CEN207_Assessment 1 Case Study Page 1 of 3 CEN207 Creative Enterprise Assessment 1: Case Study OneStop is an e-commerce startup that sells items to firms and individuals online via their website and application (app). It offers a wide variety of products that can be purchased online ranging from electronic gadgets to clothing items. OneStop operates in four market segments: 1) business to business (B2B); 2) business to consumer (B2C); 3) consumer to consumer (C2C); and 4) consumer to business (C2B). OneStop is an easier alternative to physical stores in terms of convenience and increased selection; however, many customers have raised issues they have encountered with the ecommerce start-up. OneStop’s customers are not satisfied with the services provided over the internet. For example, customers have encountered difficulties understanding some of the features of the electronic gadgets sold on the e-commerce website and app. They cannot approach anyone with their questions as they would in a physical store. Based on the statistics obtained from different customer surveys, some of the customers have demanded that OneStop provide the equivalent of an employee who can demonstrate the electronic gadgets’ features. Another issue that customers have raised is the difference between the products displayed in the online images and the products received. Additionally, customers cannot touch or examine the products available online as they could in a physical store. This often leads to disappointment, as the products delivered do not match customers’ expectations that are based on the images online. This has been a common issue in the apparel section, particularly in relation to the fabrics that are not clearly identifiable in the images posted online. Further, many customers have complained about late deliveries. Some customers have had to wait for as long as a month for one item to be shipped to their homes/offices. They have demanded faster delivery services and an option to track their deliveries through OneStop’s website and app. OneStop wants to improve the shopping experience of its customers. It also wants to identify a way to increase the conversion rates to give the business a boost. The conversion rate is a significant metric for an e-commerce business. It demonstrates the correlation between the website or app’s visitors/users and ‘conversions’ (i.e., the visitors/users who make a purchase). Another metric, called the shopping cart abandonment rate, indicates the number of the visitors/users to the website or app who add items to their shopping cart but do not complete their purchases. The shopping cart abandonment rate gives the ratio of the potential buyers who leave without buying anything to the number of shopping carts created by the potential buyers. OneStop is currently experiencing a high shopping cart abandonment rate. According to recent customer feedback forms, the top reasons for shoppers abandoning their shopping carts are expensive shipping costs, competitive sites offering lower prices, a lack of free shipping for orders below a certain amount of money, hidden costs, including shipping and handling costs, long estimated shipping times, an unwillingness to create a new account for the sake of making a purchase, the absence of a preferred payment option, distractions, the long and confusing checkout process, the lack of urgent shipping options, the lack of guarantees, the lack of an estimated delivery date and an unclear returns policy. The CEN207_Assessment 1 Case Study Page 2 of 3 developers at OneStop believe that reducing the shopping cart abandonment rate could improve the shopping cart conversion rate. OneStop is planning to venture into other domains, such as the technology sector in which it will provide web services, digital streaming services, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. OneStop is planning to migrate their data to the cloud because of certain advantages, such as reduced costs and increased performance and security. However, there are various challenges associated with this migration, such as the financial costs related to investing in people and the right tools required to migrate to the cloud successfully, bandwidth costs, the need to train users on the new systems and performance issues, such as latency. Alternatively, OneStop is also considering migrating to a hybrid cloud, such that applications that have varying usage will be migrated to the cloud but applications that have consistent usage will be kept in on-premise storage. This will require massive storage to store the data, process power and an ability to handle multiple concurrent tasks. OneStop is looking for a solution that will provide flexible resource expansion capabilities, high computing performance and that will be able to handle big data, key enterprise applications and cloud computing. OneStop conducted surveys about online streaming services to gain an understanding of what their customers want and to determine if there are any issues that OneStop could potentially avoid or for which a solution could be provided via the development of the online streaming service. The survey results showed that there is a lack of accessibility features for individuals with certain disabilities, such as a lack of subtitles and audio descriptions. For example, individuals with certain neurological conditions, including vertigo and epilepsy, may be sensitive to flashing images, such as lasers, party lights and camera flashes; however, some of the existing online streaming services do not provide warning messages about such content, which causes inconvenience. For individuals with visual impairments, navigating streaming services is often inconvenient due to the lack of high-contrast, easy-to-read functions, larger text and screen readers. Navigating streaming services includes registering an account, logging in, scrolling through menus, adding content to a wish list, downloading the content and finding subtitles and audio descriptions. The cyber security team at OneStop has recently been notified that they should develop a solution to address issuessuch as virus attacks, malware attacks, hacking, man-in-the-middleattacks and the risk of exposing customer data to various attacks due to a failure to encrypt sensitive data. The cyber security team at OneStop identified a number of different types of threats, including distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, credit card fraud and eskimming. E-skimming is a method that hackers use to steal personal data,such as credit card information, by planting misleading external links on e-commerce websites. Apart from these threats, there are also bad bots. Bots are automated programmes that are designed to perform certain tasks. Bad bots can harm businesses in a number of ways; for example, they can be programmed to ascertain the CVVs of credit cards by repeatedly testing stolen credit card numbers until they are successful. According to the cyber security team at OneStop, bad bots could also steal login details and monitor the business’s pricing strategy and marketing plans, which would allow OneStop’s competitors to undercut their prices or outrank their business in search engine results or app stores. These cyber security issues and threats could CEN207_Assessment 1 Case Study Page 3 of 3 make OneStop’s website and app vulnerable to hacking and could potentially lead to the exposure of OneStop’s customer database and confidential information. It could cost OneStop a great deal in terms of lost revenue and damage its reputation. OneStop’s customers might also lose trust and confidence in OneStop’s website and app if it lacks the security to protect its customers’ personal data and credit card information. In addition to reviewing the issues with their website and app, OneStop also considered issues related to its office setup. OneStop has multiple offices around the globe and wishes to improve the collaboration and communication among all these offices. The various development teams of OneStop situated in different countries need to communicate regularly. However, an issue arises, as audio and video calls are inadequate in certain situations. Complex projects may require cloud-based remote collaboration tools in addition to audio and video conferencing. Addressing this issue by developing cloud-based remote collaboration tools would help to ensure a smooth workflow in the offices around the world and consequently, business.