Table of Contents
Human Resource and Skill Development 7
Liberalization of Telecommunications Infrastructure Development 9
Abstract
The concept of E business has been among the most appreciated ideologies of the 21st century. E-business is in fact thought as the best propeller towards the growth of a variety of economies as it harmonizes the operation between the factor inputs of organization and other departments in a country.
UAE is among those countries that could benefits from its application as it offers a variety of benefits all of whom spun from the needs of the whole world. However, the country has not made the best use of the concept considering how the world of technology and other aspects of development in the economy have been developing. In this outline, we will focus on how UAE as a nation could give its contribution towards making additional use of the e-business concept as it has a lot of use in the strides that the country will make in future.
Introduction
According to Combe (2012), e-business as a concepts clearly connects to the e-commerce concept. Combe defines it as an application that co-opts both information and communication in a way that it accommodates for all the issues of the business. All operations that business and other organization conduct inculcate this concept allowing for a swifter methodology of delivery and sale of products.
Combe (2012) notes there are several definitions of the concept. However, just as there are a variety of definitions, so are the many issues that revolve around the concept. E- Business is one of the best ways of inculcating developments through globalization. This is so because, E- business has demarcation on the issues to embrace as it barely affect the culture of a country or community except in those aspects that it focuses on such as business.
Challenges for E- Commerce
One best way to understand how to embrace management information concepts such as E-commerce is by understanding some of the challenges that the people in an organization or a country are facing. The aspect of taxation constantly appears as an issue of concern to businesses, government, and the citizens in various countries.
Most individuals feel that by embracing the concept of e-business, either some products may undergo through double taxation or several form of taxation, while they are meant to be waivered by the government (Combe, 2012).
Security is also another major issue that influences most business and nations to shun away from embracing e-business. Tales of individual being conned by con persons surface more than any other form of news hence discouraging people from embracing for fear of being victims. In other cases, the mention of such con persons being part of one life also influences one to make a decision against embracing the concept.
Unless the contribution of the government is guaranteed in ensuing security, most stakeholders would fail to play their roles for fear of being victims. The probability of these products also failing to meet the standard of the customers is also a major factor that would influence most people from embracing the concept. Customers prefer to have a direct contact with the products, as it will allow them to examine all aspect before they purchase the products (Combe, 2012).
Privacy is also another mitigating factor that prevents most nations to embrace the concept into their systems. As part of the culture of the UAE people, meeting someone and building a rapport goes a long way in influencing how they will go about with their various businesses.
It is unheard off to do business with people that one is not aware who they are. On the other hand, most of the families are built on values of conservatism. They only communicate their presumptions only to people they know and not any other people. Therefore, E-commerce is harbored by such a culture even though proper mechanisms can be put in place.
Participating to the set international standards of E commerce also harbors how UAE would fully integrate the concept in their operations. In as far as, UAE might integrate the concepts and they would be workable.
There would still be a huge lapse considering other nations that would be in Business with UAE are yet to integrate the concept into their operations. Hence, the needs to create a balance between those nations that are yet to integrate the concept in their business activities as they have customers too.
Technical factors still plays a part in influencing how UAE would embrace the concept. A country requires both the hardware and software component to create the systems to support ecommerce. However, in consideration to the level of investment that the government will make, there are still a lot of factors that would prevent full incorporation of the concept in UAE.
A well-fashioned telecommunication network is a component of many building blocks all of which are essential and require a lot of attention. Additionally, there would also be the need to develop laws that would govern creation of such a platform. This would not only require the commitment of many individuals, but it would also mean there are some aspects that the government will have to lose to accommodate for the creation of the platform (Weill & Vitale, 2013).
Similarly, education still lags behind in some of the Emiratis. Even though the younger generations are at a better place since education is developing and they have been encouraged to pursue education, the older generation of citizen would not be ready to embrace the new concept considering they do not possess the necessary computing skills.
Furthermore, embracing the concept would ensure they are phased out of the business as they would not cope with the nitty gritties that are involved in the concept. Their organization or businesses would need to embrace the concept, which will only influence such folks to hire new workforce to carry out those tasks of the organization (Weill & Vitale, 2013).
Priority Focus Avenues
In order to champion for ways through which the government would embrace e-commerce, it would be necessary to go through a series of strategies that would sum up concepts from all the areas hence solving all the challenges as they arise. Such strategies would analyze all the avenues and position all stakeholders to work on the merits of the ecommerce concept.
