Impact Of Information Technology On Business: A Research Proposal

Significance of Information Technology in Business

Discuss about the Robust Optimization to Inventory Management.

This research proposal provides a detailed overview of the research on the impact of Information Technology on business. The purpose of the research is to develop a technology-based solution for ABC Company, which would help the business to meet the growing demand and create a global exposure. It is certain that technology and innovation associated with it has changed the way businesses were done before. This research proposal describes the issues of the research and findings provided by the scholars in the previous studies with respect to implementation of information technology in business. The review of literature has been done by involving the findings of 15 different journals. The report also states the type of techniques chosen for the research.

The rapid development of technology and adoption of new trends in business have pushed the marketers to develop new business approach to remain sustainable in today’s dynamic marker environment. Phelps and Watt (2014) also mentioned that almost 59% of overall corporate businesses have adopted information technology to their business. (Vom et al. 2014) particularly mentioned that especially, the small and medium size firms have mostly shown the initiatives of incorporating information technology because e-commerce- an aspect of IT falls into the business to consumer (B2C) category, which includes online retail or online shopping.  It is usually referred to online purchases from Bricks and Mortar retailers and web online retailing.  Morganti, Dablanc and Fortin (2014) in their experimental study have provided the figure that almost 1.66 billion people around the world have made online purchasing. However, there are many businesses that are yet to incorporate such trend and they are still going with the traditional business procedures.

The major problem associated with traditional business procedures is that the business is not able to meet the growing demands of business. In the case of ABC Company, the major issue is that inefficiency in dealing with the customer demands have marked the decline in the profitability ration of the business.  So, traditional business process of ABC Company led to poor growth of profits, loss of potential customers because understanding convenience of online purchasing such as delivery to door step, the customers flock to online shopping. In this context, Taiminen and Karjaluoto (2015) mentioned that business that do not incorporate Information Technology will lag behind in the competition.  Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a research to learn the importance of Information Technology in business and approaches such as online purchasing, which can be derived from IT. The proposed research will include a primary analysis by considering the primary data, which will be collected by performing qualitative data collection method. Nevertheless, the study does not include a comparative analysis between organizations in which one has adopted Information Technology and other one is ABC Company running operation with traditional procedures.

Impact of Online Shopping on Business

The enhancement and innovation in the technology has a strong impact on the working structure and function of business. Due to limited adoption of technological trends, currently the working structured of food stores is inefficient in meeting the increasing demands of customers. The organization should take the initiative of transforming their working tactics with the innovative project plan (Laudon and Laudon 2015). It explosion of trends and technologies have accelerated the technique of adopting the information technology to enhance the degree of customer satisfaction which leads to increase in profitability. The top executives of the company should take part in making decision about the required innovation in the working platform of the organization. The following are the key research questions.

• What are the functional issues in existing process of business in ABC Company?
• What are the technological approaches adopted by the competitors?
• What technology-based solution can be developed to address the issues identified in traditional business procedures?

• To critically evaluate the existing functional issues of business of ABC Company
• To identify the Information Technology approaches adopted by the competitors
• To develop suitable technology-based business approach to address the issues identified in traditional business procedures

The third objective can also be treated as the major aim of the proposed research which deals with handling the business activities related to taking orders of customers, shipping and delivery services, preparing the invoices of customers, providing log in credentials to customers for security purpose and other related activities.

This section of the research provides a detailed analysis, which revolves around the facts and findings related to adoption of information system such as online shopping, customer’s attitudes online shopping and conventional business process. In addition to these, other significant areas of information system relevant to today’s business context have been discussed in the following. The review of literature has been performed by considering 15 different journal articles.

It is an undeniable fact that technology has made people’s life easy since its inception. Technology is everywhere; especially in business, a significant form of technology such Information technology, has a great role. Technology provide a more easy business solution such as fast transaction, track of data, creating customer invoice, managing customer relation, identifying consumer behaviour and many other aspects. However, DesJardins and McCall, (2014) mentioned that business that did not adopt technology will certainly lag behind the state of competition. For example, a small business with extending goals will find it difficult to position the brand and attract the customers because the business reach is limited to a certain areas, whereas a small business with the adoption of technological trends can approach customers in the shortest period because it can focus on the customers belonging to remote areas (Shanthi and Desti 2015).  In addition to this, in traditional process of business, the quality of service may not be aligned with the desired quality because in traditional process, it takes a lot of time for a business to understand customer requirements.

