Digital Business

Introduction

This report will discuss the digital business on the various organisations, where at the initial level, this report will discuss the key trends and advantages of digital technology and implementations of those techniques for managing various businesses within the global environment. This will also discuss critical evaluation on the new and digital business models and key businesses issues like cybersecurity and ethics while managing effective e-business within the organisation. This report will discuss the impact of collaborative relationships and strategic alliances, and along with that, it will discuss the relevant digital business theoretical concepts. Finally, to end the report, it will discuss the multi-disciplinary approach to apply e-commerce principles in an organisational context.

Question 1: LO1

Critically discuss the key trends, advantages and disadvantages of managing the virtual business in the global environment.

There are several significances of the technologies within the organisational context, and related to that the significances are –

1. i) Technologies assists the organisations in improving the communicational process within the organisational context, which assists the field workers and technicians, which can be described like employees are nowadays do not require to go office for their daily work, due to the technological advancement.
2. ii) Technology is optimising the resource management process, and that will also modify the way the organisations work.

iii) Technologies can optimise the operational process of the organisation, that can play an important role in generating effectual processes (MELO, 2018).

Technological advancement assists the organisation like ASOS in several ways, like with the assistance of technologies, the organisation is utilising technologies to make various consumers touchpoints like – eCommerce, Social Media Platforms, Email Marketing etc. All these consumer touchpoints are giving the retailers to reach out to the consumers more easily, also giving ASOS opportunities to expand their business more.

The virtual business uses to describe as when an organisation use to delegate its work out of the office, placed in different cities, countries or state. Furthermore, one organisation can use to have a virtual team as well to work with the in-house team. Henceforth, it can be stated that based upon workload, when an organisation diversify their works outside the organisation is called virtual business (Bean-Mellinger, 2018). The virtual business can be done in the international context as well when an organisation is delegating its work beyond the boundaries as well.

Key trend refers to the overall direction of the market or the direction of the asset price within the marketplace. In technical terms, the trend can be defined as the tradelines or price that highlights when the price has high market price or low market price for an uptrend, or lower market price or lower market price for downtrends. It has been seen that many traders within the market prefer to work with the trend of the market, which makes them have perfect analysis of the on-going situation of the market (MITCHELL, 2020).

There are several advantages and disadvantages of the virtual context for ASOS, and these are like –

Advantages: Virtuality within the organisational context assists the organisation will help ASOS in several ways, where the business can save money for the resources, and it opens up the area for talent hunt within organisational context. The virtual business provides opportunities to the business organisation to obtain a wide range of availability of the talent pool for the organisation like ASOS. It also helps the organisation to retain its employees easily, also it makes the working process faster and avoids the wastage of time from their process.

Disadvantages: Few disadvantages that ASOS may face during the process of virtual business operation are – issues arise due to the technological issues, and it creates communicational gaps among the organisational people while working. While a team is working virtually, it provides fewer opportunities to ASOS for creating team bonding, and it does not provide any cohesiveness opportunities to the organisation (Hohlbaum, 2020).

Impacts and importance of technology usage within the organisational context of ASOS and Very are –

1. i) Enhance Personalisation: With the help of email services, the organisation can reach out to their consumers more personally, which assists the organisation to make their consumers connect with the organisation more, and that assists the organisation in attracting their consumers as well.
2. ii) Communication enhancement: Whether communication with the consumers or communication within the management team, both the way it will assist Very and ASOS to make their process of management and operation more optimised and enhanced.

Question 3: LO2

Critically evaluate the emerging digital business models and challenges associated with information security threats and ethics in general. Perform a critical analysis with respect to the case study scenario.

A digital business model can be defined as the form of creating a value-based business form based upon the development of the consumer benefits using the digital technologies. Based upon the digital business technologies, the primary aim of digital solution is to produce significant advantages for which the consumers will be willing to pay (innolytics-innovation, Nd).

Information security threats refers to the broadest concept, where the organisation can protect their data or information with the help of technological combination from accidental and deliberate exposure. The owner of the information bears the losses no matter whether the losses are being caused due to natural or artificial factors (searchinform, 2019).

Information security and ethics refers to the all-encompassing term, which refers to the activities that required to be secure information and systems, which provide security to the information and systems that provides support in order to facilitate the ethical usage (Nemati, 2007).

There are several challenges that information security threat and ethics might have, and according to that organisation needs to take appropriate preparation. The challenges are –

1. i) The top challenges related to the information security threats is Malware and Spyware, where the organisations might face the issues where hackers can put malware or spyware within the website to steal all the information related to the organisation. As the ASOS is the organisation that only deals with the online business; hence, it is highly necessary for the organisation to keep its website and online shopping platform protected, as many information related to the consumers are protected.
2. ii) Social engineering is another type of the common threat that one organisation may face where the attackers may send some malicious links, and in one click on that link will lead to transfer of all the information to the attacker (CASSETTO, 2019).

iii) Without having appropriate ethics within the employees within ASOS technical, it can be proved as the employees of the ASOS as the black-hat criminals, who use to unethically steal information of the organisation.

There various types of emerging digital business models, and those models are –

Platform-based Business: This model is closely link with the sharing economy system and subscription models. In general concept the perfect examples of platform-based business is Facebook, Uber, where the organisation can directly interact with the consumers with the assistance of the virtual platforms, and the platform provides them value for the users by faciliting them by making a direct connection between the people. This model ASOS can also utilised, where the organisation will be able to established direct communication with the people, which will assist to make the performance of business more appropriately.

Employee Centric Business: Orthodox business processes are changing, and people are becoming nomadic with their work, and nowadays concept like Job for Life is increasing, and where people are getting more opportunity to work according to their preference. The employees of an organisation is changing the people, and their efficiency level, and gig economy system has helped the entire process immensely. In this system or business process organisation is allowing their employees to work from the places, where they are more comfortable (Marr, Nd). ASOS is also applying the same system, as they are performing online business, it is permitting them to apply the concept comfortably, which is becoming cost effective for the organisation as well.