QUESTION
Business Intelligence
writer needs to choose one organization to do this work, please tell them this organization must come from Australia or China. this is important .
BSN450 - Business Intelligence
Assessment 1 - Business Intelligence Plan
Weight 40%
Individual Task
Max. 2000 words
In Brief
You will apply tools and techniques introduced in the unit to identify and evaluate a Business in its changing market, industry, and PESTEL environment, and describe how data can guide the Business to navigate itself in this environment. You are required to write up and submit your findings in a report, which needs to include a reflection on the personal biases that govern your decision-making process.
Task Description
Organisations, whether they be for-profit (i.e. commercial entities), not-for-profit (e.g. NGOs, charities, and social enterprises), or governmental (entities funded by the government), desire to be competitive, profitable, viable, impacting, and sustainable over time. To attain these goals, they need to take the most appropriate forms of action possible, which are governed by an overall strategy. In its broadest sense, strategy could be defined as “a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim”. However, the designing of good plans needs relevant and accurate information.
Organisations successful in developing good strategies are equipped with methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies, which allow them to acquire and transform raw data into meaningful and useful information. These organisations are equipped with Business Intelligence. But organisations vary with respect to the level of Business Intelligence they employ. We could compare, for instance, nascent ventures (e.g. start-ups) that are bootstrapping in their early years and therefore have limited resources to even acquire relevant data, with large corporations that have sufficient financial, human, and technological resources devoted to purposeful Business Intelligence teams.
The overall mission of this Assessment task is for you to recognise the value of Business Intelligence for organisations and their strategy development. To this end, you are required to select one organisation and explore how it could employ Business Intelligence.
In this Assessment task, the organisation of your choice must be:
- a local organisation (i.e. an organisation that has its headquarters in your country of residence)
- either: a. a real, existing social enterprise (i.e. its actions are intended to deliver positive social impact)
- a real organisation that is traditionally not a social enterprise, but one which may pivot to deliver social impact
- a new start-up (real or one you may hypothetically imagine) that has observed an opportunity to deliver social impact
To understand what social impact might look like, please visit the United Nations website explaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/. Your chosen organisation should ideally aim to deliver impact along at least one of the listed SDG dimensions, whether that be locally and/or internationally.
There are three pathways you may therefore follow in developing your Business Intelligence Plan. These pathways and a set of pragmatic steps associated with them are presented below. Please choose only one pathway in completing this Assessment task.
Pathway 1: A real, existing social enterprise
- Start by identifying the social enterprise and gaining a firm grasp of its mission statement. The mission statement of the organisation is essentially a statement of what it would like to achieve as a long-term or overall aim – it is therefore strategic.
- Utilise the Business Model canvas as a tool to understand the social enterprise’s existing business model.
- Next, examine the organisation’s changing environment, including changing customer requirements, industry competition, policy changes, and global events, among others. Here, we make the assumption that the organisation you have chosen will need to adapt to these changes through strategic action in order to continue delivering its mission focusing on social impact.
- Given that Business Intelligence can help the social enterprise deliver its mission statement, position yourself in the shoes of top-level management (e.g. CEO, CIO), and put together a plan of the organisation’s Business Intelligence work (i.e. the Business Intelligence Plan), which will enable the organisation to adapt to its changing environment. Your Business Intelligence Plan will need to evaluate how the Business Model Canvas would need to be transformed in response to the changing environment through the use of data (see points 5 and 6).
- To facilitate the business model transformation, determine the organisation’s data-led strategy as governed by how the organisation can use data to create and capture value.
- As you develop this Business Intelligence Plan, you may want to describe, among others: (i) the information needed by the social enterprise to allow it to make decisions in alignment with its mission; (ii) the data that would need to be collected and analysed to deliver this information; (iii) how the data would be collected; and (iv) where the data would be sourced from.
- Finally, reflect on your own thinking which has led to the Business Intelligence Plan you have developed. Ask questions, such as: (i) What were your core, personal assumptions and biases?; (ii) Which parts of the Business Intelligence Plan did these biases influence?; and (iii) What could have been the influence of these biases upon the strategic actions of the organisation?
Pathway 2: A real organisation that is traditionally not a social enterprise, but one which may pivot to deliver social impact.
