E-Technologies and the Changing Face of Business Operations

In today’s competitive business world, organisations rely on modern technologies to perform their business operations. Effective use of the latest technologies resulted in increasing efficiency at the workplace and improving overall performance of the corporations. With the popularity of the internet and online-based services, the role of e-technologies has grown substantially in modern corporations. E-technology is a term which is referred to a broad range of technologies including the internet and related information technologies (Rosa et al., 2015). In the past few years, organisations rely on e-technologies to perform their business operations which provide them a competitive advantage in the industry. Organisations use technologies such as cloud computing, big data, e-commerce, and others to provide effective products and services to their customers and improve the efficiency of their operations. However, while using these technologies, there are a number of risks and threats faced by suppliers of these technologies which creates challenges for corporations (Sanya, 2013). These risks resulted in adversely affecting the profitability of organisations, thus, suppliers are required to take appropriate measure to improve the security of their services. This essay will focus on evaluating the role of e-technologies in changing business operations of modern organisations. Furthermore, various threats and risks faced by suppliers of such technologies and how they overcome these challenges will be discussed in the essay.

The internet is a major source which has contributed to increasing the popularity and use of e-technologies in modern organisations. Use of these technologies assists corporations in increasing the efficiency of their business operations which reduces their costs while improving the quality of their operations. One of the most popular e-technologies which are used by companies in the cloud computing. It is a part of information technology (IT) which enables organisations to access their data ubiquitously. The Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) enables suppliers to deliver various computing service to organisations such as server, storage, networking, analytics, software, databases and more through the internet (Christauskas and Miseviciene, 2012). It is defined as the practice of remote servers which are hosted on the internet rather than a local server to provide services such as storing, managing and processing data. Organisations such as Netflix has gained a competitive advantage in the industry by relying on e-technologies such as cloud computing. Netflix operates in the entertainment industry, and it provides the service of video on demand to its customers across the globe. Due to the ubiquitous nature of cloud computing, Netflix is able to dominate the online video service market and easily provide its services across the globe which would have not possible otherwise (Berman et al., 2012). It has changed the business operations of modern organisations because they rely on online service delivery rather than the offline delivery. It enables them to expand their customer base and reach a wider audience globally which otherwise would not have been possible.

Cloud Computing’s Dominant Role in Business Operations

Big data is another e-technology which has gained popularity among large organisations which use it to understand the behaviour of customers and form marketing strategies accordingly. It is referred to an extremely large set of data sets which are collected by corporations to analyse which assist in revealing patterns, associations, trends and behaviour of human interactions especially. Some of the world’s biggest enterprises such as Amazon, Netflix, General Electric and American Express use the big data technology to reveal trends and association in their customers’ behaviour (Provost and Fawcett, 2013). For example, Netflix uses big data to gain insight into its viewers watching behaviour which enables it to make adjustments to its algorithms. By using big data technology, the company evaluates what its viewers like to watch and what they would like to watch in the future which assist it in providing them authentic recommendations which increase its viewership. On the other hand, Amazon uses big data to analyse the buying pattern of its customers. It enables the company to increase proximity between vendors and customers which result in reducing its distribution costs. Furthermore, the corporation is able to deliver services such as one-day delivery or same-day delivery based on using big data technology, whereas, previously people have to wait 5-6 or more days to deliver their package (McAfee et al., 2012). It shows how e-technologies are enabled organisations to improve their products and services while at the same time reaching a broader audience due to improved efficiency in their operations.

Another popular e-technology which has gained substantial popularity is e-commerce or online shopping. Amazon is the world’s largest e-commerce service provider which provides its services to customers across the globe. The company has gained substantial success and competitive advantage over its customers by using e-technologies such as cloud computing and big data along with e-commerce (Huang and Benyoucef, 2013). Currently, the company is second most valued enterprise in the world with a market capitalisation of over $777 billion (Shen, 2018). The corporation has gained this success because it uses e-technologies to constantly improve its services and focuses on fulfilling customers’ demands. Along with Amazon, there are various other e-commerce enterprises which have used this technology to provide services to its customers such as eBay, Wal-Mart, Alibaba, Flipkart, Taobao and others. People can easily access the internet in urban areas which assist these companies in increasing their customer base and positively influence their productivity. Similarly, Artificial intelligence is gaining popularity with organisations such as Google and Apple investing heavily in the technology. Artificial intelligence enables them to save time by automating their business process and increasing overall operational efficiencies. The use of artificial intelligence enables organisations to make faster business decisions based on outputs given by cognitive technologies. Furthermore, it assists corporations in avoiding ‘human errors’ by establishing smart systems which are set up to perform certain tasks properly (Russell and Norvig, 2016). Autonomous vehicles, smart wearable, smart homes and smart cities are some of the possibilities which will completely change the operations of businesses by using artificial intelligence.

