E-Business Strategy - Hoku Paint Horses

Running Head: E-Business Strategy

E-Business Strategy - Hoku Paint Horses

Patrick Makinney

University of Phoenix

EBUS/410: E-BUSINESS MANAGEMENT I

Jamie D. Telesca

July 6, 2009

"E-Business Strategy - Hoku Paint Horses"

Hoku Paint Horses is a small family owned and managed Paint Horse farm involved in breed, raising, training, showing and selling of top quality Paint horses along with company branded apparel and other services specific to the business. The primary function of Hoku Paint Horses is the breeding and sales of two specialty types of Paint horses; 1) Halter and 2) Western Performance (Reining) horse with a focus on soundness, correctness and disposition.

"My Querida" Owned by Hoku Paint Horses

"Conclusive Mister" Owned by Harris Paints

The secondary focus of the business is the creation and sales of Brand specific apparel and services. This business was created from a University of Phoenix BUS475- Integrated Business Topics; a class previously taken.

The business's strategy is simple; create a website an intranet. The Website will be created first with the help of professional web designers and graphic specialists. The site will be functional, attractive, easy to access and easy to navigate. Security functions will be built-in to protect customer's personal information when purchasing items.

Stickiness is one of the main goals of creating the site. Stickiness is anything about a Web site that encourages a visitor to stay longer. A Web site is sticky if a visitor tends to stay for a long time and to return (SearchSOA, 2009). The more time and amount of times a visitor spends on the site the more likely they will become a customer and purchase products. Along with horses and products to purchase the site will be interactive and allow the visitor to create products using Hoku Paint Horses as the background.

Once the website is functional an intranet will be built and will provide secure logons for approved users. The Intranet will revolve around the business plan and the cost of developing the site will need to be researched. The intranet will need to allow information tracking, communication between employees, operations and financial interactions.

Other areas of concern in building the intranet include:

* Determine infrastructure requirements

* Determine Web server needs

* Make a browser choice

* How will you use your intranet?

* Determine the application development software you need

* Weed through the pros and cons for your firewall

* Possibly change in the role of the Webmaster

* Training

(SunWorld,1997)

Hoku Paint Horses is aware of the challenges of the business environment and future growth. The company also understands that businesses processes, structures and systems that once worked in the past might become barriers to efficiency, customer service and financial profitability. Symptoms that organizations that don't periodically renew themselves suffer from such symptoms include:

* Poor performance and results

* Inefficient workflow with breakdowns and non value-added steps

* Redundancies in effort ("we don't have time to do things right, but do have time to do them over")

* Fragmented work with little regard for good of the whole (Production ships bad parts to meet their quotas)

* Lack of focus on the customer

* Silo mentality and turf battles

* Lack of ownership when things go wrong ("It's not my job")

* Lack of information or authority to solve problems when and where they occur

* Cover up and blame rather than identifying and solving problems

* Delays in decision-making