- Start by identifying the organisation and gaining a firm grasp of its mission statement. The mission statement of the organisation is essentially a statement of what it would like to achieve as a long-term or overall aim – it is therefore strategic.
- Utilise the Business Model canvas as a tool to understand the organisation’s existing business model.
- Next, examine the organisation’s changing environment, including changing customer requirements, industry competition, policy changes, and global events, among others. Here, we make the assumption that the organisation you have chosen will need to adapt to these changes through strategic action in order to deliver a mission focusing on social impact.
- Given that Business Intelligence can help the organisation deliver its mission statement, position yourself in the shoes of top-level management (e.g. CEO, CIO), and put together a plan of the organisation’s Business Intelligence work (i.e. the Business Intelligence Plan), which will enable the organisation to adapt to its changing environment. Your Business Intelligence Plan will need to evaluate how the Business Model Canvas would need to be transformed in response to the changing environment through the use of data (see points 5 and 6).
- To facilitate the business model transformation, determine the organisation’s data-led strategy as governed by how the organisation can use data to create and capture value towards social impact.
- As you develop this Business Intelligence Plan, you may want to describe, among others: (i) the information needed by the organisation to allow it to make decisions in alignment with its mission; (ii) the data that would need to be collected and analysed to deliver this information; (iii) how the data would be collected; and (iv) where the data would be sourced from.
- Finally, reflect on your own thinking which has led to the Business Intelligence Plan you have developed. Ask questions, such as: (i) What were your core, personal assumptions and biases?; (ii) Which parts of the Business Intelligence Plan did these biases influence?; and (iii) What could have been the influence of these biases upon the strategic actions of the organisation?
Pathway 3: A new start-up (may be hypothetical).
- Start by defining the start-up’s mission statement. The mission statement of the start-up is essentially a statement of what it would like to achieve as a long-term or overall aim – it is therefore strategic.
- Next, examine the changing environment (i.e. external enablers), including changing customer requirements, industry competition, policy changes, and global events, among others. Here, we make the assumption that the start-up will be founded to address the opportunities created by these changes and deliver a mission focusing on social impact.
- Given that Business Intelligence can help the start-up deliver its mission statement, position yourself in the shoes of the start-up founder, and put together a plan of the start-up’s Business Intelligence work (i.e. the Business Intelligence Plan), which will enable it to exploit the opportunities created by the changing environment. Your Business Intelligence Plan will need to evaluate the overall business model of the start-up and the use of data (see points 4, 5, and 6).
- Utilise the Lean Canvas as a tool to design the start-up’s business model.
- In creating the Lean Canvas, establish the start-up’s data-led strategy as governed by how it ought to use data to create and capture value.
- As you develop this Business Intelligence Plan, you may want to describe, among others: (i) the information needed by the start-up to allow it to make decisions in alignment with its mission; (ii) the data that would need to be collected and analysed to deliver this information; (iii) how the data would be collected; and (iv) where the data would be sourced from.
- Finally, reflect on your own thinking which has led to the Business Intelligence Plan you have developed. Ask questions, such as: (i) What were your core, personal assumptions and biases?; (ii) Which parts of the Business Intelligence Plan did these biases influence?; and (iii) What could have been the influence of these biases upon the strategic actions of the organisation?
Formatting
The report must include a cover page, executive summary, and references, and be presented professionally with a logical structure and flow. Please also adhere to the following formatting guidelines:
- Font: Times New Roman, 12pt
- Spacing: double
- Citations and referencing: use the APA style (https://www.citewrite.qut.edu.au/)
- Length: adhere to the maximum word count allowed, which is exclusive of the cover page, executive summary, figures, and references.
Note that a template will be provided to help you structure your report.
BSN450 - Business Intelligence
Assessment 1 - Business Intelligence Plan
Report Template
Structure
Cover Page
Executive Summary
Table of Contents
The Organisation
Environmental Scanning
Data-led Strategy
Biases
References
BSN450 Business Intelligence
2021, Semester 1
[Enter Report Title Here]
[enter student name here]
[enter student number here]
[enter word count here, e.g. 2000 words]
Executive Summary
[in less than 200 words, describe the purpose of the report and the report’s findings]
Table of Contents
Executive Summary ….. i
- The Organisation ….. 1
...
