Question

You are a CIO for an organization that is considering transitioning and expanding into a mobile market.  The organization that you are the CIO for is a retail organization selling to business and consumers, YOU can define what type of retail market they are in (i.e. selling software, selling traditional retail goods, selling services, etc.).  The organization currently has an e-commerce and brick/mortar presence.

The organization is getting pressure to expand into the mobile market and simplify the purchasing of its services.  You have been asked to:

1. Evaluate what aspects of a mobile e-commerce strategy would be beneficial for the organization competitively. Consider some of the following…
   1. How does this simplify a consumer experience?
   2. How would this allow the organization to expand into new markets?
   3. How would this allow the organization to drive profitability?
2. Evaluate what aspects of mobility would impact or would be liable to impact the existing IT infrastructure and/or operations of the organization. Consider how this would impact…
   1. business workflow (how does this change the interactions with your CRM, SCM, ERP and other systems?)
   2. culture (how is this going to change the culture of the organization?)
   3. management structure (think about how you would manage this transition…. how would you change the organization?)
   4. ….. (what other aspects may impact this transition?)

As part of this mobile transformation, the organization has asked how you can improve its online presence.  Consider how you…

1. Would manage the organization’s online reputation and how it would change (or if it would change) by deploying a mobile strategy.
   1. How would you use advertising and mobile strategies to improve your communication with customers?
   2. How would you improve management in a mobile review-based environment?
   3. ….. (what other aspects would you need to manage?)

In your own words describe how you would solve the situations presented to you.  Do some research and find organizations that draw parallels to the above questions and how they leveraged the mobile market to improve their competitive position and how they used technology to manage their online reputation.

The deliverable is for you to provide a cohesive solution to the situations presented to you.  You should minimally have 3 sections to your solution.

Use your research to draw parallels to support your assertions.  Generalize each of these instances as far as you consider reasonable, and explain how IT needs to prepare for a transition to the mobile market.  You will want to do wide-ranging reading to refine, justify, and back up your generalizations.  If you like, categorize them.

This assignment reminds me of a situation that happened to me a couple of years ago…

I remember a time where we had an organization come to our executive board meeting where I work.  The organization was purchasing more equipment from us, and I was meeting with the CIO.  The CIO was telling me a story about how they were moving to a new mobile strategy for their retail organization.

The organization spent about 2M purchasing new equipment to roll out the mobile e-commerce strategy.  The organization rolled out the mobile e-commerce application and within 3 months began to run into scalability issues.  The organization went back to their IT department and was told they would need to spend another 1M to purchase new hardware and about 3 months to get the equipment up and running.  This was too much time and money for the CIO to spend.

The CIO needed another solution.  He called Amazon and within 72 hours had the additional resources he needed to scale his new e-commerce application.  Many people in his IT department, who were against this move, quit, and the remaining helped to manage the relationship with Amazon.

This was a very good decision for the CIO, he met his financial, time, and scale goals for his business.

Your assignment should be about: ~8 pages, single-spaced of 12-point type excluding appendices, title pages, etc

Sample Paper

Dundex Company is a retail organization dealing with the sale and distribution of open-source domestic assistant devices to consumers in different parts of the word. The companies are headquartered in the UK and operate other subsidiaries in India, Japan, and China. Dundex operates an e-commerce platform as well as physical stores in the identified areas. From its good reputation in the e-commerce sector and a well-defined workforce, the company has managed to achieve most of its goals. To further enhance its competitiveness in the sector, the company seeks to venture into the e-commerce platform to improve the convenience of its services and reach more customers. This report is an evaluation of the M-commerce strategies that can be adopted by the organization to enhance its competitiveness in the M-commerce sector. Specifically, the paper explores the

Assumptions

Dundex currently operates physical stores that are mostly situated in large stores dealing in the sale of electronic devices. The company does not operate in smaller stores in various locations in their country of operation.

HomeAssistant operates an e-commerce platform that is only accessible to PC users. The company also relies on Paypal and Visa cards to process customers’ payments.

2. Mobile M-commerce Strategies Competitiveness

The advancement in technology has brought in new ways of communication and doing business over the internet. M-commerce is one of the approaches that have been supported by the new technology to improve the business experience and outcome through the internet. According to Tan & Teo (2002), mobile commerce refers to the process of selling or buying goods and services through mobile apps. The use of such technology in e-commerce has grown significantly following the wide adoption of mobile phones. It is reported that smartphones are indispensable items in the lives of humans owing to the fact that they are used in solving nearly every problem (Tan & Teo (2005). The wide use of smartphones makes it a suitable platform for supporting online transactions between producers and consumers in various settings.

The simplicity and practicality of smartphone use in e-commerce have also enhanced its adoption in the retail sector. According to (Tan & Teo, 2005) smartphone is simple to use and supports a number of systems that can be easily integrated into the M-commerce platform. Also, smartphones have an enhanced level of practicality and convenience in reference to online retail marketing since they allow customers to have access to various featured by just a few clicks. This explains the wide use of the M-commerce platform and its significant benefits in supporting online retail activities.

M-commerce is a form of e-commerce that is increasingly growing and is reported to have attained a 6% growth in the recent past. This type of e-commerce is expected to account for nearly 53% of all the sales made from the e-commerce platforms. As indicated in figure 1 below, M-commerce has reported a significant growth in recent years and is expected to have significant contributions towards the sales of an organization. As much as a company focuses on building a strong e-commerce platform, it is important that it invests in an M-commerce platform to further enhance its overall performance and profitability.

Figure 1: The percentage increase in the use of the Mobile app in e-commerce

References

1. Tan, C. N., & Teo, T. W. (2002). From e-commerce to m-commerce: The power of the mobile Internet. In Internet management issues: A global perspective(pp. 27-53). IGI Global.
2. Tan, C. N., & Teo, T. W. (2005). Mobile Telecommunications and M-Commerce Applications. In Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, First Edition(pp. 1984-1988). IGI Global