This paper examines the e-business and enterprise business system requirements needed to support the growth of a small tire store. It recommends agile, SaaS-based platforms for e-commerce and accounting, and outlines a four-step justification process that includes strategic planning, process mapping, project rollout, and pre-implementation benchmarking. The paper also identifies key implementation challenges—including employee resistance to change and systems integration complexity—and addresses privacy and security concerns such as role-based access control, dual-administrator logins, 128-bit encryption, and external threat analysis. Together, these recommendations provide a practical roadmap for small businesses seeking to leverage digital systems for competitive advantage.
The paper uses applied problem-solution reasoning supported by peer-reviewed citations. Each recommendation is paired with a rationale drawn from academic sources, showing how real-world business decisions can be informed by scholarly research. The use of a balanced scorecard (BSC) framework to pre-measure performance before system deployment is a particularly strong example of evidence-based planning.
The paper is organized around four explicit prompts: system recommendations, justification activities, implementation challenges, and security concerns. Each section builds on the previous one, moving from strategic planning through operational execution to risk management. The conclusion synthesizes the customer-centric design philosophy that ties all four sections together. This structure mirrors a professional technology recommendation report.
Any proposed e-business system and its related Enterprise Business System needs to be agile and flexible enough to meet the unique process needs (Carayannopoulos, 2009) and role needs of the tire store. The e-business system specifically needs to be flexible enough to allow for rapid updates to pricing, inventory, product definitions in catalogs, and the use of online sales promotions (Elmore, 2005). The e-business side of the system needs to be attuned to the marketing, selling, and service needs of the small store. As a result, there need to be applications available on a 24/7 basis so that customers can check, for example, whether a specific tire is in stock. For larger vehicles including SUVs, there are also wheel balancing and safety checks of wheel installation, including testing of shocks to ensure they are safe and functioning properly.
The e-business system must also be flexible enough to be changed quickly as the store's needs evolve. Using template-based development tools for the e-commerce site, for example, the store could quickly have an online store up and running. Assuming that inventory is available in automated system feeds, the store could work with a software integration specialist to display real-time price and availability on the site whenever a customer requests it. A segment of the website also needs to be dedicated to escalating service calls and requests for quotes on fleet programs from larger companies. This would be a specialized application the company could develop over time.
Supporting the e-business platform, the Enterprise Business Systems would include Accounts Payable (A/P), Accounts Receivable (A/R), General Ledger, Financial Reporting, Analytics, and Online Payroll (Collins, 2006). These are the core financial accounting systems of the company and are critically important for managing it to profitability. In many small businesses, these Enterprise Business Systems grow over time into Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems as they integrate with inbound suppliers, inventory, pricing, stock balancing, and service costs and programs. What begins as an accounting system often evolves into an ERP system in small businesses that grow rapidly (Jackson, 2009).
Having financial, supply chain, logistics, and support data across the company can also be used to strengthen the e-business system or website. Using systems integration for pricing and logistics would allow a customer interested in a highly specific and potentially expensive tire to see when it would arrive at the store's warehouse, its price, and when it would be available for purchase. In short, forward-thinking small businesses view their ERP systems as a means to support more effective online selling through their websites and e-commerce initiatives.
As the company has yet to install an e-business system or website and an Enterprise Business System (potentially an ERP system), it is recommended that the initial systems be hosted or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based, meaning they are accessible entirely over the Internet through a browser. This will significantly speed up the customization of both the e-business and enterprise business systems, in addition to accelerating the learning curve. Hosted or SaaS-based applications are pervasive for e-commerce, with Yahoo, GoDaddy.com, and others being well-known examples. NetSuite offers an online accounting and ERP system that is also exceptionally easy to work with and could increase the probability of a successful implementation.
The store first needs to define which objectives it wants to accomplish using both the e-business or e-commerce site and the Enterprise Business Systems. In effect, a strategic plan needs to be produced first, which can then be used to determine the most critical success factors for the e-commerce and enterprise systems. Included in this plan, there also needs to be process workflows and estimates of how processes would improve over time based on the adoption of these systems (Robinson, Sherwood, & DePaolo, 2010).
Second, after defining the strategic plan and the long-range goals the systems will be focused on achieving, it is critically important for the company managers responsible for planning, implementing, and maintaining the system to have a clear understanding of what people in the targeted process areas will do on a daily basis, and also to understand how these new systems may significantly change their roles and responsibilities. Process mapping and a focus on how to make the overall store more efficient by placing more information online need to be addressed in this step. Inherent in this step is also a definition of the e-commerce strategy and its goals and objectives.
Third, the strategic plan and e-commerce plan need to be integrated into a project plan that the store's management, selling, and services team can all support as the systems are rolled out over time. There needs to be allowance for training and additional system development, as well as customization of screens for the specific needs of employees. All of these factors can contribute to employees having a greater sense of ownership over the e-commerce site and the enterprise system.
Fourth, prior to the actual pilot of the e-business or e-commerce system and the Enterprise Business Systems, the store would be wise to benchmark existing processes and measure how much it costs to manage price and availability calls manually, or how much time is spent helping customers check on the status of their orders. Measuring how often customers call to inquire whether a given high-end or unique tire is in stock also needs to be captured. All of this data can be included on a balanced scorecard (BSC) by which the tire store will be able to evaluate the effectiveness of its e-business and enterprise system efforts (Saffu, Walker, & Hinson, 2008).
Most successful small business implementations of e-business or e-commerce systems, in addition to ERP systems, share this common trait: they all measure the performance of the company's processes and systems before cutting over to the new system, in order to isolate the effects of that system (Winter, Gaglio, & Rajagopalan, 2009). What often happens during this phase—conducted immediately before a pilot—is that new metrics or performance measures are created that had not been considered before. This is extremely valuable because not only are insights being gained into the company that were not previously available, they are being actively measured and evaluated over time.
All of these steps need to be taken into account to ensure the store has a successful evaluation of the e-business or e-commerce system, in addition to the Enterprise Business System it plans to implement (Wolcott, Kamal, & Qureshi, 2008). If all the store does is bring in the software without thoroughly evaluating its processes and systems, it will be automating mediocrity. To achieve lasting results, the focus must be on measuring the true impact of these systems on company performance.
All of these considerations taken together increase the odds of the e-business or e-commerce site and the enterprise business system being able to stay secure over the long term. By combining agile SaaS-based deployment, structured implementation planning, proactive performance benchmarking, and layered security protocols, the tire store can build a technology foundation that supports sustainable business growth while keeping customer data and company systems well protected.
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