E-Business and E-Commerce Web Apps Essay

Transforming a brick-and-mortar business to an e business is not an easy task. The first step in creating an e-business is to conduct a market research on the competition we need to gather information such as shipping costs, price points, web navigation shopping cart procedures, and alternate revenue streams. The next step would be to create a detailed business plan with sales projections, budgets, goals, and actions. The third step is creating a Domain name that reflects your business for example: UNFO.com/ UNFO.ORG. After this step we have clearly identified the target market in the different fishing towns in Michigan, then an advertising budgets for online strategies, we also need to establish different distribution channels of the merchandise if shipping is required. Then we UNFO need to determine if the company is going to sell goods or services or advertising. One of the most important aspect of the customer information that is going to be handle would be Data Management, since we are handling customer data, such as credit cards information, mailing addresses, it is essential to have a published policy detailing how the information would be gathered, stored, and secured. A well effective return policy would be clearly stated and acknowledged by the customers. The other important aspect is weather the data will be updated and maintained in-house or outsource support. At last we will need to implement a Customer Service department and determine the methods for online customer service. Analyzing the market and the recent emerging technologies it would be recommended to implement a fully integrated ERP, UNFO will have a distinct advantage an internal transaction engine in place to deliver on the promises of the company’s Web pages, and the ability to truly show â€Å"one face to the customer,† not only in front-end Web-page design, but also in the way Web-based functions integrate with  internal â€Å"back-office† functions. This integration means that Web-based entry flows directly into real-time available-to-promise and order fulfillment. For suppliers, it means that the company truly is able to manage the flow of materials into the production process to the advantage of both parties rather than merely to push inventory onto the supplier. Implementing an effective Internet marketing strategy UNFO will follow the 10 online marketing avenues that craft-based Web site. Participate in craft-related forums building relationships. These relationships come from the customer. Drive articles to the web site with article links, issue an online press releases for new fishing products or services, develop a link exchange program with related web sites, use click based advertising on related sites , and register the bookmarks of your business online with companies. The enhancing the customer service delivery also involves ensuring security for communications and protecting customer information, using VoIP provides less-expensive alternatives for the different hubs, implementing a secure access for remote employees secure remote communication channels would need to be implemented , UNFO would need to use a virtual private link between the employees and the remote network or a VPN. Also secure web protocols to provide a way to authenticate the clients and servers on the web to protect the integrity of the communication, (PPTP) Point to Point Tunneling Protocol creates a secure communication tunnel between the two points it also enables authenticated and encrypted transmissions between the clients and the servers, we can also implement (L2TP) Layer two tunneling protocol and it uses tunneling to deliver the data, also implementing (IPSecs) Internet Protocol Security to secure communications between systems on the network as well as outside to the different hubs or towns. UNFO needs to maintain a highly available and secure E-mail and web site hosting using the most advance methods in today’s industry for example: using redundant hardware configuration such as (RAID) for hard disks, multiple memory, and failover servers, hardening applications using the latest service pack and patches to prevent software failure, have all up to date antivirus, intrusion detection and protection systems, use secure protocols like the ones mentioned earlier, implement and use (UPS) for power outages to protect the web servers , and use a remote network location if the primary location be compromised the second location  can take over. One important part of E-Commerce is maintaining stringent site security, confidentiality for the customers, integrity, and availability, also a secure system must contain authentication verification of the user, Authorization, allowing manipulation of the resources in a specific way and Encryption for records and transactions.