The priority focus avenue focuses on the needs of all stakeholders. In this case, it would sum up the needs that emanate from the challenges of different individuals. Once individuals find solutions, business would go forth and embrace the concept through a series of steps. The series of steps are structure in such a way that it would be in appropriate for businesses to pursue other steps and fail to sum up others.
Promotion and Awareness
Just as any other business concepts globally, creating awareness is one of the most essential step of embracing or influencing people to embrace a certain concept. For example, before companies develop a product, one way of selling the product to increase their sale revenues once they release the product in the market is through constant advertising and promotion.
By raising awareness, a company would give time to people to think of the concept and to conceptualize other benefits that would accrue to them if they were to embrace the concept. In a case of e- commerce or E-business in UAE, raising awareness would prepare both individuals such as customers and business of the need to embrace the concept.
Part of promotion also creates a platform of understanding some of the views that people posses regarding a certain ideology. In the case of Ecommerce, raising awareness would encourage people to give their views on what they expect from the system.
Additionally, it would also provide a platform to understand some of the stereotypes that people posses hence solving them prior to the concept being in use. Considering UAE is among one of the Muslim nations that believes in conservatism, such a concept would require the need to raise awareness hence quell all issues that would need addressing (Cloninger, Zohar & Cloninger, 2010).
Promotional and awareness would also invoke creation of strategies that are needed to sum up the needs of the whole concept. For example, embracing e-commerce is not easy, as it would require the opinion and the contribution of telecommunication companies who would provide internet services to the company.
In such a case, by raising such awareness, stakeholders who will give their contribution in the field will fashion their overall mission statements based on the needs they feel are emanating from the promotion and the awareness strategies, as people will give their feedback regarding to the ways through which the issue of the company will be solved. Such vocalization through promotion and awareness will invoke stakeholders to anticipate the needs prior to the original embracing of the concept (Cloninger, Zohar & Cloninger, 2010).
Human Resource and Skill Development
Developing a strategy is always easy as it always done through a theoretical framework. However, embracing such a concept and making it workable through understanding the needs of the society is not a cinch. This is because it would involve the stakeholders to involve people who have the necessary skills to carry out the skills. Any department can do planning, but actualizing such a plan in reality can only be done if an organization has individuals with the right skills.
In the case of developing an E- business platform for a country, a huge workforce who posses varied skills would be needed. Therefore, looking at the current period and the education level in UAE, a lot would need to be done to embrace the concept.
In the meantime, planning to anticipate the concept would be the most appropriate strategy, while the country could encourage many more students in schools and educate them in regards to the needs of the actualizing the strategy (De Vaujany et al, 2014).
Skill development would also spurn to those individuals who are already in the work environment. While the new skills are being inculcated to new grandaunts’, it would be essential to have those people who have been in the work, environment to sharpen their skills with reference to the needs of the market.
Their scope of work will involve developing plans for their respective organization and encouraging a smooth transition that is gradual and would take a long time as people would do so ins steps. Such a gradual transition would also accommodate for the needs of all other stakeholders who are not aware of what to anticipate. Additionally it will also provide a platform for instituting a learning process for the older folks who posses different views about the use of telecommunication in the daily operation and activities of the business (Katz , Kochan & Colvin, 2008).
According to Sims (2002), the human resource components are the most essential component in instances when new strategies are being fashioned. Their way of anticipating the needs of a specific strategy widens incognito to the level of training that they have been subjected through.
Since E-commerce will needs to factor in many aspects in UAE ranging from improving the current telecommunication network to better and more sophisticated. Propers training of the workforce to suit to the needs of the market later on will be very essential.
According to Abraham, Iyanna & Sarr (2013), the statistics detailing the current level of education still proves that UAE still lags behind considering individuals who possess the necessary skills to developing their contribution. In fact, the statistics by Harrison & Michailova (2012) notes that most of the people who work in UAE in the currently period are expatriates from developed nation all of who would easily leave to their country of origin (Harrison & Michailova, 2012).
With such a high statistic of expatriates, and very few people from UAE who posses tactical skills especially in fields such as engineering and computer science, the country is at a loss on what it should embrace to make such a goal a reality.
Thus, the needs to disseminate knowledge and create a plan that will be workable for a certain period still fails to materialize as a concept. Additionally the number of population of people in UAE is still low considering the number of people who will be needs to accommodate for development of the platform.
