What is e-Commerce Business?

E-commerce is a type of business which facilitates consumers to purchase products and attain all kinds of services online using internet technologies and related infrastructures. The advantage of e-commerce over traditional shopping is its ease of use and time saving.

As a business field, e-commerce is one of the most growing and it also takes the day to day technological use of a person to the next level.

As a business, e-commerce is a booming business to start. Shopify is a Canadian e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, that develops computer software for online stores and retail point-of-sales systems and offers e-commerce business enthusiasts a platform to help start their business.

iFour Technolab Pvt. Ltd. is a Shopify partner and provides following services using expert team.

•     Online store development using Shopify
•     Shopify Theme Design
•     Provides dedicated Shopify Developer or resources
•     Shopify store Customizations and enhancement
•     Shopify Plugins & Add-ons development
•     Shopify Store Maintenance and support

We have been successfully working over the years with expertise to deliver the above services as one of the best ecommerce solution provider in india. We have experience and expertise of an enterprise and fit very well in the pocket of all firms (small, medium and large firms).

Old Technology New Perspective

Out with the ancient, in with the innovative! That's the standard path of innovation. PCs killed typewriters, for example. Smartphones outdated telephones, pocket calculators, and point-and-shoot cameras. Every once in a while, however, an ancient technology rises from the ashes and finds novel life. : Rebirth 

It is feasible for softwarecompanies in India to prolong the life expectancy of some technologies, along with the organizations and communities that back them. Successful companies may be able to relocate a 'dying' technology by redefining its individuality and value for the customer. When things looked truly bad for the mechanical watch industry, when the industry seemed on the verge of breakdown, watch collectors started purchasing mechanical watches at auction at best prices. This sent a signal to the industry that there may still be hidden value in what they supposed was a dead technology. And so these collectors become almost like canaries in a coalmine, in a respectable way. They sent a signal of optimism that there might still be value there.  

Redefining an industry's worth also means redefining the rivalry. And in order for a technology to resurge, the entire industry must do that. In the case of the Swiss, for example, they were no longer challenging against the Casio and Seiko of the world, but rather creating a fresh market for luxury watches. 

Another example is fountain pens. The industry sold roughly 45 million units in 1960s. Sales then plunged to approximately 7 million units by 1980s due to the rise of the ballpoint pen. But in 2010s, annual sales of fountain pens had rebounded to almost 20 million units. The reason: Fountain pens were now advertised not simply as practical writing implements, but also as sentimental fashion accessories. As such, they were not truly in the identical competitive market as ballpoint pens anymore.

 The question becomes whether ASPDOT NET software companies in India re competing on the old terms or on a set of new terms. And industries that successfully re-emerge are those who redefine their competitive set - the group of organizations upon which they want to contest and the value proposal that they send to the consumer.  

A few years ago, it seemed like mega-chains like Borders Books might crush independent bookstores. What happened instead was that online booksellers sucked Borders, which had secured all of its super-stores by 2010-2011. Meanwhile, the independents are gradually re-emerging. In 1995, the American Booksellers Association had a membership of about 5,500 stores. By 2009 that number had dropped to 1,401. But the number has rejuvenated a bit to 1,632 currently. While Borders was competing on price the independents were falsifying a renewed competitive identity. Independent bookstores were created on the idea of community building and today they have moved their sole focus away from the books they sell—Amazon can do that. Rather, they have shifted their focus to build communities for their readers. They've connected with consumers' craving to be with others who are like themselves. The Swiss understood the significance of helping consumers build an emotional link with their watches. The same holds correct for the independent bookstores that are getting it right. To endure, they're shifting their organizational identities to generate emotional value in their communities.  

The value of some products may go beyond pure functionality to hold non-functional aspects that can influence consumer buying behaviours although it is unlikely that such emotional or self-expressive benefits will totally trump function, exploring these other elements can offer c#software companies in India with valuable extra time to progress possible adaptation or repositioning strategies. 

The lesson for asp.netsoftware companies in India is that a new technology is not always the only way to get ahead of the arc when older technologies or industries seem to be reaching the expiration of their life.

