INFS1602 Assignment A Essay

The purpose of this say was to fig a start-up strategy and IS infrastructure for Ruth & Luke (R&L) Crowdsources agate line. interrogation for this report identifies the focus (target market), opportunities and threats in entering the market and provides a detailed wrinkle personate.This report incorporated recent statistical data in relation to online well-disposed media, various journal articles and books obtained online.Research for the target market indicates that the descrykers comprise of in the first place logical argumentes of a transmutation of sizes that be familiar with the practice of crowd-sourcing. In regards to the do workrs, findings suggest that university students and academics provide be the dominant target market for R&L Crowdsources stemma. apply the five-forces model to identify saucily market entrants, substitute products and services, customers, suppliers, and competitive rivalry, overall thither is a medium-high take of threat in entering th e market.Further research recommends that R&L Crowdsource should focus more than on achieving an slowly accessible system with avail mogul to an extensive blow of audiences while raising reputation and credibility by advertising through online social media, the Google search engine and newspapers. The efficiency and effectiveness of R&L Crowdsources ancestry operations give be dependent on the sum total of investment into the countenance teaching systems, which may be financed through revenue obtained by charging a fee to seekers.Target markets (seekers/solvers)R&L Crowdsource leave behind be commencing the online business initiative for clients who are seeking for their business problems to be work out through outsourcing the business termination. To identify potential target markets R&L Crowdsource needs to consider undermentioned characteristicsSeekersType of clients R&L Crowdsource needs to determine the type of business that their client conducts i.e. retail com panies or IT companies. Online and offline research needs to be securen to see which sectors of these markets need R&L Crowdsources business solution services. This is because a variety of companies encounter varied levels of difficulty within the businesses operations. As this is a relatively new type of service, it has not widely take it yet. Therefore, R&L Crowdsource should focus more on those who imbibe use this service previously or are in the same industry where their competitors nourish used due to the fact that they are more promising to be interested (Alzawahreh & Khasawneh, 2011). This flock be do through online research and surveys.Size of clients Online research conducted primarily from Innocentive.com (www.Innocentive.com) suggests that the size of clients should not be prioritised. The research revealed that heedless of whether they are operating world-widely or domestically, a variety of different sized companies are likely to favour outsourcing their busi ness problems. Examples of these companies include P&G (Spradlin, 2012).SolversIn set out to target the market for seekers effectively, the directors of R&L Crowdsource should reflect on their experiences as past seekers. Primarily, different participants leave behind conduct each check and depending on the characteristics of the put ups, it may require more era and work. People who already sop up a full-time job are not likely to desire spending their spare time on supererogatory works unless it has either a high level of reimbursement or it is an area of interest. Therefore, R&L Crowdsource should ab initio seek university students and academics that are qualified in certain fields so that the outcome ordain be more reliable.Implementation of 5 forces modelNew Market EntrantsThis type of business initiative is richly ground on the supplier and they are apologise to participate and exit for the given challenges. The company depart subscribe to a middleman role, which connects the suppliers to its clients. There are few economies of scale in place because thither is no significant peachy investment required and specialised technology is not required. The company volition likely encounter other competitors coming into the market when it commences sooner or later. However, its strong brand festering achieved by supremacyful and stable customer relationship accomplished ordain lead to a miserable threat of new entrants in the market.Substitute products and servicesThose who request these services would be less pertain closely the process, caring only about the outcome. The assumption based on this initiative is that the wisdom of crowds will come up with optimised thought processs for the challenges. Furthermore, clients who are considered as conservative will have a tendency to solve the business problems with internationally well-recognised business consulting companies as they can work collaboratively. They provide more systematic ways of solving problems and can work interactively with the companies as their group of employees will work for the company with well-trained and qualified human being labours while it cost more. This may result a high level of client satisfaction rate. Furthermore, at that place is the likelihood that large sized companies would substitute this type of service by using their internal resources. This authority that there is a medium to high level of threats of substitute services.clientsAt the present, the bargaining power lies with the customers until R&L Crowdsource has built up a reputable audience constituteing of both seekers and solvers. The main feature of this business initiative is that clients do not know who will be participating in the task and this will seem unattractive to more conservative companies due to the fact that they would be prefer to spend their resources on reputable companies and individuals instead of taking a risk through Crowdsourcing.SuppliersSupplier s will be those who are instinctive to attempt given challenges with other people collaboratively to discover the ideal solution. Since the business has a fundamental idea that collaborative work with other people who have different background will come up