Big Data: An Important E-Technology in Business Operations

Along with numerous benefits, there are various threats and risks associated with e-technologies which resulted in reducing their effectiveness and creating new challenges for enterprises. One of the biggest risks faces by corporations while using e-technologies is the threat of cyber-attacks. Since e-technologies are based on the internet and in order to use them companies and individuals are required internet connection, they result in increasing the chances of cyber-attacks (Kotenko and Chechulin, 2013). It is relatively easy for cybercriminals to hack into the servers of enterprises which use e-technologies to gain unauthorised access and breach their data. Cybercriminals can also hack into the transmission to collect the sensitive data of enterprises while it is being transferred. There are a number of examples which showed that use of e-technologies could result in substantial data leak which adversely affects corporations. The hack of Apple’s popular cloud computing service ‘iCloud’ is a popular example in which cyber criminals hacked into the accounts of celebrities and leaked over 500 sensitive pictures and videos of some of the biggest celebrities in the world (Woollaston, 2015). Another example is cyber-attack on the servers of Yahoo. Yahoo was an internet pioneer which soon when into history books due to the leak of its customers’ data. Cyber criminals were able to hack into its servers and beach the data of its customers in which over 3 billion people were affected (Stempel and Finkle, 2017). These attacks resulted in leaking confidential data of organisations which affects the profitability, and it is possible due to the use of e-technologies.

In order to address the risk of cyber-attacks, suppliers use a number of tactics which keeps their data safe from cyber criminals. Firstly, most large organisations avoid using public cloud to ensure that they keep strict policies on their servers and maintain high-security standards to avoid data breaches. Furthermore, encryption of data is a great way to protect it during transmission. By encrypting the data, corporations are able to convert it into secret codes which can only be read by a special key. The encrypted data is highly secured, and it cannot access by cyber criminals even when it is collected by them (Brakerski and Vaikuntanathan, 2014). Organisations are encouraged to use encryption software to protect their data from cyber-attacks; however, they avoid encryption because it takes a long time to encrypt large data which affects the efficiency of companies. Another popular tool which is used by corporations to protect from cyber-attack is ‘firewall’. Most organisations install firewalls into their systems to protect their data from breaching and unauthorised access. Cyber criminals use malware to attack the servers of corporations and to control their operations to access their data. In order to avoid malware, companies invest in antivirus software. Antivirus software is designed to detect and keep malware away from the servers of enterprises which protects their data from unauthorised access (Stone-Gross et al., 2013).

E-commerce and Improved Customer Services Due to E-technologies

Another key threat face by suppliers while using e-technologies is the risk of leakage of private data of customers. Technologies such as big data include sensitive information about behaviour patterns of customers which can adversely affect them if accessed by wrong people. In modern times, cyber criminals focus on collecting big data sets of customers by hacking into the servers of large enterprises and CSPs to hinder the profitability of these enterprises (Kitchin, 2013). Furthermore, there are various ethical and security issues associated with artificial technology. For example, the popularity of autonomous cars will result in ending the careers of drivers which will increase unemployment. Similarly, automation is making more and more jobs obsolete which increase the threat of unemployment across the globe. In order to address these challenges, suppliers implement various strategies. For example, most suppliers prefer to encrypt big data sets to ensure that they are not accessed by cyber criminals. Furthermore, they physically secure their servers and data centres to avoid unauthorised access since over 60 percent of cyber-attacks are caused due to insider threats (IBM, 2018). In order to tackle challenges of artificial intelligence, corporations are implementing a code of conduct to ensure that the use of artificial intelligence is not affecting the society adversely. For example, these companies hire people to act as a safety backup in autonomous vehicles to increase their security and reliance on people.

From the above observations, it can be concluded that the use of e-technologies has increased among modern organisations because they enable them to increase the efficiency of their operations and improving overall effectiveness. Most corporations rely on e-technologies such as cloud computing, big data, and e-commerce because it saves their operations costs and enables them to reach a wider audience globally which improve their profitability. Many organisations such as Netflix, Apple, Amazon and Google have gained a competitive advantage in the market by relying on these technologies. These corporations use e-technologies to monitor the behaviour of their customers which provides them key insights knowledge which is effective for them while forming business policies. Suppliers of these technologies face a number of threats and risks which adversely affects their business. One of the most common risks is cyber-attacks in which cyber criminals gain access to their operations and collects their sensitive data to gain an unfair advantage. In order to protect themselves from this risk, corporations rely on a number of technologies such as encryption, antivirus software, firewalls and others. These technologies reduce the risk of cyber-attacks and protect the data of organisations from breaching. Furthermore, corporations physically secure their servers and encrypt their data to protect big data set from unauthorised access. Furthermore, a moral and ethical code of conduct reduces the threats of artificial intelligence technology. Thus, there are various threats and risks associated with e-technologies, however, suppliers of these technologies rely on various security infrastructures to ensure that they are protected from unauthorised access which results in improving their security and effectiveness.

References

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