Comparative Analysis Of B2B Model Websites Of Financial Service Providers In Australia

Background on B2B E-commerce Model

The B2B or the business to business model of e-commerce has been chosen for the purpose of this assignment report (Huang and Benyoucef 2013). Business-to-business is one where two or more business organizations involve in business transactions among themselves. This is generally the scenario that involves the business engagement between manufacturers and wholesalers or wholesalers and retailers. Rather than dealing with individual customers, these business models allow different companies to build a process chain through which a free and regular flow of data and services can be maintained. In this report, the B2B model has been chosen to suffice the needs of a service based industry. Financial service providers based in Australia are affording new heights through the use of websites in order to spread their business and serve in the respective industry (Ennew, Waite and Waite 2013).

Laudon and Traver (2013), states that B2B e-commerce has fostered well over past few years. Forrester (2017), expects that the B2B e-commerce service market will hit an all-time highest of $1.1 trillion U.S. Dollars within the next 5 years which accounts for almost 13% of the entire B2B business process. The companies that prefer to promote their business on web platforms like websites or mobile applications, allow their clients to learn more about the organization, the business that they deal with and other working details. Moreover, the websites act as a brand communication medium through which other companies can contact them using the online chat supports, email or through calls.

The first financial business website that has been chosen for the purpose of this report is Azure Group Australia. The URL to their website is https://www.azuregroup.com.au/.

The second considered website is from the Deloitte group. The Australian branch of Deloitte, Deloitte Australia has their operating website that be reached through the following URL https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en.html.

According to Azuregroup.com.au. (2018), Azure Group Australia was established back in 2002 with the motive to serve the other business organizations of Australia. Their current business procedure has been inspired by the B2B e-commerce model that has helped them not only to reach new heights in their field of business but also create a brand image before the entire world. They have successfully managed to spread the words of their presence before the entire business world. They have the options for their clients who are specifically large or small business farms to contact them through mail or call and then chalk out business deals accordingly. They focus on taking up newer business projects from the biggest brands from around Australia. They have their own cloud service through which they provide bookkeeping services to their clients. In addition, their leading managing partner, Michael Derin claims that have the earnest passion to help Australian business forums to reach the epitome of their success and get ranked among the leading companies. They plan to do this by educating and developing units and concepts in their financial management system and by providing the best of services. This proves their will to excel in the Business-to-business model of financial and accounting services.

The Two Considered Websites – Azure Group and Deloitte Australia

The Deloitte group of industries is one of the most famous financial and accounting service providers in the world. They have high reputation and is also a crucial name in the Fortune-500 list of companies. They have throughout provided financial services to their clients who are mainly small to large business, institutional or welfare organizations. Like any other country they have also succeeded in establishing a firm girth over the Australian business markets. Deloitte Australia is regarded as the brand under which tons of collaborations take place with several professionals in Australia to provide economics, financial advisory and human capital, audit, tax and other technology-based services. The Australian Deloitte group has more than 790 partners and a record revenue is generated of 2.013 billion dollars in the financial year of 2018 (Deloitte Australia 2018). They provide service in all fields of business that range from government organizations to health care organizations and private organizations. They prefer to discuss with their client the details about their business, formulate the issue or the problems that are being dealt with and provide the best of the solutions and reports.

The Azure Group has their aims set to achieve great heights in their prospect of business.  They have also grown over the years in virtue of their enormously successful business collaborations with various companies all over the nation. They were originally created as a chartered accountant farm back in 2002, however, over the time they have consistently grown with time to meet the financial business lifecycle needs of their clients from initiation till exit. Some of the most commonly followed business values of the company are as follows:

• Trust and Respect: They aim towards promoting their business and deals in a way, which encourages a respectful and trustworthy environment. Dealing with the most fragile form of information that is financial statistics, trust building is a necessary element in the process.
• Achieving goals: They focus on pushing over the limits to achieve their goals and targets of serving their clients in all possible circumstances. Providing financial solutions is not what they can stop at, they have made their services reach higher levels, where they also pledge to provide post-delivery support, solving more queries from their clients and maintain a coherent relationship and business prospect (Azuregroup.com.au. 2018).
• Cloud Support: Their cloud support system allows their client to keep backup of their financial records in the cloud for their all-time usage. They can also maintain bookkeeping records and update in the same place with real time access for the clients. This is a very unique service delivery option that they have chosen to implement and is also working like a charm.

Having mentioned the goals of their business a whole, it is also necessary to highlight the website goals, which clearly depicts every necessary detail in a clear format. Their website can be represented as one of the best examples on how to manage a website in order to spread financial services with e-commerce outlook.

As for Deloitte Australia, being a branch one of the largest financial service providing companies in the world they already had their goals and business highlights set. Deloitte Australia thrives too make an impact that matters, not only to their aspects of business but also positively motivates the business modules of their partners or clients. They claim to have been driven by their desire to provide the utmost perfect and positive solutions to their clients, people or communities that they are dealing with. They intend to serve their clients with Assurance and advisory guidance, tax advices, financial guidance, economical reports, risk analysis and guidance and so on (Deloitte Australia 2018).

Comparison of Website Features and Ratings

They have also managed to formulate a way to educate the general mass about various aspects of the changing financial environment with the help of rolling sections that showcase latest news and updates in the respective fields. This helps the clients and other general people to educate themselves with basic initial knowledge about the field they are dealing with or allow them to excel on their own. Deloitte Australia has been successful in committing to the name or the brand that they are meant to uphold.

1. Website URL

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	5	https://www.azuregroup.com.au/ clearly depicts the business name and the geographical area of service.
Deloitte Australia	3	The Deloitte Australia’s URL https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en.html is however a drawback for the website. They do not have an independent domain for their website that directly takes the user to the website. However, they allow sub-domain URL access to their website.

