A310KM M Commerce Assignment Final

A310KM – M-Commerce Applications Azrie Aris Bin Hamza Aris (09063007)

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONS)

IN

Business Information Technology

A310KM M-Commerce Applications

Development of an E-Commerce System and M-Commerce System for Warees Halal

Report I & II

STUDENT NAME : AZRIE ARIS BIN HAMZA ARISSTUDENT ID NUMBER : 09063007SUPERVISOR : MS. LAKSHMINO. OF WORDS : 4284

Auston Institute of Management of 29


Content Page

1. Industry Analysis...........................................................3

2. Infrastructure Analysis...................................................8

3. Model Analysis............................................................10

4. Product or Service & Customer Analysis....................12

5. Select a Model............................................................15

6. IT Strategy...................................................................18

7. Implementation Strategy & Comparison.....................18

8. Conclusion..................................................................27

9. References .................................................................28



1. Industry Analysis

1.1 Introduction of the Halal MarketMuslim population in the world is growing and it is estimated to be 1.6

billion (Muslim Population Worldwide 2009). With this growth, 30% of the

world's population would be Muslims by 2025. As for halal products,

there are about 1.5 billion consumers. Presently, the two strongest

markets for products that are halal are the Middle East and Southeast

Asia (Riaz 1999).

As at 2008, the Halal Industry has reached 2.1 trillion. This is certainly

an important market to tap into (Riaz & Chaudry 2003).

The Halal industry, which includes Islamic finance, is approximately to

be worth between USD 200 billion to USD 500 billion annually, with an

annual growth rate forecasted to be around 12% to 15% for the next 10

years (Riaz & Chaudry 2003).

Many companies are gaining speed to market aggressively certified

halal products supplied throughout the world. The demand for Halal

products have increased very quickly because Halal products now

appeal to not only Muslim consumers but also non-Muslim consumers

(Riaz 1999)

Asia has the largest Muslim population but the population has fairly

small per capita incomes, and hence lower total food consumption than

other areas. For example, Pakistan, India and many other high

population countries in Asia have relatively low consumer incomes. But

despite this, this region has been one of the leaders in leveraging on the

Halal market which is growing (Riaz 1999).

South East Asian countries have also taken steps to tap into the global

Halal market. For example, the Singapore food industry has also taken

steps towards becoming a Halal hub, including an advertising campaign



in the Middle East. Even Thailand has moved to become a recognized

Halal centre of excellence in science and testing.

Brunei is currently working together with firms from Australia to combine

their roles to ensure safe, high quality food production with halal

standards and Malaysia has also plans on becoming an international

Halal hub. The Malaysian government has taken a lot of measures to

support that objective by forming the Halal Development Corporation.

The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore or also known as Majils

Ugama Islam Singapura (Muis), is the main Islamic authority in charge of

all Muslim affairs in Singapore. Established as a statutory board when

the Administration of Muslim Law Act (AMLA) was passed in 1968, Muis

is given the powers to act as the main authority in the administration

and regulation of Halal certification in Singapore (Majlis Ugama Islam

Singapura 2010).

Up to 2009, Muis had certified more than 2,600 locations and has played

an important role of being the body in charge of Halal food assurance for

15% Muslim population in Singapore. Moreover, with more and more

Halal-certified eating companies, it has helped to improve social

interaction between individuals from various racial, cultural and religious

backgrounds (Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura 2010).

1.2 Warees Halal

The Halal certification in Singapore is globally recognised, It has also

generated strong interests from companies, both in Singapore and

overseas which are planning to embark on the MUIS’ Halal Certification

scheme. Warees Halal, one of the divisions of MUIS’ subsidiary Warees

Investments Pte Ltd. This division has been given the responsibility of

helping companies to attain certification (Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura

2009).

At the present moment, Warees Halal leverages on the existing Muis

eHalal System to manage all aspects of the Halal Certification Process.

Apart from this system, Muis has engaged a third-party vendor, Marshall



Cavendish Business Information Pte Ltd, to manage its directory portal

The Singapore Halal Directory (Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura 2009).

Warees Halal is currently exploring new ways to improve and streamline

their work processes and expand their reach to the global halal market.

