Course name: Information Governance

Course Name: Information Governance (ITS - 833)

University of the Cumberlands

Introduction

The technology and globalization are two major players that have been able to make a tremendous change in the business. The change has been to such an extent that technology is being used to leverage the human capital so that increased focus can be made towards innovation. E commerce is hence one industry that has made excessive use of technology to bring about convenience to the end consumers.

E commerce

E commerce is an industry that has been taking shape in recent times. It can be seen that there have been a number of e commerce players in the market. The different e commerce players have tried to address the basic human need to provide convenience. The e commerce industry has also evolved from one company providing different kinds of products and services to different companies now providing for specialized services in the same domain. Further it can also be seen that the industry has also evolved from following an inventory driven model to marketplace model (Keating, 2019). The two main players in the e commerce industry are Amazon and Ebay. The total size of e commerce industry in USA in the year 2019 was $187 billion and the industry has been experiencing a double-digit growth for a long time. The industry has given a tough competition to the offline players that are present in the industry. At the same time, the industry has also given rise to a lot of new players since the barriers of entry are quite low. The companies that want to make an entry into the e commerce market do not require any kind of initial investment apart from the technology interface.

Primary challenges with information Governance

The e commerce industry involves a lot of online data collection. This online data collection that is done takes into account different kinds of requirements of the customers so that they can provide customized solution to the customers. But there are some primary challenges when it comes to information governance and its usage in e commerce

Security

Security is one of the major concerns of companies in e commerce industry. The online collection of data proves to be a major challenge since the data is always exposed (Rumata & Sastrosubroto, 2017). Despite high levels of security, the data may be exposed and hence any cyber attack may cause data to be stolen within the organization which can cause reputational damage to the industry.

Data retention cycle

Another major challenge which gives rise to the need of information governance within the industry is the data retention cycle. The data that is collected within the organization is collected about multiple attributes of the customers. The reason for this is because different attributes of customers are needed for different kinds of decision making within the organization (Rumata & Sastrosubroto, 2017). But it can be seen that collection of such huge data on cloud can prove to be a challenge. Thus, there becomes a need to define the retention cycle of each data point within the organization. This shall help the e commerce companies in making sure that cloud space can be better optimized.

E commerce industry has brought about a major revolution in the retail industry. The use of technology has taken the industry to another level. The industry still faces some of the challenges due to security issues that happen with online storage of data. It can also be seen that the data retention cycle is also a challenge because of different types of data that is collected by the organization related to consumers.

References

Derindag, O. F., Canakci, M., &Tsarev, R. (2019, December). Information and communication technologies in e-commerce and e-governance. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1399, No. 3, p. 033110). IOP Publishing.

In, J., Bradley, R., Bichescu, B. C., & Autry, C. W. (2019). Supply chain information governance: Toward a conceptual framework. The International Journal of Logistics Management.

Keating, C. B., & Katina, P. F. (2019). Complex system governance: Concept, utility, and challenges. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 36(5), 687-705.

Mikalef, P., Boura, M., Lekakos, G., & Krogstie, J. (2020). The role of information governance in big data analytics driven innovation. Information & Management, 57(7), 103361.

Rumata, V. M., & Sastrosubroto, A. S. (2017, October). The Indonesian e-commerce governance challenges in addressing the penetration of global user generated commerce platforms. In 2017 International Conference on Computer, Control, Informatics and its Applications (IC3INA) (pp. 7-11). IEEE.