Ecommerce Initiative Essay Example for Free

Ecommerce Initiative Essay This paper focuses on pointing out the way planning electronic commerce initiatives. In order to support the ideas that are going to be shown, four online articles will be cited. The articles are: Ethics in advertising by Dr. Gomathi Viswanathan, Advertising Regulation – How to avoid inciting the FTC’s wrath by Jay N. Sawyer, and New Online Marketing Regulation – The dos and don’ts by Alan J. Grainger. E-commerce initiatives Planning electronic commerce initiatives: There are steps that one should follow when planning for the e-business initiatives when one is using markets, processes, services and products that already exist. The first step is to come up with the e-business initiative objectives which are the accomplishments that the business intends to meet. The decisions about the objectives that the business should consider includes the risks that may arise when the initiative is being carried out and the expected costs and benefits of carrying out the initiative. The objective should also consider the way resources are to be allocated when carrying out the initiative (Schneider, 2011). One should also analyze the scope that the initiative functions and this involves the use of online specialists that would help in the implementation of the electronic commerce initiative. This should involve the use of the data analytics and also the visual designers, people who will be involved in the interaction design and information design. One should also involve the use of specialists in marketing channel who would help in ensuring that the initiative is well promoted through the best marketing channel. The organization should invest in the important functions that would help in promoting the online business (Mckenzie, n. d). The team carrying out the initiative should have good communication channels that would help the organization to meet their objectives and to promote change in the organization. The team should have strong leaders that would help push for the implementation of the initiative and those that will ensure teamwork so as to meet the set deadline. The leaders should be able to report problems that arise during the planning period so as to prevent faults that would affect the online business (Mckenzie, n. d). The business processes, planning and implementation should be integrated and they should all be carried out online. It is also important to come up with a plan that would help the team members perform their tasks depending on the set plan. The organization should also ensure that they are able to retain the employees because there is a great demand for the people with talents in digital retail. This is because most of the consumers prefer shopping online and therefore, most businesses prefer using electronic business. Most of the companies have come up with electronic commerce initiatives and therefore when one is planning for this initiative, it is important to hire qualified personnel that will help provide ideas for competitive advantage (Mckenzie, n. d). When carrying out the plan, the team should include the performance review, deployment, testing of the initiative, implementation and feasibility analysis. The company should also make the initiative a priority and there should also be the analysis of how sustainable the initiative should be regarding the benefits it will provide. The managers should use the needs of the customers so as to ensure that their needs are met when planning is taking place and also it would help the company to identify the type of market segment to focus on the plan should be one that ensures that products that are offered are delivered on time and that there should be the best way to respond to the consumer queries (Muylle Basu, 2007). The people using e-commerce can also form joint ventures if they plan to carry out business online. People believe that these associations help in reducing costs of marketing and ensure that integrity and trust exists when carrying out business. People tend to rely on external and internal resources in maintaining and developing resources that are web-based. Associations that are more mature involve strategic partners and the core staff. Joint ventures are important in e-commerce because they encourage financial investment and competencies such as marketing, management and technology. It is therefore important for the organization to analyze the competitors before forming the associations (Lang, 2000). The organization should also identify and measure the benefits of initiating electronic commerce and that the managers should carry out the measurements by setting objectives that can be measured and the ones that that can increase the satisfaction of customers. In case the objective of the company is to build their brand, then the goals should be measured in terms of opinion polls and surveys from research that has been carried out. The aim of this is to increase the companys brand awareness. The company should come up with a team to carry out market research so as to find out the effects of a sales program and a marketing program. This team would help the organization to evaluate and to set goals for the initiatives of electronic commerce (Schneider, 2011). The company should also link the strategies with the objectives such as upstream and downstream strategies that would help the organization to focus on generating value and reducing costs and to improve value offered to customers. The initiatives inspire businessmen to carry out activities such as building web portals and virtual communities and also to manage the supply chain. The businesses are also inspired to purchase services and products, understand the needs of the consumers, and advertise their products and also to sell their services and products. These initiatives also help in improving the marketing programs that already exist and create brand awareness for the organization (Schneider, 2011).