Thus they have engaged Warees IT, another division in Warees

Investments specializing in providing IT services to explore any

possibilities and solutions by leveraging on technology.

1.3 Current Business Model of the Halal Global Market

The current business model is the directory and business portal (Rappa

2005). The average online halal directory and business portal like the

Singapore Halal Directory acts as a mere introductory service. Once the

Buyers have identified products and suppliers of interest, both parties

will have to move offline and continue using emails, faxes and myriads

of spreadsheets that result in complexities, errors and added costs.

1.4 Technology Challenges

There are several challenges with regards to technology that need to be

overcome. Firstly, for instance looking at the case for Warees Halal,

communication management between Warees Halal Staff and their local

clients is not properly managed. This problem was also faced when they

are communicating with their marketing agent in China. At present, most

of the communication is done through email or phone and there is no

centralized location to capture information. Thus tracking can be quite

challenging as different staff have their own sets of excel spreadsheets

to keep track. This may result in duplication or errors in data capturing.

1.5 Emerging models for E-commerce business in the Halal MarketThe growth of Global Halal market has been stated to be depending on

the availability of E-marketplaces and online business directories

customized for Halal Businesses (Halal Industrial Development

Corporation 2010).



In fact, the regional Muslim countries like Singapore, Brunei Darussalam

and Malaysia are quickly promoting the concept of Halal and this aims to

integrate the Halal producers and marketers. One example of such site

is the DagangHalal website from Malaysia (Halal Industrial Development

Corporation 2010).

Besides this site, some of the Halal Directories which are only search

directories are the Singapore Halal Directory and the Australian Halal

Food Directory (Halal Industrial Development Corporation 2010).

1.6 Halal Market Leaders for the adoption of E-commerce solutions

We have identified the following market leaders for the adoption of E-

commerce solutions

Zabihah.com

Zabihah.com is the one of the largest databases of Halal establishments

.It is based in the US and was created in 1999. Now, it has become an

important resource for Muslim communities worldwide.

DagangHalal.com

DagangHalal.com, based in Malaysia is one of the B2B e-marketplaces

featuring Halal products and services. It provides an online platform as

well as other business sourcing channels for our merchants to reach out

to a potential worldwide Muslim market

HalalBusinessDirectory.com

The Halal Business Directory website from United Kingdom provides a

free service to Halal Businesses. This enables the halal businesses to

publicise their online presence, and a free service to the public to help

locate local businesses. The Halal Business Directory also provides a

business listing with contact details, products and services, and a link to

selected businesses websites.

Halal Exchange

Halal Exchange is a UAE based project that had been started by Halal

Exchange Inc. and RAK Investment Authority It is another web-based

B2B enterprise solution for Halal companies and is founded in 2002.



Currently, it is located in Vancouver with locations in San Francisco

Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Dubai.

Australian Halal Food Directory

The Australian Halal Food Directory is Australia’s first comprehensive

Halal food and eating establishment guide. Their aim is to give Muslims

in Australia a comprehensive guide to look for Halal locations such as

restaurants, cafes and other eateries.

1.7 The Social, Organizational, Behavioral and Legal issues facing Warees Halal

Social Issues

First and foremost, it had been identified that Non-Muslim customers are

not familiar with the concept of halal and do not know how to go about to

have their products or services achieve halal certification. The solution

for this issue is to provide proper training on Halal and the necessary

processes and procedures to achieve halal certification.

Organizational Issues

For Warees Halal, in order for it to be successful, it needs to have a

team of specialists to effectively and efficiently deliver Halal solutions to

its customers. Being specialized does not mean that the team needs to

know everything about halal only but, it need to be comprised of people

with mixed knowledge and skills in the areas of religious background,

food and nutrition as well as business administration.

Behavioral Issues

As the halal business deals with halal certification, the company need to

be more sensitive towards the social /religious aspects of the business.

If it is not done so, it may have a major impact and repercussions due to

negligence and misinformation with regards to the handling of the halal

certification processes.



Legal Issues

Like any company, Warees Halal needs to adhere to any laws with

regards to contract agreements between its customers. The company

also needs to understand the different legal systems of the different

countries they are doing business in.