with better ideas, supplier bargaining power will be considered as relatively lower in this business type. This is because development of Internet accessibility has surrendered a large be of users to facilitate a variety of internet resources regardless of their geographical location. Therefore, we assume that there will be a large number of potential participants who would like to take challenges with certain level of reimbursement.Competitive RivalryThis type of an online business is not widely recognised so far and only few existing competitors have provided the services. However, this does not return the R&L Crowdsources business because it as well as has a disadvantage, which is the lower level of switching costs for cli ents. A differentiated feature of this business from its potential competitors in the market is that the business problem will be worked on by a group of people who have different background companionship rather than one individual. Therefore, even though this business market is considered as a blue-chip business, there is medium to high level of industry rivalry between competitors.Business StrategyR&L should utilise a click only strategy to assist their online business. The strengths of an online business lie with the low start-up capital and overhead costs, consisting of chiefly purchasing a domain, designing the website and promoting the business. In this case, however, we will be promoting the business mainly through online social media which no cost. In station to gain exposure or popularity, something essential for all business, after designing the website, marketing should be invested in to find potential customers.Re-iterating the target markets from above, solvers woul d primarily consist of people who may not have full-time jobs and for people who may be full-time studying. However, versed the target market will not increase website traffic, advertisements and other systems should be used in establishing R&Ls companys reputation. R&L should advertise firstly with Googles AdWords. As Google dominates the search engine market, with 83% of search users using Google and just under 1 trillion uses per twelvemonth it emphasises its popularity. This online advertising program would suspend for R&Ls advertisements to appear on Google and its partner websites and will only charge R&L when someone clicks their ad.Using online social media is another order they should undertake in order to attract more seekers and solvers. Creating a page on Facebook will allow R&L to announce co-creation projects and communicate with the public. If, for example, a large business likes this page, it will be opened to a greater number of people, increasing credibility an d reputation. Other sites such as twitter may also be used for announcements and increasing popularity.Advertising on newspapers or magazines should also be considered. Placing advertisements on the business section of newspapers may appeal more toseekers whereas advertising on other sections may appeal more to solvers. However, this may be less effective in finding solvers if we consider our target market for solvers to be full-time students in comparison to advertising on Google and online social media websites.Once a Crowdsourcing project is established and seekers are found, if the project is successful, R&L should attempt to increase popularity and credibility through their clients business in an attempt to continue the network effect mentioned earlier.Web 2.0Mainstream and emerging Web 2.0 technologies and applications have greatly enabled users to share with and communicate to the broader world through online media. By advertising R&Ls business through social media, there is a higher potential to develop and expand this business. This business strategy relies partly on the network effect, as it will be dependent on the amount of users. As more users participate, the network will grow exponentially. Statistics also reveal that 60% of social media users are willing to post about products/services on Facebook if it is of interest and that 91% of experienced social marketers see improved website traffic due to social media campaigns .As seen from these statistics, it is evident that the use of online social media such as Facebook and Twitter will be of benefit in increasing website traffic and exposure to the broader population.Also, in order to establish this liaison system, many applications or programs of web 2.0 should be employed to enable the operations of the business. As they are just starting the business, the use of free web-based tools such as Google Docs and eGroupWare will enhance the cogency for the solvers to collaborate as any work submitte d or edited will be updated automatically for every(prenominal)one to read. As with any content management systems, roles must be set in order to maintain an cost-effective workplace. Having editors who can only edit material and administrators to watch over the work and behaviour of the editors will dissuade solvers from abusing their editing privileges. Using web based email clients such as Gmail or Hotmail will allow for seekers and solvers to communicate with R&L in regards to any problems outside of the work. As these web-based clients have options to organise emails into affiliate areas or folders, the emails wont be as cluttered and be easier to deal with.Business shapeAn organisations business model is essentially the blueprint of their business logic and ideologies (Ludeke-Freund, 2013). As such, it is overcritical that an effective business model is both established and adhered to. Osterwalders business model canvas is explained in nine different pillars.Key Partners Key ActivitiesValue PropositionRelationshipsClientsKey ResourcesChannelsCost structureRevenue StreamSource Alexander OsterwalderValue PropositionRL Crowdsource needs to provide a ordinary crowd sourcing service, which connects solvers and seekers alike. The competitive advantage that RL Crowdsource should be striving for is an easily accessible system, which provides access to an extensive range of audiences. Whilst crowd sourcing is freely available on the Internet, R&L should