…
- The Organisation
- Background
[The purpose of this sub-section is to introduce the organisation of your choice. What is the name of the organisation? What is its Mission Statement? What are its objectives? What is its overall strategy? Where does it operate? What is its size? And so on.]
- The Business Model
[The purpose of this sub-section is to define the current business model of the organisation, which allows it to do what it purports to do. The business model should be explained through the Business Model Canvas, which should be inserted as a figure in this section]
[insert - Figure 1: The organisation’s Business Model Canvas – here]
- Environmental Scanning
[The purpose of this section is to evaluate the changes that are taking place in the organisation’s environment. This environment can include the political, economical, social, technological, environmental, and legal (i.e. PESTEL) factors. It is encouraged that you utilise a suitable framework (e.g. PESTEL, SWOT, and so on) to structure your discussion.]
- The Data-led Strategy
[The purpose of this section is to elaborate the Business Intelligence Plan you will devise for the organisation.]
- Business Model Transformation
[The purpose of this sub-section is to discuss how the new business model should look in response to the changing environment. In this new business model, it should also be explained where and how data will assist the organisation as it implements a data-led strategy. The transformed Business Model Canvas should be included in this sub-section as a figure.]
[insert - Figure 2: The organisation’s transformed Business Model Canvas – here]
- The Data
[The purpose of this sub-section is to discuss the data itself, by explaining where it will be sourced from, what kind of data it would be, how it would benefit the organisation, and so on.]
- Biases
[The purpose of this section is to evaluate the cognitive biases you have encountered while analysing the organisation you have chosen and the Business Intelligence Plan you have devised for it.]
References
[List here the resources that have been referred to in the report, following the referencing style explicated in the Assessment instructions document.]
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| Subject | Business | Pages | 18 | Style | APA |
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Answer
BSN450 Business Intelligence
Alibaba is the leading e-commerce business in China. The company has been at the forefront to establish an effective e-commerce system and promoting its associated environmental factor. This report will reflect Alibaba’s business model, environment, data-led strategy, and biases in the system. From the data, it was established that Alibaba has a good grip on the market attributed to the strength of having affluent publicity. The company’s weaknesses are propped by insufficient laborers. Alibaba’s data-led strategy is bestowed upon cloud computing techniques owing to its scalability as well as virtualized resources that support sharing the available data via internet connectives. However, this strategy’s only bias is sunk-cost thinking.
Table of Contents
4.1 Business Model Transformation. 9
Alibaba is China’s biggest e-commerce business. The company was founded by Jack Ma, a former English teacher, in 1999 after scrapping $80,000 from 80 investors to introduce an online marketing platform for Chinese companies. With its headquarters at Yuhang District, Hangzhou, the company has managed to extend its operations to other counties across the globe. Since 2014, the company’s revenue has been increasing steadily and is currently ranked among the top 10 world’s largest corporations in terms of market value. In 2020, the company managed to reach more than a billion global active with almost 90 percent of the defined populace residing in China. The current number of employees working at Alibaba Group stands at 117,600.
Vision
Alibaba’s vision is to establish the future of e-commerce. To realize its vision, Alibaba had to consider some measures that could effectively see it through growth and success (Havinga, Hoving & Swagemakers, 2016). Initially, the company’s stakeholders desired to increase their geographical boundaries, however, it was a challenging proposition to achieve. Nevertheless, the revenue generated through their business supported all operations to the point that they had enough capital to expand their business.
Mission
Alibaba’s mission has been oriented in respecting and expressing business ethics to the surrounding. The mission that the company resorted to significantly contributed to the achievement of their vision. The serenity that the firm introduced to their business world indicated that these shareholders wanted a peaceful co-existence in that potential clients from different cultures could easily relate to and prefer to utilize resources offered by the company.
Strategy
Considering that most online platforms in the world are business-oriented, the managing directors of Alibaba had to ensure that their company suits the market demands. To establish a strong market relationship with its client’s demands Alibaba opted to use different as well as easy services offered by the different media platforms. It became evident that application pricing significantly promoted its market strategy of using social media platforms. For instance, the decision from Alibaba’s official that the firm will sell its application to its subscribers at lower prices than Facebook or YouTube made a majority of online shoppers opt to use the platform. Currently, many of these platforms are venturing into advertisements in promoting the company. The motive behind this was that, if many individuals are familiar with a certain product, a good number will choose to consume the product through referrals. All the stated processes of marketing required professional evaluation for the company to conceptualize which market strategy would suffice.