2. Infrastructure Analysis

2.1 The current Information Technology Infrastructure of Warees Halal

Figure 1 – Current Warees Halal Network Diagram

Based on the diagram, we can see that the Warees Halal division is

connected to the internet via a broadband connection and is using the

existing Muis E-Halal System which is managed by the Muis IT

Department. Warees Halal Staff do not have access to all the

information and have only normal user rights which is to view just the

existing customers . This restricts Warees Halal from performing well in

their daily work as they are not able to generate daily and management

reports for monitoring and controlling purposes. Warees IT is also

unable to manage any downtime of the Muis E-Halal System which may

result in loss of productivity.

2.2 Technology needed additionally in the B2B, mobile and collaborative commerce environments



Warees IT have identified that following technologies are needed to

enable B2B, mobile and collaborative commerce environments:-

A Web server running the B2B Web Application

The web server could be Microsoft IIS or Apache Server running in-

house at the company’s premises or hosted by an e-commerce service

provider

LAN Network with wired connectivity

The computers within the division need to be interconnected between

one another as well as to the Internet to allow connectivity outside of

the company. This can only be enabled through network

technologies such as broadband, leased line or fibre broadband.

These services can be provided by local Singapore

telecommunication service providers such as Singtel, M1 and

Starhub.

Mobile Devices connectivity such as Smartphones or Laptops

with 3G connectivity provided by the local service providers

In order to allow mobile commerce, the users may use mobile

devices such as laptops and smartphones to connect to the

proposed system wirelessly through 3G connectivity. Examples of

mobile devices from popular manufacturers are Lenovo Thinkpads

with built-in 3G Sim card slots, Apple iPhones, HTC Android phones,

Windows Mobile smartphones from Samsung and most recently,

Apple’s tablet solution the iPad

2.3 Infrastructures used in deploying the Halal E-Commerce Solutions

Client-Server Model

The client–server model of computing is a distributed application

structure that partitions tasks or workloads between the providers of a

resource or service, called servers, and service requesters, called



clients. There will at most times, be clients and servers communicating

over the network on different hardwares, but both the clients and

servers may be located in the same system. A server is a host that is

running one or more server programs which share their resources with

clients. A client does not share any of its resources, but requests a

server's content or service function. Clients therefore initiate

communication sessions with servers which await incoming requests

(Reese 2000).

Cloud Computing

Warees IT is also exploring new technologies and one of them is cloud

computing. Cloud computing, is one of the most important rising

developments in Information technology. With Cloud computing,

computer resources, storage resources and applications can now reside

on the Web and be accessed all day around \through a web browser. In

a climate where IT organizations are cutting cost, cloud computing can

also provide a very quick time to value for IT organizations which spend

a unequal percentage of money and time to buy software and hardware

to perform daily IT tasks, that includes custom application development

2.4 Common business models usedE-marketplace is an electronic exchange marketplace where companies

register as sellers or buyers to be in contact and carry out business in

the Internet.

One of the main functions of the Halal E-marketplace is to lower the cost

of collecting information such as the purchase price and to improve

trading efficiency (Halal Industrial Development Corporation 2010).



2.5 Additional Business models Another additional business model we can look at is the Wireless

Business 2 Business Model. Wireless B2B is the equivalent of E-

commerce B2B in terms of mobility. It is also not as large or as profitable

as the wireless B2C however, wireless B2B allows companies to

achieve savings in procurement, inter-organization transactions, data

interchange, and various collaborative business ventures. For example,

the main use of mobile technology is to co-ordinate mobile sales work

forces and provide them with up-to-the-minute data. (Elliot & Phillips,

2003)

2.6 Examples of different firms collaborating in an e-commerce model Here are two examples of firms collaborating in an e-commerce model

They are Dell and Starbucks.

Dell

Dell is one of the leading IT systems and services company globally.

They wanted a CRM solution that will allow its global sales teams to

collaborate internationally.

The company relied on many opportunities in each region and they also

wanted a easy-to-use and scalable solution that was consistent. The IT

team at Dell was looking at creating a centralized solution but that found

out that it was too expensive..

In conclusion, Dell selected Salesforce CRM because it is easy to use

more flexible, and it allows worldwide deployment. The company

implemented Salesforce CRM to a total of 4,000 staff in only 3 months

in the United States and now it has 15,000 staff using the system

worldwide in just 1 and a half years.