implement a system that easily connects a seeker directly to the best available solvers. In an increasingly global generation, RL Crowdsource should also have the ability to bypass language issues, which would normally stop a seeker from outsourcing work.The presence of RL Crowdsource as an mediator will also enable easier transactions. Payment and reward incentives would be transacted through RL Crowdsource, decreasing the possibility of trick and enabling peace of mind for many users. Other solvers may be motivated by the social benefits derived from creations that benefits society greatly. Some others may not be motivated by recognition or pecuniary incentives but instead, choose to free reveal ideas (Krogh, 2006). R&L Crowdsource should endeavour to harness these different sources of demand by being the delivery system for any rewards and incentives.The communication and collaboration between solvers and seekers in the project should produce greater satisfaction and results. It should be noted that the satisfaction and results were facilitated through RL Crowdsources C2C business system, and then forms part of the honor proposition to R&L Crowdsources clients. Pathak (2009) articulates this through emphasising the efficient nature of platforms, which allow consumers to cooperate and collaborate with each other in real time. RL Crowdsource will conduct advertising and recruiting activities on behalf of the client. This is particularly master(prenominal) because a large part of RL Crowdsources target audience will have little or no expertise and experience in this area.Key ActivitiesTo successfully enable the jimmy propositions stated above, R&L Crowdsource must establish a system to connect consumers. A make out element of that aspect would be a search RSS feed that connects a solvers characteristics and qualifications with that of a seekers. The feed should have different categories alongside a onsite search engine. De La Torre-Diez (2013) educates that an RSS Feed is an passing effective method for sharing frequently updated information on the Internet. It is also a low-cost method of creating universal access to the offerings of the slopped through the Internet (Ning et al., 2008).A customer relationship management system and a multilingual search engine within the companys website would also be efficacious for developing customer relationships and achieving the value propositions. The implementation of these systems would be dependant on the a vailability of capital. As the firm invests in these information systems, the report is for quicker and more accurate connections between seekers and solvers. This will thus make out more value for everyone as more users use the site.Key ResourcesCapital is clearly the most important resource. It will enable R&L Crowdsource to obtain technological requirements such as computers, networks, databases and customised ERP systems. A corporeal location to store these items will need to be available as well. As the value propositions are primarily based online, R&L Crowdsource should mitigate a lot of resource expenses attributed to traditional brick and daub businesses (Pure-Play e-Business Development, 2000).Key PartnersThe key partners of a firm are those who support and aid the firms success on a professional level (Clark, Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2012). As such, R&L Crowdsource should consider its I.T department or outsourced I.T consultants to be a key partner. This is because the firms value propositions rely entirely on the ability of its information systems. The design and accessibility of the system will also determine the success of the system. Other key partners could include large business customers whose reputation can give credibility to R&L Crowdsources legitimacy. Likewise, R&L should consider all users as a key partner simply because it relies on its users to hold the value proposition for other users.Customer RelationshipManaging customer relationships is critical for every business that aspires to attain a competitive advantage. The nature of a customer relationship is defined by how responsive, attentive, personalized and customised it is (Bankston 2013). A key aim to maintaining customer relationship is therefore to increase efficiency and effectiveness for every seeker or solver. Due to the low switching costs attributed to many businesses based primarily online (Pure-Play e-Business Development, 2000), customer loyalty is often defined thr ough the value and customer service attained by the customer. Therefore, R&L Crowdsource must continue investing in the key resources defined above to maintain customer loyalty. Other methods to enhance customer loyalty can be through discounts and lower pricing.Channel talk between the firm and its customers is a vital element. For a firm whose value proposition is primarily based online, it is rational to have communication channels based primarily online as well. Milburn (2004) states that the challenges faced by companies, involves advance a behavioural change to electronic communication. This makes sense for the company because electronic communication is often the method of communication with the lowest cost as well (Milburn, 2004). Methods such as email and enquiry forms on the website should be used. The advantage of electronic communications lies in the fact that it is accessible at any time of the day. However for electronic communication to be successful, it must be quic k, responsive and easy to navigate (Bernier, 2013).Customer SegmentsR&L Crowdsource should be creating value for both seekers and solvers. It is paramount that both segments of the market see value in order for R&L Crowdsource to deliver its value propositions. The most important customers are the customers who open the most revenue for the firm. These typically include organisations that use R&L Crowdsource extensively .Cost structureThe most important costs in this business model involve the business systems that deliver the value proposition to our clients. This includes the database (which needs to be constantly updated), alongside server bandwidth and RSS Feed design. These