ITIL Service Design

The scope of Service Design covers the design of new IT services, as well as modification, changes and improvements made to the existing ones.

The activities included in Service design are :

• To design the IT services to meet Business Objectives of a software development company.
• To design Secure & flexible IT Infrastructure.
• To analyze, identify and remove the risks associated with the IT services before they go live.
• To create & maintain the IT plans, processes, policies and frameworks.
• To design methods & metrics for the measurement of the effectiveness of processes.
• Design Effective & efficient processes for design, transition & operation phases

The Service Design includes different phases, namely :

1. Design Coordination
2. Service Catalogue Management
3. Service Level Management
4. Availability Management
5. Capacity Management
6. Supplier Management
7. Information Security Management
8. Service Continuity Management
9. Risk Management
10. Compliance Management
11. Architecture Management

DESIGN COORDINATION
Design Coordination handles all processes in the Design stage and acts as the center point of all the communication.
It governs all designing activities and make sure that the consistent design of IT services is aligned with the service strategy.

Five Sub processes of the Design Coordination includes :

• Design Coordination Support
• Service Design Planning
• Service Design Coordination and Monitoring
• Technical and Organizational Service Design
• Service Design Review and RFC Submission

SERVICE CATALOGUE MANAGEMENT
Service Catalogue Management includes the IT Services which are ready to be used and implemented.

The objective of the Service Catalogue Management includes :

• Creating and maintaining the Service Catalogue.
• Keeping the Service Catalogue updated with the latest trends and information.
• There has to be Continual Improvement in Management of Service Catalogue.

Service Catalogue :
The service catalogue is defined as the single source of information for all the offerings of IT services. It includes Operational & in Transition Services. Service catalogue is considered as a part of Service Portfolio. Service Catalogue emphasizes on what kind of IT service software development company would would like to offer to its customers based on the needs of the customers.

The different types of Service Catalogue are given as :

• Business Service Catalogue
• Technical Service Catalogue

AVAILABILITY MANAGEMENT
The Availability Management ensures that the IT services are working as agreed upon.

The objective of the Availability Management includes :

• To ensure agreed Availability Level is continuously met or not and check whether it has exceeded the expected level or not.
• To ensure that a defined level of IT services are accessible to customer in a cost effective way.
• The availability management ensures Availability
• The availability management ensures Reliability
• The availability management ensures Maintainability
• The availability management ensures Serviceability
• The availability management ensures Fault Tolerance

Three sub-processes of Availability Management includes :

• Design Services for Availability Process
• Availability Testing Process
• Availability Monitoring and Reporting.

SERVICE LEVEL MANAGEMENT
The Service Level Management covers the negotiation & service level agreement with the clients on the various IT service provided.

The objective of the Service Level Management includes :

• It focuses on the negotiation, agreement and documentation of the agreed levels of the IT Services.
• Maintaining the balance between expectation of the customers and the capabilities of an IT organization.
• Emphasizes on continual improvement and maintaining of the agreed IT service levels
• It looks onto managing the performance as per the agreed service level norms.
• Maintain the customer relationship is given importance.

Four Service Level Management sub-processes includes :

• Maintenance of the SLM Framework Objective
• Identification of Service Requirements Objective
• Agreements Sign-Off and Service Activation
• Service Level Monitoring and Reporting Process

CAPACITY MANAGEMENT
The Capacity Management ensures IT services are sized in very cost effective manner and at the optimum level.

• Mapping and ensuring that the capacity of IT services with the IT infrastructure is able to deliver the agreed service level targets in a cost effective and timely manner.
• It ensures that the IT infrastructure is utilized to its optimum level.
• Capacity plan should be regularly produced and updated.

Four Sub processes of the Capacity management includes :

• Business Capacity Management
• Service Capacity Management
• Component Capacity Management
• Capacity Management Reporting

SUPPLIER MANAGEMENTThe role of the Supplier Management in an IT organization is to manage Supplier Relationship & Performance and maintain it for the advantage of the organization on the ease of resource availability.