Starbucks

Starbucks is a world-famous coffee cafe company and they wanted to

create a system that will allow the company to collaborate with

customers and employees worldwide in a way that allows continuous

growth (Paramarketing 2010).



With that the company launched My Starbucks Idea built

salesforce.com’s functionality in 6 weeks (Paramarketing 2010).

More than 92,000 total ideas submitted on My Starbucks Idea, more

than 760,000 total votes received, and more than 150,000 comments

posted. As a result, more than 90 ideas implemented from the feedbacks

generated from the system (Paramarketing 2010).

3. Product or Service & Customer Analysis

3.1 Services Provided by Warees Halal The services that are provided by Warees Halal can be divided into 2

programmes.

Firstly, it provides a halal certification programme for companies

outside of Singapore and internationally. Secondly it provides a Halal

consultation programme for Singapore companies (Majlis Ugama Islam

Singapura 2009).

The Warees Halal team, under its international programme, will take

overseas companies through the process. and they can only use the

Singapore Muis Halal Mark only if they are certified (Majlis Ugama

Islam Singapura 2009).

Services provided include an international marketing support for global

exports, a wide international network for global export opportunities;

and a 24-hour hotline for technical support issues (Majlis Ugama Islam

Singapura 2009).

The second programme involves Halal facilitation work that is targeted

at Singapore- based companies Services provided by Warees Halal

are as follows:-

Development of the necessary documentations for the halal

certification

Implementation of the halal system at the company’s location

Submission of the online application to the Muis’ e-Halal System

Provision of the specialised halal training sessions.

Sourcing for Halal ingredients



Conducting of certification audits to gauge the levels of Halal

compliance.

Provision of a 24-hour Hotline number for technical issues (Majlis

Ugama Islam Singapura 2009).

3.2 Warees Halal’s CustomersWarees Halal’s customers comprises of 3 areas . Firstly, they are the

overseas customers which are mainly customers in China which had

close links with their local companies in Singapore. Secondly, are the

customers who had engaged Warees Halal’s consultation services to

obtain halal certification. Thirdly, are customers who had only attended

training for Halal.

3.3 The difference between Warees Halal different and its competitorsThe differentiation factor that Warees Halal has over its competitors is

that Warees Halal has strong links with Muis and this creates a mental

perception that the consultation programme Apart from this, Warees

Halal is the only training provider for Halal training in Singapore

3.4 Who are Warees Halal’s primary customers? Warees Halal’s primary customers are the local-based customers in

Singapore for instance, Resort World Singapore as well as companies

based in China which has subsidiaries based in Singapore.

3.5 Customers’ perceptions of Warees HalalBased on testimonials from customers of Warees Halal, for instance

Terry Deng a manager in Mongolia Mengniu Milk Industry Co.,Ltd in

Chine, had commended that the Warees Halal staff had demonstrated a

high degree of credibility and professionalism while conducting in-house

trainings in China and were able to provide a good understanding on the

concepts, processes and requirements of Muis’ Halal certification to the

management team The consultation programmes were said to be

comprehensive and the whole process took only less than four weeks.

They were also able to source for Halal ingredients in the shortest period



of time and the marketing plan that Warees Halal provided to Mongolia

Mengniu allowed the company to reach out to Muslim clients effectively

(Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura 2009).

M-commerce ApplicationsReport II



4. Business Model

4.1 Business Model for Warees Halal

Based on the earlier analysis that we have done on Warees Halal,

Warees IT have decided to propose for a wired B2B and a wireless B2B

model using a Cloud solution. Taking into consideration that at present,

Warees Halal do not have an existing web application and there is no

current internet application infrastructure, Warees IT have decided to

propose 2 solutions to be implemented:

Solution 1: To implement a web application

This application is a Customer Relationship Management System wil be

managing Warees Halal’s interactions with customers, current and new.

It will also assist Warees Halal to automate business processes—

mainly sales activities, and also for customer service, marketing and

technical support.

Solution 2 : To implement a mobile application for mobile teams

This can be achieved by using the SalesForce mobile application to

allow the sales team and technical team to perform their duties such as

sales activities and technical activities.



