Additionally, the IS will also assist the organisation in the transaction processes which will include payment made for buying of stocks and the payments received from the customers. The deemed process will be simplified and secure because as the transactions will be made online so, the troubles of the banks will be avoided along with proper documentation of the transaction processes. The documentation of the documents will assist the organisation in the auditing processes and will also ensure that the organisation stays away from the legal or tax trouble which cites adverse effect on the organisation. Multiple other benefits are associated with the adoption of IS in an organisation. In conclusion it can be stated that the adoption of IS in the discussed organisation will offer significant benefit to the online furniture shop. Hence, it can be stated that the proposed method is feasible and should be considered by the organisations.

The objective of the paper is to devise a plan for online furniture shop to assist the online furniture shop in mitigating the challenges that have been discussed in the sections above. The proposed IS system should also offer the organisation competitive advantage in the market and assist the organisation in maintaining its sustainability in the long run. Another significant need is the feasibility of the system for which the following task had been done in which the feasibility of the system has been discussed. To discuss the feasibility, the paper has offered the functional and non-functional requirements of the system along with providing an dataflow diagram, event table and the use case diagram of the proposed IS.

Functional and Non-functional Requirements of the IS

Number	Functional requirement	Description
1	Data protection and management	One of the core needs of the IS system would be data protection and management. The reason for stating the above fact lays on the fact that data are one of the core resources of the organisation that assist in formulating of strategies and maintaining sustainability and hence, the system should offer data protection and management.
2	Communication and reporting	The system should support the communication option between the internal and external stakeholders of the organisation. Additionally, the reports developed due to transactions should also be supported by the system to ensure proper management of organisational resources.
3	Managing resources	The system should offer support to the management processes of the organisational resources which includes CRM, inventory management, accounts management and others.
4	E=Commerce	The system is proposed for an online shop and hence, the system should support the online transaction process so that the e-commerce processes could be done readily.
5	Authentication	The system should support authentication of the users that had been authorised by the server to use the source.

                                                                              Table 2: Functional requirement of the IS

                                                                                    (Source: Created by Author)

Sl No.	Non-functional requirements	Description
1	Scalability	The system should be capable of handling overloads during high traffic situations.
2	Security	The system should offer a high security level to ensure its reliability and dependability.
3	Flexibility	The discussed system should not limit itself to the core functions specified, it should show scope for further improvements and assistance that it can offer to the users.

                                                                              Table 3: Non-functional requirements of the IS

                                                                                        (Source: Created by Author)

The discussed IS system will assist the organisation to organise the organisational operations which will assist the organisation to serve its visitors with great accuracy and grace. It will lead to enhancement of the customer base of the organisation. Additionally, the system will manage the organisational resources with great accuracy which will lead to proper utilisation of resources which will offer sustainability and competitive advantage to the organisation. All, the process of the organisation will be automated which will lead to prevention of any kind of frauds that the organisation may face. The prevention of frauds will be prevented due to documentation of each processes; as all the process of the organisation will be done through automation the system will report it to server to maintain a database which will assist in auditing processes and also prevent legal trouble for organisation.

                                 

                                                                                                   Figure 1: Data Flow Diagram of the IS in E-Commerce

Dataflow Diagram, Event Table and Use Case Diagram

                                                                                                             (Source: Created by Author using MS Visio)

The dataflow diagram above have cited a general process of the online furniture website. The order to shipping and payment process of the organisation has been discussed. The first step in the diagram shows how the customer makes the order after which the system drive the information to the user database from where two steps are taken. The first step of the process is to do the payment process for which with proper credentials the users pays the amount to the website from a payment gateway. Post-payment the information is send to the inventory from where the order requested by the customer is shipped to their address completing the organisational operation.

Sl No:	Event	Trigger	Source	Use Case	Response	Destination
1.	Search item	Select item	Customer	Scan item	Items available	Customer
2.	Sale report	Receipts	Governing body	Sale report	Data management	Inventory
3.	Deliver stock	Purchase stock	Supply Chain	Supply Stock	Buying of stocks	Governing body
4.	Manage resources	Inventory management	Inventory	Update inventory	Update the inventory	Inventory
5.	Receive payment	Debit, Credit card, COD	Customer	Payment	Payment process	Accounts System

                                                                                                                      Table 4: Event Table

                                                                                                                (Source: Created by Author)

                                                          

                                                                                                                            Figure 2: Use Case Diagram of the IS

                                                                                                                          (Source: Created by Author using MS Visio)

The use case model above shows the operations within the proposed IS off the organisation. It had showed the relation between the customer, inventory, accounting, supply and governing entities. The governing entities and the supply are engaged in the stock management processes where after the transaction the governing bodies sends a purchase report to inventory while the supply is paid by the accounts department. The inventory system than updates the inventory stock and the customer can scan through the items and select the item they wish to purchase. After selecting the item, the customer selects the mode of payment which could be from debit or credit card or cash on delivery option. After the mode of payment is done, the accounting system ensures that the payment process is successful after which the further steps of delivering the item is done completing the whole operation.