resources are likely to be the most expensive as it also incurs a constant maintenance cost. Legal support will also be required to make sure R&L Crowdsource abides by national and international legislation in its activities.Revenue StreamsThe revenue streams for R&L Crowdsource should be primarily from th eseekers. An example of this can be seen by eBay.com, where the seller pays a percentage of the final sale price to eBay, alongside government activity fees. This is a model that R&L Crowdsource should adopt. Bonakdar et al. (2012) educates that misguided revenue gaining ideals will hurt all business models. Therefore, R&L Crowdsource should refrain from charging fees on solvers. This will allow the number of solvers to increase because the service is free to them. Revenue will thus rise naturally as the number of seekers increases.References1. Alzawahreh, A., Khasawneh, S. (2011). Business Strategies Adopted by Jordanian Organisations The Key to sustained Competitive Advantage. Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, garishness 3 .2. Amir Bonakdar, T. W. (2013). Transformative Influence of Business Processes on the Business ideal Classifying the State of the Practice in the Software Industry. Hawaii Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.3. Ba nkston, K. (2013). Whats Your Top Goal. deferred payment Union Management .4. Bernier, P. (2013). Taking the Customer Experience Mobile. Business Source Premier (7), pp. 8-11.5. Clark, T., Osterwalder, A. (2012). Business Model You A One-Page Method For Reinventing Your Career. Hoboken, New Jersey, USA John Wiley & Sons .6. Cherry head & Co. (2000). Pure-Play e-Business Development. USA Cherry Tree & Co.7. ComScore, 2011. Statistic Brain. Online ready(prenominal) at http//www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/ Accessed 16 April 2013.8. Kristin Purcell, J. B. L. R., 2012. PewInternet. Online Available at http//www.pewinternet.org/ disciplines/2012/Search-Engine-Use-2012/Summary-of-findings.aspx Accessed 16 April 2013.9. Krogh, v. (2006). Free Revealing and the Private collective Model for Innovation Incentives. R&D Management , 36 (3), 295-306.10. Ledeke-Freund, F. (2013). Business Models for Sustainable Innovation state of the art and Steps Towards a Research Agenda. Journal of Cleaner Production , April Edition, 9-19.11. Milburn, P. (2004). Customer Communications Keeping thousand in an Ever-Changing Environment. Keeping Good Companies , 56 (8), 458-459.12. Pathak, B. (2009). C2C Business Models Beyond Online Marketplaces. Hershey, PA, USA IGI Publishing.13. Pring, C., 2012. The Social Skinny. OnlineAvailable at http//thesocialskinny.com/99-new-social-media-stats-for-2012/ Accessed 16 April 2013.14. Spradlin, D. (2012). Are you Solving the Right Problem?. Harvard Business Review15. Torre-Diez, I. d. (2013). Development and execution of instrument Evaluation of a New RSS Tool for a Web-Based System. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, Volume 7.16. X Ning, H. J. (2008). RSS A Framwork Enabling Ranked Research on the Semantic Web. Information Processing and Management .Overview of the ReportThe main purpose of the assignment is to illustrate how our client should commence their own business initiative into a viable business venture with our recom mendation as a team of Information System consultants. Basically,we had to design a ideal and optimized business model for our client with reasonable explanation and how Information System will accelerate their business initiative.During our preparation for the group project for INFS1602, we started from reviewing the lecture notes and prescribed text book apiece for the brainstorming stage. This was suggested by Justin as we did not fully understand all concepts and theories that the lecturer explained during the week 1 to 5 lectures. This idea was an absolutely good starter for our group work and we were able to find the re drive direction and it gave us a clear way of completing the workAfter the brainstorming stage, we had to wrangle more details regarding of the assignment as none of us had the identical idea such as which target market we should decide as well as how we can recommend which business model Ruth and Luke should adopt. Throughout the brainstorming process, we c ame up with a variety of different ideas for potential target markets and ushers competitive forces model described in the text book was used in order to justify why we chose the target markets for the clients business. This textbook resources were quiet useful, however, we needed to do nurture researches since it illustrated mainly generalized ideas and we wanted to see how actual Porters competitive forces model is adopted in practice.Therefore, we found some samples of the Porters model and this gave us very clear ideas about the first part of the assignment. When we were doing the second part of the assignment which is describing how our client should use information systems and technology to create value and how mainstream and emerging Web 2.0 technologies and applications could be used to enable the strategy and operation of the business, we referred to our textbook mainly from chapter 3 to chapter 4. Some case studies from the text book were significantly helpful to underst and how actual information system is working for existing companies. Particularly, in terms of answering how the business initiative can generate revenue, the case study in chapter4 was a time-saver as we discussed these issues during workshop and various different opinions and perspectives from classmates stimulated when we were doing the brainstorming.In conclusion, while we were doing the group assignment, we encountered some conflicts as they had different point of view for the same issues and we effectively solve those issues cooperatively. Workshops, textbook and the lecture notes were the main resources that we used and a bit of supportive online researches were conducted in order to swan our recommendation for the client. Also we all agreed that information system is a combination of all different business knowledge and can maximise a business strategy if we can apply properly.