Figure 1 Diagram of the new proposed setup for Warees E-Halal System

4.2 Description of the new proposed setup

As you can see from the diagram, using the Force.com platform, Users

in Singapore would be able to access the web based e-commerce

system from their desktop PCs or laptops in the main office while the

mobile team which consists of halal inspection officers and ritual

cleansing officers may be able to access the system from their mobile

devices on-site while they are attending to the customers.

4.3 Justifications for choosing this modelBased on the studies of the different types of business models that had

been used by the other competitors of Warees Halal, we have

discovered that it was not feasible to have the global halal e-marketplace

model due to the small geographic location in Singapore. Apart from

this, Warees Halal is also made up of a small team and to manage this

infrastructure will require technical expertise which is not present unless

they employ a software development team or outsource this function

which could be very costly. What Warees Halal need to do is to focus on

their existing customers in Singapore and have better communication

with them. The approach by the competitors was to “cast an open net”



and expect customers to sign up with them which is very risky for

Warees Halal as the staff strength in the company is small and they are

not able to compete directly with the big guns. Warees Halal also do not

not have the financial muscle to start a major software project The

business strategy that Warees Halal will be is similar to the guerilla

warfare strategy whereby they are only focusing only on a small market

instead of going for the big kill.

Force.com Platform

Force.com is a cloud computing platform from a software company

called Salesforce, It is the first to allow developers to build applications

for multiple customers that are hosted on Salesforce’s servers and is

provided as a service.

4.4 Benefits of using Force.com

The following are the benefits of having this solution :-

Reduced cost in implementation as it is using the Force.com platform.

there will be no hardware or software that needs to be installed at the

company premises.

Reduced annual downtime as the server is located off-site and

managed by the system administrators at Force.com.

Better management and allow better communication among Warees

Halal Staff, locally as well as globally as well as between Warees Halal

Staff and their customers

(THINKStrategies 2007).



5. IT Strategy

5.1 Budget Needed for E-Commerce / M-Commerce Implementation

Based on the Saleforce pricing plan, Warees Halal initially can go for the

Force.com Free Plan first which is free as the company has less than

100 users. Thus, no cost is involved because at present all staff has

mobile devices that support the Salesforce mobile application.

5.2 Cost to expand from e-commerce to m-commerce businessUsing the Force.Com platform, it allows the Warees Halal users to

connect via mobile access without implementing another new m-

commerce system. This saves a lot as we have to take into

considerations the development costs required. Thus it is affordable to

expand from e-commerce to m-commerce. On top of that, the company

can leverage on the fact that the current local staff are presently using

their personal smartphones for work and it comes with 3G connectivity.

5.3 Time required to implement the infrastructure (model) of e-commerce to m-commerceThe time required to implement the m-commerce inrastructure will take a

few days only as there are altogether 6 staff in Warees Halal and

installation of the SalesForce Mobile application is quick and easy.

6. Implementation Strategy & Comparison

6.1 Implementation Strategy for Warees E-Halal System The Warees E-Halal System will be fully implemented in 4 phases. This

is a high level level Work Breakdown Structure and here are the

phases:-

Phase 1: Project Planning

1.1 Produce Project Plan

1.2 Review Project Plan



1.3 Produce Project Quality Plan

1.4 Review Quality Plan

1.5 Set up Project Filing System

1.6 Management and Administration

Phase 2: Analysis

2.1 Interview Users

2.2 Review Existing Documentation

2.3 Analyze Requirements

2.4 Produce Requirements specification

2.5 Review Requirements specification

2.6 Produce Functional specification

2.7 Review Functional specification


Phase 3: Design

3.1 Produce System Design

3.2 Design User Interface

3.3 Design Communications Interfaces

3.4 Software design

3.5 Produce design specification

3.6 Review design specification


Phase 4: Implementation

4.1 Code & unit test

4.2 Integration

4.3 System Test

4.4 Produce system documentation

4.5 Train Users

4.6 Acceptance Test

4.7 Web/Mobile Software Installation




6.2 Differences between Warees E-Halal’s new plan and old planThe difference between the new plan and the old plan is that Warees

Halal will no longer be accessing the Muis E-Halal System and also the

China Marketing Agent would be able to have access to the system from

their country.