2. Search Engine Optimization

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	5	The Azure website can be easily found when searched with their name in Google, Yahoo, and Bing and so on.
Deloitte Australia	5	Deloitte Australia web link can also be spotted on Google and Bing when searched, directly. They also come up when the results for top Australian finance service providers are searched for.

3. Website Information

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	4	They provide enough information about the services that they provide. They also have ample amendments in their website that can lead the client to contact them freely. However, they did not provide any details about the brands that they have worked with and the budget details of the project that they handle.
Deloitte Australia	4	Similarly, this website too has all the necessary information embedded, however budget information is missing. They prefer to talk monetary terms over the call or mails.

4. User Information gathering

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	3	They do not have much scope of user information gathering. When the client or user fills the contact form they are only required to fill in basic identification details.
Deloitte Australia	5	This website has an exceptional way of handling user information. They tend to accept user information that will exhibit all the basic business details of the client.

6. Website Trust

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	4	They have thoroughly made sure that they can build a trustworthy community with their clients by mentioning the points that they ensure that they follow at work.
Deloitte Australia	5	They have achieved better trust recruiting options through the use of names of big brands that they have worked with (Andress 2014). The educational information of latest financial news also helps to drag clients to their website.

7. Addressing legal aspects

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	2	They did not put in any information regarding the legal aspects in the website.
Deloitte Australia	5	They have addressed all the necessary legal aspects involved with the website as a separate navigation area in the footer. All necessary points can be found in this section.

8. Accessibility

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	5	The website has a pretty nice interface which is not only accessible from widescreen computer devices but also in accessible from mobile devices. The information on the website is also easily accessible on any device.
Deloitte Australia	5	The website has a pretty nice interface which is not only accessible from widescreen computer devices but also in accessible from mobile devices. The information on the website is also easily accessible on any device (Frain 2012).

9. Cultural aspects

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	4	The use of .au in the domain helps to inject a sense of national pride within the locals. The language that has been used is simple and well directed towards the Australian people.
Deloitte Australia	4	Language and domain names are suitable for Australian users.

10. Product Information

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	4	They have provided ample information about the services that they provide. Only negative aspect is that they have not mentioned any price related information.
Deloitte Australia	4	They too have all product or service related information, however no budget information is provided. The clients will have to communicate with the company through the contact section for project price quotation.

11. Customization

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	2	This field do not have much customization options needed.
Deloitte Australia	2	This field do not have much customization options needed.

12. Experience personation

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	4	Newsletters allow the business to maintain a healthy business-consumer relationship with the clients and allow in the promotion of special offers.
Deloitte Australia	2	No such promotional events spotted.

13. Support channels

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	3	Support can be primarily accessed only by contacting the company via calls or mails.
Deloitte Australia	3	Same as above.

14. Ease of information access

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	5	Information about almost every aspect of the website and the business is readily available.
Deloitte Australia	5	Every information and fact is available at a click’s distance on the website.

15. Clarity

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	5	All shared information are labelled with dates and sources.
Deloitte Australia	5	They share blog reports to support their information and also has clear and appropriate information on the website.

16. Website Navigation

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	4	A very simple navigation bar is provided.
Deloitte Australia	5	A detailed navigation bar is provided with multiple sub navigation areas.

17. Website look and feel

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	5	A very simple look has been used with a serene sense of graphical, colour or fonts. The video on the home page draws audience attention.
Deloitte Australia	5	They have used rich graphical contents and a very interesting group of colour and font combinations.

18. User Community maintenance

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	5	Allowing the clients and or website visitors to subscribe to their newsletter they thrive to maintain a loyal group of consumers. They can use these information to make promotions and spread financial insights. Blogs help a handful too. They also have alumni forums and meet.
Deloitte Australia	5	They provide updates about the nation’s or worlds changing economic aspects to educate the mass. This helps to maintain a consumer forum for the same. They also allow social media indulgence using Twitter. Blogs help a handful too (Riemer, Scifleet and Reddig 2012.).

19. Server up time and other functionalities

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	5	The website’s server access time is pretty low, that is it can be loaded onto the local machine very fast. It barely takes a second or two to be loaded on a machine in any part of the world with a decent internet connection (Al-Qeisi et al. 2014).
Deloitte Australia	4	Their loading time is efficiently low as well but when compared to Azure, they will lag behind by a few seconds. This is because of the graphically rich content that they exhibit on their website.

20. Web browser accessibility

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	5	The website can be easily accessed on and from any web browser platform. The website performs as expected on Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari as well.
Deloitte Australia	4	They too have implemented techniques to allow cross-browser accessibility to their website. However, the graphics seem to underperform when opened on Internet Explorer.

21. Payment procedures

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	1	None.
Deloitte Australia	1	None.

22. Delivery options

Website	Rating	Comment
Azure Group Australia	5	Their cloud service platform works as the primary delivery option where the information is stored, accessed and analysed with the needed problems being solved to delivery.
Deloitte Australia	3	They have not mentioned any information about the delivery of their solutions.

From the above report and analysis it can be stated that both websites have tried their best to implement the Business-to-business model of financial services through an e-commerce platform. Both websites have highlighted all the necessary information that is required by the clients to indulge into business with them and then carry forward with the projects. However, Deloitte Australia can be given better points over Azure Group when it comes to preferring only one from the two. This is because Azure has missed out on many of the important aspects of e-commerce business as can be concluded from the above analysis table. Deloitte has been there in this business for long and has learnt as they have grown. Business forums will generally will to deal with them owing to the variety of information that they have shared on their website and moreover, the community that they pledge to maintain using their blogs and social media optimization.

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