Question

the start up is for an online watch company

Discuss in detail how you will use technology in your new startup that you presented in the Chapter 2 discussion. Make sure you include technology in areas of: Operations Marketing Communications Procurement Delivery

Answer 1

To begin with, technology is important in business for the following reasons-

1. Improves business communication
2. Raises efficiency
3. Leads to innovations
4. Protects assets
5. Enhances coordination
6. Keeps employees engaged
7. Raises capacity
8. Saves time, effort and money

For an online watch company, technology could be used as follows-

• Operations
  • The operations of an online watch company, just like any other e-commerce set up, includes - Product/Service management, Demand management and Content and metrics management.
  • Technology within Product/Service management, includes software for merchandise, search engine algorithms, cross selling and comparative evaluation using cluster mapping, pattern analysis. Machine learning etc.
  • Demand management is all about inventory management, sales projections, forecasting etc. Information technology, software in Business Analytics and Intelligence (R, Python etc) could help in this area
  • Content management refers to the ability to quickly update and manage your online store. In other words, your products, orders, customers, promotions etc. Technology can help you develop custom admin features like ERP integrations or custom shipping-tools.
  • Metrics Management is the ability to generate insights based on the running of your operations. Again, BI related software (R, Python etc) could come in handy here.
• Marketing
  • Marketing in ecommerce is all about-
    • User experience- how people navigate on your website.
      • Technology - in the form of web designing, Java scripting etc. - helps you prepare an attractive interface.
    • Social media, email, PR and Publicity etc - to promote yourself
      • Again, IT (information technology) helps you advertise online through social media - facebook etc, emails etc.
    • Design, content, search - Again, good web designing's important to keep your customers engaged. Technology (algorithms, machine learning etc.) helps you make your site easily searchable on search engines (Google, Bing etc) too.
• Communications
  • Technology makes business communication easy and fast - both externally and internally.
  • Some notable technologies in the communications area (e-commerce specific) are- Cloud technology, Automation, Hosted services, video calling, chat services, mobile apps etc.
  • You can increase your presence through technology - having apps besides a website, for example, increases exposure - yields more sales ("place" in the 4Ps)
• Procurement
  • The Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) technology is quite popular when it comes to procurement. Buyers and sellers exchange business information in a predefined, standardised manner - via quotes, invoices, inventory data etc. Companies communicate through point-to-point private networks on the Internet or via VANs (value-added networks).
  • Some software also allow buyers to create a system wherein they can manage invoices, purchase-orders, receipts and quotation requests - all in one place.
• Delivery
  • Technology in the form of Big Data Analytics could help generate useful insights to determine shipping volumes and associated costs quickly and efficiently.
  • Companies like Amazon are thinking of a drone service for their delivery function - But being a start up, I doubt if you'll have that kind of a budget!