The objectives of the Supplier Management includes :

• To enhance and maintain the supplier relationship & performance
• To Ensure the relevant and correct contracts with the supplier of the IT services
• To manage and maintain the contracts throughout the supplier management lifecycle
• To create and maintain the database of Supplier Policy and Contracts

Six Sub Processes of Supplier management includes :

• Providing the Supplier Management Framework
• Evaluation of new Suppliers and Contracts
• Establishing new Suppliers and Contracts
• Processing of Standard Orders Process
• Supplier and Contract Review Process
• Renewal or Termination Process

INFORMATION SECURITY MANAGEMENT
Information Security Management is the way to protect the data and information of the IT organization against the vulnerabilities of the natural or environmental factors. 

• The objectives of the Information Security Management includes :
• To prevent  against the unauthorized access
• To provide various effective security measures at different levels : Strategic, planned & Operational organizational Levels
• To match and comply with the Information Security Requirements as per Service Level Agreement

Four Sub Processes of the Information Security Management includes :

• Design of Security Controls
• Security Testing
• Management of Security Incidents
• Security Review

SERVICE CONTINUITY MANAGEMENT
The Service Continuity Management process focuses on the continuation and the recovery  of the IT services even after the disaster and ensuring that they work in the same fashion as before as per the  agreed & applicable SLA

The objectives of the service continuity management includes :

• To create & manage IT service continuity & recovery plans
• To reduce potential disaster occurrence
• Balance SLAs & Cost factors while planning for service continuity

Four sub processes of the service continuity management includes :

• ITSCM Support Objective
• Design Services for Continuity
• ITSCM Training and Testing
• ITSCM Review.

Conclusion: The service design helps to an IT organization to design new services and increasing the relationship with the IT service providers and the supplier along with maintaining the relationship with the customer thereby increasing the value of the IT organization. It helps to maintain the existing IT Services as well as implementing new services.

References :http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/ITIL_Service_Design

IT and Business – who aligns whom?

ASP DOT NET Software companies in India can accomplish great success when key IT resources – physical IT infrastructure mechanisms, technical and managerial IT talents, and information assets − are aligned with business strategy and when suitable structures are used to direct the deployment and effective management of these resources. Over time, history shows that strategic alignment basically means mutual understanding between business and IT as to the strategic nature of IT, governance tools for IT, enterprise architecture development, and strategic path.

Getting the accurate level and type of alignment is essential. Throwing money on occasions of misalignment can be uneconomical and unwise for software companies in India if the basis of misalignment is not linked to the level of IT investment. Concentrating on alignment as a remedy for IT-related problems can be equally uneconomical.

IT Alignment needs greater understanding of interrogations such as:

• If the measurement of IT alignment is based on perceptual dealings of IT and business strategy and perceptions are hypothetically flawed, alignment measures could be similarly flawed.
• Can IT be aligned when the behaviours of individual stakeholders (corporate and business unit IT management, service providers, and IT outsourcers) do not display the same tendency toward the business strategy? IT managers in the same firm might not realise business strategy in the similar way.
• How could stress that arise between corporate and business unit management upset the ability of organizations to accomplish and maintain alignment at both the corporate and business unit levels?

Novel c# software companies in India are fundamentally varying traditional business strategies, allowing organizations to reach across boundaries of distance, time, and function. The upswing of digital business strategy – primarily, strategy formulated and executed by leveraging digital resources, suggests that ‘IT leads rather than aligns with corporate strategy’. The effects of net-enabled businesses is a reduced role for strategic alignment but this is somewhat short-term thinking. The issue lies in the characterization of strategic IT alignment as the degree of IT provision for business strategy. In these instances, misalignment is usually attributable to inadequate or misdirected IT investment where the level of IT investment might be an objective but organizations have simply capitalized on the wrong IT. If the definition of IT alignment is reviewed to reproduce both the extent of IT support for business strategy and the extent to which IT is deployed/leveraged in assisting present and forthcoming business strategy, it may be possible to spot examples of misalignment that are because of underutilized IT abilities.

As organizations digitize their complete businesses and build digital choices to capitalize on future opportunities, business processes that implement business strategy are becoming increasingly dependent on IT. This would then infer that executing digital business strategy is reliant on the capability of firms to leverage IT through business processes, in which case two-way alignment befits a key mechanism through which IT creates value. An organization that holds IT-based digital options but who then nominates to not workout those options – possibly because of scarce market opportunities or modestly because of poor managerial decision making – would be wide-open to misalignment and to the projections of sub-par firm performance.