6.3 Challenges in the new model

Warees IT foresee 2 types of challenges that will be faced when this

new system is implemented.

Technical Challenges

The Warees IT Team is still not familiar with the programming language

used in Force.com (APEX) and will require additional training.

Staff Challenges

The staff will not be familiar with the new system. They might also be

resistant to the change in work processes



6.4 New Interface of Warees E-Halal System

6.5 Analysis of the Web-based User InterfaceAs you can see from the interface above, the system consists of a menu

which has sections labeled Warees Halal Accounts, Contacts, Reports,

Dashboards and Documents.



Figure 2: Staff Login Page to access the Warees E-Halal System

Firstly the user will be able to access the system through Force.com website

from any web browser.

The user will need to enter his or her User Name which is

[email protected] which is the same as their Warees Email Account.

Password will be assigned by the systems administrator

Once the user details are keyed in correctly, They will be able to access the

main screen as shown earlier

System Demo

To see a demo of the system, please access the site

Please use the following Username and Password

Username: [email protected]

Password: auston123

Please send email to [email protected] for assistance if you face any

technical issues or in Singapore, please contact Azrie Aris at 9800 6889

directly. Note that a copy of the application is not found in the CD as it is a live

web based application.


mailto:[email protected]




Warees Halal Accounts Page



Mobile Application User Interface

User Password Login

Warees Halal Accounts Main Page



Screenshot of one Halal Account



7. Conclusion

With the great need to be more competitive in the halal industry, Warees

Halal will surely benefit from the implementation of this system as it will

surely streamline the work processes within the division itself. Moreover

companies are currently looking at cost cutting especially in the area of

information technology and by implementing a solution based on

Force.com; Warees Investments will be able to reduce in spending too

much on hardware and software purchases.

By implementing a web based Customer Relationship System, Warees

Halal will improve customer service with its clients be it locally or

internationally. Apart from this, using the Force.com platform,

implementing a m-commerce solution is also quicker and easier as the

solution comes with a mobile application for different smartphones in the

market. This will then allow Warees Halal to expand its reach to the rest of

the world and bring greater success to the company.



8. References

Andrew,Blackburn And Sirkin, 2002, The B2B Opportunity, The Boston

Consulting Group

Elliot and Phillips, 2003, Mobile Commerce and Wireless Computing Systems,

Addison and Wesley

Halal Industrial Development Corporation, 2010, The Emerging of Global

Halal Space and the Halal E-Marketplace,[Online] available from

<http://www.daganghalal.com/HalalInfo/HalalArticlesDtl.aspx?id=298> [20

July 2010]

Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura, 2009, Singapore Halal Directory 2010 4th

Edition, Marshall Cavendish Business Information, p 24-25

Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura, 2010, Halal Certifications [Online] available

from <http://www.muis.gov.sg/cms/services/hal.aspx?id=1714> [18 July 2010]

Muslim Population Worldwide, 2009 [Online] available

from<http://www.islamicpopulation.com> [15 July 2010]

Paramarketing, 2010, Starbucks Enhances Conversations with Customers in

the Cloud, [Online] available from < http://www.paramarketing.com/cloud-

computing-case-studies/?Tag=Starbucks> [21 July 2010]

Riaz and Chaudry, 2003, Halal Food Production , CRC Press,

Riaz, M.N. 1999, Halal food processing and marketing , in 10th World

Congress of Food Science and Technology, Book of Abstracts, Australian

Institute of Food Science and Technology, Sydney, p. 44.

Rappa, M. 2005, Managing the Digital Enterprise, North Carolina State

University [Online], available from <http://digitalenterprise.org/index.html> [25

July 2010]

Reese, G. 2000, Database Programming with JDBC and Java, Second

Edition, O'Reilly Media

Salesforce, n.d., Dell Harnesses the Power of Salesforce CRM and the

Force.com Platform to Drive Innovation and Success, [Online] available from

< http://www.salesforce.com/customers/hi-tech-hardware/dell.jsp> [20 July

2010]


http://www.islamicpopulation.com/


THINKStrategies, 2007, Understanding the Business Benefits of

Salesforce.com’s Platform-as-a-Service, THINKstrategies, Inc


A310KM M Commerce Assignment Final

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