Well done to those that hit the MERIT and DISTINCTION on the last deadline today. Praise email on the way to those.
P3 is now asking you to consider the factors that a selected business needs to consider when deciding to operate online. For this you need to consider the planning required, the implementation of making it go live, any extra staffing that you might need to employ or do you get someone else to make it and deal with the £1500 cost implications or do it yourself. And how will you pay for this.
P4 is then asking you to consider any operational risks involved in developing this online presence for a selected business.
Assignment brief can be found here
PowerPoint of resources can be found here
The benefits that having an email address, url, social media presence on You Tube and Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, can offer a business can be seen here
Tower Trophies used to be a shop in the busy market town of Evesham in Worcestershire. The business was struggling to pay its bills even though it had been trading over 15 years. In 2002 it decided to go online and now has no high street presence as it has relocated to a business park with cheaper rents but has increased its sales as a result of the 24/7 sales that it now enjoys. Tomoli and Wills a clothes shop in East Grinstead used to have tow shops in the group but decided to go online. They generated enough sales from one allowing them to close the less the other store and distribute all their stock from the larger East Grinstead premises. Having an online presence and a physical shop allows them to advertise promotional codes in magazines and this drives traffic to the online store. Anyone wishing to try on the physical outfit can still do so and returning products to the store is easy and free.
Which business will you talk about when considering the benefits and implications of suggesting that it develops an online presence?
P3 Factors to consider regarding suitability to go online. Start with the planning and implementation before looking at the other areas below
- Why do some businesses feel that online is not for them?
- The need for personal contact rather than remote access
- The lack of skills or finance to build an online presence
- Difficulty in thinking of or securing the correct domain name!
- In house v outsourcing
- Changing and updating it to keep it looking exciting with new products, images, prices and promotions
- The importance of building a relationship with your customers and keeping them, intrusted in your brand
- Ability to cope with the additional work load and the different processes to deal with the 24/7 orders
- Use of call centres v employing a new team of telesales staff
- The importance of personal contract. Can you speak to someone before you order iof you have to
- Are staff trained to deal with the technology of processing online orders and if not who will train them
- Can the team of staff continue with the workload of going online as well as their own job to start off with and what happens when things go wrong?
- What is the initial set up cost and can this business afford to do it?
- How will it impact on the additional running costs and fixed costs?
- How will the business cope with a sudden increase in interest? Can they afford to get more stock from their suppliers and store this stock. Can they get deliveries out quick enough at peak times?
- How important is it to fulfil customers orders., same day, next day, within 3 days or more and should the business charge people for a quicker service ?
- What are the benefits to customers of shipping stuff quickly?
- How complicated is it to ship outside the UK? To EU and the rest of the world and are there any extra taxes that get added or restrictions in place?
- How will the business deal with fragile goods and perishable goods if this is applicable
- How much easier is it for a service business to operate online than a business that has to shift products?
- How can a business keep payment details secure?
- Ability to check that errors are corrected before orders are confirmed
- Protecting customers data that they enter when they order online and how the law insists that you do i.e. Data Protection Act
- Dealing with customers that have different languages to English as their main language
- Talk about the legislation that's involved e.g. Distance Selling Regulations and the Company (Trading disclosures) Regulations that protect online customers
- Protecting the business from hostile attacks from cybercrime
- Back ups and software and hardware failures that could loose orders and customers details
- Any global regulations that prevent you from shipping to other countries around the world
D2 Evaluate the suitability for having an online presence for the chosen business
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