Liberalization of Telecommunications Infrastructure Development
Lam & Shiu (2010) define liberalization as relaxation of some of those restrictions that may have been set by the government or certain organization ads they were not considered fit. In this case, relation of laws will allow the stakeholders to give their contributions concerning the needs of the society rather than being too constricted hence failing to serve the customers to their full expectation.
For example, for the E-business to be fully workable, organization must make aggressive advertising with reference to the needs of the people that such an organization does target of its customers. In some cases, it may be offensive on the culture of the UAE community.
Even though the government might restrict use of certain aspects of advertising, some products might fail to sell considering other countries might also venture and use those aspects aggressively. Therefore, only a certain level of regulation would be appropriate hence the need to fashion goals in reference to the needs of a region.
Liberation must also form a major component that propels organization and school to form research groups and teams to anticipate the needs of the future. Most notably is the consistent development of all forms of technology (Lam & Shiu, 2010).
It would not be appropriate and workable if some section or some aspects of technology were allowed, while others are yet to be discovered. The level of modernization must be even to all forms of technology must be open to any level of development that such student and teams would develop.
Laudon & Laudon (2011) notes that legacy systems also form a major component of such liberalization, in most cases, technology developers may be tempted to create those forms of technology that factors in to the previous technologies they may have created.
This not only bars advancement, but it hinges development, as customers have to learn on using one aspect at a time. However, with legacy systems, the platform accommodates for development of the previous needs hence always advancing the level of technology that has been created.
Regional Strategy
Part of the hindrance of using this concept in UAE springs from the neighboring countries failing to embrace the concept, It may be easy for one county to embrace telecommunication in their business operation with the hope they would make their operations easy.
However, considering the needs of the trading blocks such as the OPEC nations, UAE could lose some of its customers, which would be against the original intention of raising the customer’s base through harmonizing the operations. In as far as the country could make use of expatriates while still training its citizens the probability that other country would shun away from the use of this technology would prevent them from being in association with the country.
Part of the goals of the regional strategy is to anticipate the needs of a region just as the promotion and awareness stage raises the level of awareness to people in UAE. Such preparation will not only position other countries to harmonize their operation and realize the needs of such a concept, but rather it would offer a way of addressing other problems other than those that emanate from the business models.
Regional strategy would also be a way of raising awareness of the needs of the larger community rather than the needs of one community. The possibility of realizing the goals of a concepts increase with several stakeholders just as it would be if all business in UAE were to embrace the concept fully in the operations.
Regional strategy would also play a special role of harmonizing government-to-government operations that will invoke some level of flexibility and ease of addressing the needs of that specific region.
According to Smelser (2013), regional development plays a special role as it sums up other benefits such as the economies of scale and spreads the risk as nations would assists one another in case the operation in one country fail. Either way there will be coordination of how operations will proceed if systems were to fail.
Financial Services
Smelser (2013) notes financial services as the second most useful aspect of developing a system, it spurns from the fiancés that will be used to support such a system to the greater needs of how financial services will work out ones the system is complete. As noted in challenges, losing one’s finances is part of the stereotype that prevents people from embracing such technological aspects.
Therefore, the need to develop a swift system that is safer and enhances follow up is essential. Financial services are part of the financial industry that spurn to all the industries. The main backbone would support the planning and actualization of a model.
Smelser (2013), recommends the financial system to be the first aspect of the economy that would embrace any form technology to determine whether such a form of technology would be workable or not as people believe in system that are workable though the financial systems. In the case UAE, financial services are not any different; however, there is still a factor that would have to be considered such as how people do trade in UAE.
Being a Muslim nation, the financial system is limited to the financial and shariah laws to develop those products in reference to the Muslim guidelines. This presents a better challenge on the customers as they will have to decide on those financial organizations they believe would be part of actualizing the idea (Ayub, 2007).
Lastly, planning will need to have a limitless option on the financial services. As earlier on noted, the probability of a collapse of a financial system is very high. Therefore, financial services such as the insurance industry to curtail any form of shortfall must come in to help address the needs of the organization. Gamal (2007) postulates that financial services would determine the level of preparedness that stakeholders make on a certain project and so should be the commitment of the financial system.
Conclusion
As part of the development goals that UAE has set, E-business remains at the forefront in determining the level of strides that the company will make in outwitting other countries. It is possible to integrate the concept of E-business; however, there is need to outweigh the current position of the country in reference to the challenges it is facing and fashion the platform with reference to the needs of the country.
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