Value proposition: The company offers five main value prepositions; Accessibility, brand/status, risk reduction, convenience, and customization.
Channel: The main channels used by Alibaba to market products and interact with clients include; company website and app, social media, and telephone calls (Yun et al., 2020).
Customer Relations: This is primarily an automated self-service with a limited human interface.
Key Activities: Alibaba is devoted to maintaining a robust and common platform for its products/services as well as buyers and sellers.
Key Partners: They include; market affiliates, professional service providers, logistics service providers, independent software vendors, and retail operation partners (Yun et al., 2020).
Key Resources: They include; human resources and a dependable software platform.
Cost Culture: a cost-driven structure that guarantees the reduction of losses and an increment in profits.
Revenue Streams: The three revenue streams for Alibaba include; service fees, advertising fees, and commissions.
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Fig 1: Alibaba Business Model
Political
Political factors have taken up a big role in the modern age. Globally, the political powers are assuming a vital part with regards to business. The technology business industry is explicitly facing immense control pressure. The Chinese government empowers local organizations which has demonstrated its significance for organizations like Alibaba which has seen extremely rapid development. These political powers are influencing international organizations in alternate manners as well (Pervaiz 2015). Trade relationships between nations additionally influence international trade. The decisive trade relationships between the U.S. and China are currently on a rough patch. The situation has been detrimental for Chinese organizations working in America. Similarly, it can be an obstacle to the intended development of Alibaba in the European nations.
Economy
In Likewise, economic factors play a vital role when it comes to international business. Other than the current state of the global economy, the condition in the local as we as regional economies also impact global business together with their sales and the related profits. After the global recession, many global economies have struggled to regain the previous state (Pervaiz 2015). The Chinese economy has also flourished significantly considering that the country is currently in the second, after the U.S. in the global ranking. This has instigated higher sales as well as profits for local brands.
Social
Social factors play a significant role in business sustainability. Other than the alternating social trends, other factors impact the business. From one society to another the cultural patterns vary significantly. However, the use of technology across all cultures has increased exponentially (Pervaiz 2015). This initiative has proved to be beneficial for e-commerce businesses such as Alibaba and Amazon. In China alone, the population has increased significantly and the majority of the populace is aware of technological tools. This suggests that Alibaba can effectively exploit both local and international markets.
Technology
In the modern age, technology is playing a crucial role in the growth of industries. Alibaba is a technology-oriented business. In China, the firm has gained significant recognition making it grow rather fast within a short period (Pervaiz 2015). This growth has been solely influenced by advancements in technology as well as innovations. Every year, Alibaba invests a lot of money in technology. Respectively, the company is leading in cloud computing technology in China. .
Ecological
Large companies that have made major investments in environmental sustainability have gained significant recognition (Pervaiz 2015). Alibaba has prioritized the green environment by sponsoring environmental projects as selling merchandise that conserves the natural environment. This charitable commitment has made the company realize its mission and vision.
Legal
Laws and government policies have grained a significant role in the business external environment. For multinational companies, these laws have been a big challenge (Pervaiz 2015). Complying to the set rules means that big business have more responsibilities to sustain the environment and non-compliance to such laws indicate that these high companies such as Alibaba are prone to hefty fines, which would affect their revenue and growth.
The building blocks of Alibaba's operations will be bestowed upon cloud computing techniques owing to its scalability as well as virtualized resources that support sharing the available data via internet connectives (Zhang & Ravishankar 2019). The key objective of this technology is to reduce the associated costs for running the company’s physical structure. Most essentially, this domain is used to share both the computer resources and data resources following the customer’s request. In most cases, this domain is associated as a third-party data center where the client is provided virtual data storage space and permitted to accesses the same data.