With the growth of digital business strategy, chances arise for asp.net companies in India to progress understanding of alignment in precise ways:

• The logic of digital business strategy claims that IT alignment may become less significant since IT is the strategy. Hence, IT and business strategy are indistinguishable.
• If the existence of IT shortage and IT underutilization affect the aptitude of organizations to perform their digital business strategies, what are the consequences of two-way strategic alignment for firm performance? Is the relation between two-way strategic alignment and performance toned-down by the level of strategy digitization?
• How do forces (and directives possibly) to boost security in a digital world affect IT alignment?

It is time to revive understanding of IT alignment. How IT alignment has been theorized and measured as well as identifying long-term challenges. Potential paths for future strategic IT alignment comprise many challenges but they also show that there is much that asp dot net companies in India still do not know about IT alignment. Strategic IT alignment has an optimistic future and will likely persist a key area of interest for managers of  software companies in India.

Successful Startup Companies

A lot of software development start-ups in India have entered the industry either establishing an entirely new market or growing in existing markets. Every start-up wants to grow its company to a great success. The path of a journey is from start-up to business to brand. A business becomes a brand when it successfully connects with its consumers either intellectually or emotionally. Following are the ways for start-up to grow to business:

• Solve a problem familiar to you
• Test your guesses quickly
• Build and test a prototype
• Sell it to your initial market
• Expand globally

Although there are many successful start-ups, following are growing rapidly and changing how an existing industry works in the process:
1. Paytm :   

Vijay Shekhar Sharma is a co-founder of Paytm. Life tested him right from the beginning of his journey to become one of the most influential people in the business world today. 

At the very beginning, Vijay along with his colleague, Rajiv Shukla, co-founded One97 Communications Ltd, a mobile value-added services company. But in 9/11 tragedy, their business crashed. His partner left him. He was with no money now. For sustaining his life, he took up a job. But the enthusiasm of doing something of his own keeps his interest alive from inside. And so he founded Paytm with collaboration of application development company in India.

Paytm was launched in December 2010. It started as a prepaid mobile recharge website. He firstly experimented with the three basics of internet- content, advertising and commerce. But the big eureka moment came in 2011 when he first pitched the idea of entering the payment ecosystem in front of his board. And then the first avatar of Paytm, Pay through Mobile, was born, going rapidly onto becoming the next big thing of the start-up ecosystem in India. The main reason behind its success is the trust he built with his customers. He first built a strong 24x7 customer care service to address the worries of customers to enable them to trust the wallet enough to put their money into the hands of the unknown. 

Currently its business is not only limited to recharge but has expanded as online payment platform including mobile recharges, utility bill payment, wallet payment and wallet to wallet and wallet to bank transfers for many leading internet based companies like Bookmyshow, Makemytrip, FoodPanda, IRCTC and many others. Paytm is using Online-to-offline strategy provided by e-Commerce solution provider to grow more and more in business.

2. Snapdeal :  

Snapdeal set a niche for itself in the sphere of e-commerce solution provider in India. In 2010, when Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal wanted to start their own business, they chose an offline couponing business and named it MoneySaver. 15000 coupons were sold in three months and it was time to take the business to the next level.
       

Initially started as an offline business, Snapdeal went online in 2010. It was a bumpy ride in the first few months. Mistakes were made, but lessons were learnt. It is this kind of hard work and diligent attempt to offer the best to the customers that gave Snapdeal its initial success.
      

Today, Snapdeal is one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in India with the largest online market place. In just two years, the company went from scrapping their group coupon business and starting an online marketplace to become a billion dollar company. Its year on year growth is almost 600%. Their values – Innovation, Change, Openness, Honesty and Ownership drive them to press for greater success.

Conclusion:
This article is inspiration for all start-up including software/application development companies in India. Every start-up can grow into business if it has confidence and Never Give Up quality. Though challenges are there, start-up companies can reach to greater success with determination and hard work.