Overview of E-commerce Industry

Analyse the implementation of the business analytics strategy in the entire e-commerce industry.

The report helps in identifying and analysing the different kind of drivers of business analytics in the e-commerce industry. The perceived kind of benefits to achieve from BA will be discussed in an effectual manner along with analysis of the strategy that is required to be employed by the e-commerce industry. The different kind of actual benefits has to be identified in an effectual manner along with analysis of the drawbacks of the selected BA strategy.

The entire e-commerce industry is comprised of the different organizations that produces and sell software to the business along with different corporations of all the sizes. The proper range of goods and services are offered and this helps them in expanding and improving the customer’s information technology capabilities as well with the enhancement of the tracking purchases of the different customers along with operations and inventory management.

There are different kind of key factors that has to be focused in order to gain proper understanding of the entire organization along with the shares of the respective company. The future and current aspects of the economy play a prominent role in analysing such equities as well. Furthermore, new product releases are continuous in nature with the help of other companies that are providing similar kind of services and offerings. It has been seen that there is huge competition in the entire market and this is leading to aggressive fight for the customers along with market share (Agarwal and Dhar 2014).

Business Analytics is referred to the different skills, technologies, practices for the continuous iterative exploration along with investigation of the performance of the businesses as to gain proper insight and drive planning of the entire business. In the e-commerce industry, it has been seen that Amazon uses the native analytics platform, there are different divisions wherein the analytics are utilized that are as follows:

• Customer analytics
• Seller analytics
• Supply chain analytics
• Trust analytics

For instance- It has been commented by the Rajeev Rastogi, Director, the machine learning has helped the different customers in providing them with seamless services and it is the unique selling prospectus of Amazon that is the e-commerce-based organization. With the usage of the machine learning, it helps in identifying the correct defective packages that can be delivered to the different customers on a timely basis.

Main drivers of Business Analytics are as follows:

• Proper and clear initial use case is one of the main driver of the business analytics wherein the focus is narrowed down and the customers with the initial kind of focus are able to focus mainly on the deployment of the business intelligence solutions. The initial focus speeds up the entire deployment along with providing visible for the entire team and makes the change management with the end users
• The other main driver is the outcome focused and it is not feature focused as this will help in providing the main focus on the tools development that will help the customers in using the analytics platform and this helps in providing advantage by automating the certain kind of capabilities by making it flexible in nature
• Right team has to be built in order to guarantee success and the different kind of successful customers helps in ensuring the two key roles are covered that includes strong champion that understand about business value and data and it includes the analysis of the valuable analytical problems in an effectual manner
• Proper and right utilization of the resources helps in transforming the business wherein the resources are appropriately used in order to gain long term success. Well-funded initial implementation of the different analytics program is to resource the initial project at appropriate level to ensure rapid speediness in the work

Drivers to adopt Business Analytics in E-commerce Industry

There are different kind of perceived benefits to achieve from Business Analytics from the entire e-commerce industry. According to Calof, Richards and Smith (2015), the entire e-commerce market is utilizing the business analytics strategy that helps in gauging the effectiveness along with increase their marketing strategies in an effectual manner. With the help of the big data analytics, wherein the big data is the large amount of the content that is varied and it is produced in a quick manner as well. Big analytics can help the different companies in an effectual manner:

On the other hand, Dubey and Gunasekaran (2015) has commented that it helps in examining the google trends in the entire e-commerce industry as the entire analytics of the big data helps the business by providing opportunity to examine the different trends on Google site. The trend kind of data helps in showing the terms along with the keywords that has been searched in an appropriate manner as well. This kind of information is helping us in checking the number of public who are interested and they are allowing to adopt that kind of specific market as well.

Secondly, it helps in preventing fraud through the analysis of the large sets of data. With the help of this big set of data, it helps the e-commerce companies in identifying the fraudulent activities and the extent of the frauds that are prevalent in nature. It can be seen that the online companies can help in analysing the states or countries that is affected by the different kind of credit card frauds or wherein the cash on delivery commitments are not honoured in nature (Gandomi and Haider 2015). With the usage of the big data analytic, this will help the companies and allowing them to not become victim of the fraud and this will help in implementing anti-fraud measures in specific areas and this will avoid doing the business in such areas as well.