In line with the new data-let strategy, Alibaba will introduce Cloud Data Protection for Masses to run concurrently. This alternative is a service-based commercial development that ascertains data protection to the cloud users as well as cloud servers while accessing potential risks to the application. In broader prospect, this technology will be used to burr unauthorized personnel from assessing clients’ data (Zhang & Ravishankar 2019). The entire project development austerely depends on standard procedures of Data Protection and Services. To achieve this objective, a new cloud platform will be developed to save time by reducing the number of exertions of the pre-installation for every application by the user. Another advantage is that it provides greater enhancement offers of protecting both cloud and users’ data.
The company’s project development under this entity will follow four modules, such as user module, trusted platform, cloud computing, and third-party auditor. The front end, used by company developers, of this project is created using Java, while the back end will use SQL server tools (Zhang & Ravishankar 2019). This form of the framework makes the project user-friendly and more secure in the front end and the back end. What’s more, this new technology offers a new cloud computing paradigm to offer data protection to consumer applications. Data encryption, logging in/out, decryption, logging, and key management are few methods used to deploy the suggested security measures of the cloud.
Figure 2: The organisation’s transformed Business Model Canvas.
To become an effective data-led organization, Alibaba has to solely rely on consumer data. This data will help the business to predict customer preferences and to determine areas that need more investment (Elvy 2018). There are four types of data that the company will rely on to determine its mode of operations
Personal data
This classification includes personally identifiable data such as gender and social security numbers together with non-personally identifiable data like IP address, device IDs, and cookies (Elvy 2018).
Engagement Data
This category is associated with detailed information on how clients interact with the company’s website, customer service routes, emails, paid ads, social media, and mobile apps.
Behavioural Data
This type of data includes transactional information such as quantitative data, product usage information, and purchase histories (Elvy 2018).
Attitudinal Data
This category encompasses data such as purchase criteria, metrics in consumer satisfaction, and product desirability (Elvy 2018).
Methods of Collecting Data
Alibaba collects information in different ways and from many sources. A majority of data collection methods are relatively technical, but others are quite deductive. The bottom line is that Alibaba uses a cornucopia of collection procedures as well as sources to obtain and process consumer data with metrics. The company collects consumer data using two methods: direct interviews with the clients, tracking consumer pathways using the company’s website and other social media platforms.
Importance of collecting data
The essence of collecting consumer data is that it enables Alibaba’s management to understand the market. The company ought to know how consumers behave online, identify areas that need improvement to support consumer experience, and define genera demographics (Martin 2016). Consumer information will help the company tweak every operation to better fit clients’ needs.
Another importance of collecting data is that it will help Alibaba to enhance its marketing strategy (Becker, 2018). To outrank its competitors, the company has to increase its conversions as well as establish transparency and trust between its brand and the market. Data will help the company to identify and embark on the marketing campaigns and procedures that target the audience effectively.
The proposed business intelligence plan for Alibaba has one major preconception which is sunk-cost thinking. This type of bias explains how the company will venture to a certain investment despite the probability of failing but still encourages consumers to utilize the opportunity (Zhang & Ravishankar 2019). Many e-commerce businesses have overlooked the importance of using consumer data by giving false information regarding a certain product or service. This kind of bias always favors the company as it hardly experiences a loss in the inventory. Ecommerce businesses that thrive with this perception tend to focus more on their profits rather than establishing a sustainable customer experience.
References
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Becker, L. (2018). Methodological proposals for the study of consumer experience. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal. Elvy, S. A. (2018). Commodifying Consumer Data in the Era of the Internet of Things. BCL Rev., 59, 423. Havinga, M., Hoving, M., & Swagemakers, V. (2016). Alibaba: a case study on building an international imperium on information and E-Commerce. In Multinational management (pp. 13-32). Springer, Cham. Martin, K. (2016). Data aggregators, consumer data, and responsibility online: Who is tracking consumers online and should they stop?. The Information Society, 32(1), 51-63. Pervaiz, F. (2015). Pakistan’s E-commerce market analysis. Yun, J. J., Zhao, X., Park, K., & Shi, L. (2020). Sustainability condition of open innovation: Dynamic growth of alibaba from SME to large enterprise. Sustainability, 12(11), 4379. Zhang, G., & Ravishankar, M. N. (2019). Exploring vendor capabilities in the cloud environment: A case study of Alibaba Cloud Computing. Information & Management, 56(3), 343-355.
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