E-commerce and the Internet and the Case Study of Spotify and Wallmart

Assignment 2 – E-commerce
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Assignment 2 – E-commerce
Part A: Short-Answered
Running the supply chain system separate from the core business of a corporation has some implications and can derail the competitive advantage of a business. The volatility of a corporation cannot be sustained when the supply chain is not up to speed with the corporate strategy. For instance, for corporation dealing in the manufacturing sector, the overall competitiveness relies on the capability of the supply chain to distribute its products rapidly to different vendors and retailers. It is, therefore, crucial to align the company’s strategies with that of the supply chain management, collaboratively or develop in-house supply chain systems to enhance the overall efficacy of the corporation.
E-commerce and the internet offer new business opportunities that call for additional strategies such as online marketing strategies and customer engagement via the social media platforms. The concept of globalization is only possible with the advent of internet technologies and hence the need to adopt new strategies that conform to the aspects of globalization. E-commerce and internet technologies have the potential to revolutionalize the entire operation in a business environment by adding values from the supply chain, manufacturing, distribution, customer relation, and marketing (Laudon & Traver, 2016). New strategies need to be put in place to leverage these values addition.
E-commerce systems present the company with many benefits, real-time communication being one of them. This benefit is particularly significant in supply chain management that requires an uninterrupted and reliable flow of information from the key players of the supply chain process including suppliers, manufacturers, customers, and retailers (Laudon & Traver, 2016). The networking technologies that come along with e-commerce systems can streamline information flow from one business process to the other and eventually cut down on cost while increasing collaboration. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), for instance, facilitates the exchange of crucial transactional documents such as invoices and purchase orders between two business entities like retailers and supplies (Laudon & Traver, 2016). The two entities benefit mutually from the technology, which not only enhances order placement and streamlines the payment process but can also potentially reduce costs and processing time when integrated with other e-commerce systems.
System analysis, system design, and implementation are some of the vital steps of a system development life cycle (SDLC), a software development framework adopted to align solutions to business objectives (Laudon & Traver, 2016). System analysis is the foremost step in the development process where the development team gathers information from the intended system users to establish its feasibility. The step also outlines the functional and non-functional requirements. Once established, the design process commences outlining the logic and the physical devices needed for the e-commerce site. Components in the system design process give the blueprint of the system. They include use case diagrams,...