Thirdly, introduction of the new products and services helps the e-commerce companies in developing new trends in the creation of the products. The big data analytics helps in allowing examining the new kind of trends along with upcoming trends through the use of the search engines along with other kind of online networks as well. It has been seen that the by filtering the different kind of data with the different kind of characteristics of the customers, this helps the different companies in targeting the markets along with new products as well (Ragsdale 2014).

Perceived Benefits to Achieve from Business Analytics

There are different kind of business analytics strategy that can be employed by the entire e-commerce industry. The E-commerce tracking module of the Google Analytics is one of the most powerful strategy that can be employed by them to analyse the direction wherein the business is heading and this will help in analysing the correct direction as well. The data that is available to the different users include total amount of revenue along with number of unique kind of purchases as well.

Furthermore, the tracking module helps the respective e-commerce industry in understanding the moves of the other competitors and this will provide them different directions to perform the entire task in an effectual manner as well. Data mining along with analysis helps in targeting the better customers and increasing the entire marketing productivity in an effectual manner as well. The business analytics help in predictive kind of analysis to streamline the experience of the customers effectually (Shmueli, Bruce and Patel 2016).

Furthermore, the online shopping companies can make big kind of predictions and this helps in receiving in-depth look at different channels in the company. This kind of information will help in increasing the visibility of the products and services along with e-commerce customized solutions (Laursen and Thorlund 2016). The business analytics strategy will help the online shopping organizations in preventing the shipping breakdowns along with better targeting the customers effectually as well. Lastly, proper business analytics will help in improving the internal processes of the entire company with data and this helps in diagnosing the issues effectively (Wang et al 2016).

There are different kind of challenges in the BA strategy in the entire e-commerce industry that includes the following:

• Formulation of the concrete data strategy is one of the major issues wherein haphazardly data gathering as there is lack of the coherent kind of strategy of data. Furthermore, the quality of the data is the other issue in the e-commerce industry wherein it is seen that there is lack of trust and fraud is huge in such areas as well. It can be seen that there are employees in the organization who do not have much knowledge on the technical skills along with integrity of the data (Riggins and Wamba 2014)
• Secondly, the complexity of the model is the other issue in the business analytics in different kind of e-commerce business. The security of the data along with maintenance is lacking in different kind of organizations and this is one of the challenges in the organizations (Riggins and Wamba 2014). It has been seen that there are employees who do not have much knowledge on accessing the relevant information in the specific period of time as well
• The entire maintenance along with the data security is a huge issue in the business analytics implementation in the e-commerce industry as there is inability among the employees to address the different issues appropriately (Loebbecke and Picot 2015)
• Lastly, the implementation of the business analytics strategy is costly in nature and there are other kind of hidden costs in the implementation of the business analytics as well.

Therefore, from the different kind of analysis of the challenges, it can be seen that there is dearth of the professionals in the e-commerce industry who are well-equipped in nature in handling the different kind of technological advancements objectives in the organizations.

Furthermore, it has been seen that the different business analytics professionals are taking up different kind of corporate roles in different sectors that included insurance, marketing along with finance or lifestyle sectors. However, it has been noticed that there is still hesitation among the individuals in using the different kind of statistics along with trends in taking major decisions in business as well.

There are different kind of benefits that can be gained by e-commerce sector as this will help the different organizations in different manner that includes the following:

BA Strategy Employed by the E-commerce Industry

The business analytics help in accurately transferring different kind of information wherein this helps in bringing consequent kind of efficiency in the entire system of the organization. The implementation of the business analytics strategy will help the companies in the e-commerce sector to help in portraying the future challenges and takes steps regarding the same in the present itself.

Secondly, the implementation of the business analytics will help in making the different kind of strategic decisions as this will create a perfect kind of blend of the data analytics along with science. With the implementation of the data analytics and science blend, this will help the companies in reducing the costs of different techniques and the decisions can be taken in much improved manner as well (Sharma, Mithas and Kankanhalli, 2014).

Lastly, with the implementation of the business analytics, the different online shopping organizations that falls under the e-commerce industry can share the different kind of essential and relevant kind of information with the larger group of audiences and this will help the companies in attracting larger group of audiences by introducing different kind of new products and services in an effectual manner.