IT Adoption and Business Growth

 Moreover, if a business wants to expand in a new or global market, it has to follow the market trends, as in traditional process, the goals of reaching a wide market may take a lot of time. The changing trends of market may confuse the business and identification of dynamic needs could be challenging in traditional process, as, hence, marketers dot not have any idea regarding the traits and characteristics of customers and competitors in the sector (Chakraborty et al. 2016)The major issue that is usually found that working structure and the functions of traditional business is inefficient in meeting customer needs because for example, the employers and the organizational members are facing issues in managing the demand of customers. The customers tend to ask for the delivery at the doorstep while the business find it difficult to maintain smooth and assured delivery. The business finds it difficult to deal with the customer demands because tracking customers’ demand record with existing business process is challenging and time consuming and hence leading to decline in the profitability (Moore 2017).

Anesbury et al.  (2016) conducted a study and found that particularly, the small retailers are adopting Information Technology for their entrepreneurial venture. Frim this particular article, it has been learn that three antecedents are positioned to influence IT adoption in business such as employer’s perception of the relative advantage of using information technology, social expectation of information technology as well as the owner of innovativeness in dealing with the business. Information technology provides three significant mode of business such as Business to Consumers (B2C), Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Government (B2G) but between these three, business to consumers is probably the popular trend of business (Ta,  Esper and Hofer 2015).

The major e-commerce giant such as Walmart and Amazon.com are the greatest example of business to consumers.  Sohaib and Kang (2014) mentioned that adoption of Business to Consumer ecommerce model has become a long lasting trend of business because, due to advancement in technology, people now have access to technological devices such a laptop, computer and mobile phone. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics, the percentage smartphone users in 2017, was around 82.1% and this growth is reflected in the business (Tam and Clarke 2015). The marketers understand that business remains profitable when the path to reach the customers are easy and time-effective.  Online media or e-commerce platforms provides the maximum reach, when it comes to approaching customers from a remote area. This enable the firm to generate desired number of sales and profits. For example, Woolworths online sales has hit AU$2.9 billion in 2016 (Cavallo 2017). On the other side, Wal-Mart’s US online sales increased by 44% in 2017 (Yu and Deng 2017). In this context, Schultz and Block (2015) commented that with the help of information technology, the marketers receive customers’ background information such as their taste, preference, age, income proof, location and this large set of information help marketers to design their product and strategy. To be more specific and increase customer’s value to business, the markets design individual deals and offers to attract the respective customers.

Adoption of E-commerce Model for Business

It has been identified that revenue of the business are expected to grow because Information budgetary waters is presently calm and the advantages of Information Technology is gearing up to adopt new tech in the coming future. In this context, Goyal (2014) commented that as economic trends tend to continue upward, organizational revenues are expected to grow and moreover, almost 60% respondents tend to expect corporate earning to enhance the business in the coming year.  Retailers tend to base their business procedures on the recent trends and adapt the trends when required to fit the new and innovative the way of doing business.

A very significant thing that business do is, development of a website which means when transitioning a traditional business to a new platform, the website becomes the face of the organization in the mind of consumers. Advertising is another significant aspect of this e-business as it helps in customer acquisition in e-business. Abebe (2014) pointed out that in this procedure, the only major difference here is that method and the author has also suggested that it is necessary to investigate different marketing options to determine the suitable option that fit the business effectively. For example, when it comes to adopting or development of e-commerce strategy, IBM has developed the principle the best way of learning is, by doing. The organization has moved onto Web, and the organizations expect to save $240 million on the $11 billion in goods and services. Likewise, IBM also developed another similar step to put customer support online and this might save another $750 million (Roos 2014).

Particularly, when it comes to E-Service, Paroutis,  Bennett and Heracleous (2014) mentioned IB has almost 1300 consultants and its e-service business is expected to hit $3billion in the year. The brands deals with the web design to hook older corporate data base.

The existing studies have presented different facts providing that traditional businesses are becoming obsolete now days due to slow growth, limited reach, poor quality of services and many other reasons. However, the studies do not talk about how a business with traditional procedures can shift or adopt a new mode of business or adopt the c-commerce trends. The literature did mention about any particular channels or platform that help a new business to grow. In addition to this, the literature also include ay discussion regarding other aspect of information technology can help the business to meet the dynamic market needs.

Designing Marketing Strategy with the Help of Information Technology

As put forward by Mackey and Gass (2015), research method is a systematic plan for performing a study. Sociologists tend to draw on different set of qualitative and quantitative research techniques including experiments, survey research, participant observation and secondary data.

It has been identified that different research designs could place different meaning on research design and some scholars tend to consider research design as the choice between the qualitative and quantitative research methods.  Brinkmann (2014) argued that research design is referred to the choice of a specific technique of data collection and analysis. However, in the proposed research, the research design will be used as the general plan which would help to answer the research questions. The most significant elements of research design may include the research strategies and technique related to analysis and data collection. The research design is categorized into three different categories such explanatory, exploratory and descriptive research design. According to Flick 2(015), explanatory research is treated as the initial research into a hypothetical or theoretical data and most of the time exploratory research could lay the initial groundwork for the future research. On the other side, descriptive research design is usually defined as the attempt to discover and explain while delivering additional information about the topic. In this context, Billig and Waterman (2014) also mentioned that descriptive research remains as act of exploring the thing in dark by forming a more in-depth picture of the context. In the proposed study, the descriptive research design will be applied

Descriptive research design will be applied to the execution of the proposed study because this research design will help to dig into the concept of Information Technology and help to learn how implementation of information technology such online shopping can help business to grow. There are several concepts and finding related are derived about the use of information technology but hardly any research has discovered those facts and applied to real-world context.

As put forward by Palinkas et al. (2015), data collection remains as the technique of collecting information from all relevant sources to discover responses to the research problems, and evaluate the outcome of the research. Data collection methods are usually divided into two different categories such as primary data collection and secondary data collection.

Secondary Data Collection method:  The secondary data is a type of data that is already available and the content can be found in books, newspapers, journal, articles and some online portals. There is a plenty of data available in these sources about the research area in the business studies. In the proposed study, the secondary data will be collected from books, journals, industry analysis report by registered sources, articles and annual and sustainability reports of organizations.

Revenue Growth with Information Technology

Primary data collection method: Primary data collection method is categorized into two different groups such as quantitative and qualitative data collection. Hence, quantitative data collection is usually based in the mathematical calculations in different formats. The methods of quantitative data collection and the analysis could include questionnaire with the close-ended questions, regression and methods of correlation. On the other side, Qualitative data collection technique usually do not involve numbers, mathematical calculations. Thuries and Gillet (2016) specified that qualitative data collection method may include interview, questionnaire with open-ended questions, observation and focus groups.

Justifying secondary data collection method: In the proposed study, secondary data collection process will be used to collect the secondary data because the proposed study does not include any particular organization and the discussion and analysis has been done based on the data found in the secondary source such as the industry report, peer reviewed journal articles and relevant data sources. Implementation of Information Technology is a broad context which involve several real-world business environment and practical examples of several business adopting Information Technology.

There is a clear difference between the qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Especially in qualitative data analysis techniques may include interview, focus group and other experiments and hence, the analysis could involve the identification of some common patterns within the research response (Robson 2016). Conversely, quantitative data analysis usually include critical analysis as well as the interpretation of some figures and numbers, which help o find the logic behind the main findings. However, in the proposed study, qualitative data analysis techniques will be used because the common facts derived from the collected data can be linked to aims and objectives because the data are collected from different sources.

The ethical issues could be a major concern for a research and the major ethical issue that is usually found in the secondary research is that the scholars usually do not acknowledge the work of other author and claim the work as their own. To avoid such issue in the proposed study appropriate evidences in the discussion will be provided. In addition, all theories which in the proposed study, will be supported by the evidences. The major limitation in the study is, that the study is limited to secondary analyses, because primary analyses will not he conducted in the study.

Table 1: Research Time Table

Table 2: An estimated Budget

Reference

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Importance of Website and Advertising in e-business

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