Furthermore, the business analytics implementation can help in sharing the valuable kind of information with the different stakeholders of the organization effectually and this will help the organization to increase the business of the different organizations in a much appropriate manner (Phillips-Wren et al. 2015).

Therefore, from the above, it can be analysed that there are different kind of advantages of implementation of the business analytics in the different e-commerce organizations. It has been seen that there are different kind of organizations who lack such kind of business analytics and this is making them lack in providing and sharing the information to the different audiences and shareholders of the company as well in a much effectual manner.

There are few disadvantages of the selected business analytics strategy that has been implemented in the entire e-commerce industry. It has been seen that E-commerce tracking module of the Google Analytics is one of the most powerful strategy is generally the most powerful strategy, however the companies need to provide proper training to the different kind of employees who are working in different organizations.

Furthermore, it has been seen that the companies need to incur separate kind of costs on the training of the employees in making them learn the different technical skills of identifying the customers to whom the delivery is required to be done and this will increase the cost of the organizations to a huge and great extent as well.  It has been seen that there are different companies wherein the employees lack different kind of knowledge on using the technological advancement equipment and this can create huge trouble to the organizations in the entire respective e-commerce market as well.

Challenges to BA Strategy in E-commerce Industry

Lastly, the e-commerce companies are the ones that require business analytics to be restored and implemented in the different organizations to a huge extent as they deal with different customers and the main purpose of the company is to identify the target groups and deliver the products and services to them in an appropriate manner as well. Lastly, the e-commerce industry is the fastest growing industry that is required to be grown in an effectual manner, however these kinds of limitations will create huge issues in the market as well.

Conclusion

Therefore, it can be concluded that proper business analytics strategy is essential in the e-commerce industry as this helped in understanding the advantages and the competitiveness that can be brought in the different organizations as well. Furthermore, it has been seen that the implementation of the Business Analytics strategy has helped in reducing the costs of the companies along with sharing the different information to the larger audiences as well. Lastly, the implementation of the strategy of Business Analytics helped in easing the entire process of sharing the information with the different stakeholders of the company and gained competitive advantage in the market as well.

Therefore, it can be recommended that proper implementation of the business analytics strategy is essential in nature in different e-commerce organizations in the entire market. Proper implementation of the business analytics will help the business to grow at a faster pace and this will help the business to gain profit as well.

Furthermore, the e-commerce-based companies need to provide proper training to the employees on the technical skills that is required to improve the security of the data and prevent the business from fraud as well. proper knowledge is required to be gained by all the employees along with the higher officials of the company to deliver the relevant kind of information in the given period of time and makes the integrity of the data successful as well

References

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Laursen, G.H. and Thorlund, J., 2016. Business analytics for managers: Taking business intelligence beyond reporting. John Wiley & Sons.

Loebbecke, C. and Picot, A., 2015. Reflections on societal and business model transformation arising from digitization and big data analytics: A research agenda. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 24(3), pp.149-157.

Phillips-Wren, G.E., Iyer, L.S., Kulkarni, U.R. and Ariyachandra, T., 2015. Business Analytics in the Context of Big Data: A Roadmap for Research. CAIS, 37, p.23.

Ragsdale, C., 2014. Spreadsheet modeling and decision analysis: A practical introduction to business analytics. Nelson Education.

Riggins, F.J. and Wamba, S.F., 2015, January. Research directions on the adoption, usage, and impact of the internet of things through the use of big data analytics. In System Sciences (HICSS), 2015 48th Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 1531-1540). IEEE.

Sharma, R., Mithas, S. and Kankanhalli, A., 2014. Transforming decision-making processes: a research agenda for understanding the impact of business analytics on organisations. European Journal of Information Systems, 23(4), pp.433-441.

Shmueli, G., Bruce, P.C. and Patel, N., 2016. Data Mining for Business Analytics: Concepts. Techniques, and Applications with XLMiner.

Wang, G., Gunasekaran, A., Ngai, E.W. and Papadopoulos, T., 2016. Big data analytics in logistics and supply chain management: Certain investigations for research and applications. International Journal of Production Economics, 176, pp.98-110.