Evaluating E-commerce Hosting Services

Publicly traded companies, including those specializing in e-commerce, are required to file financial data with the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) operated for the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA). By analyzing this information, you can determine the profitability of an e-commerce company and the viability of its business model. Pick one Canadian company that conducts e-commerce on the Internet, for example Hudson’s Bay Company. Study the Web pages that describe the company, and explain its purpose and structure. Use the Web to find articles that comment on the company. Then visit the SEDAR Web site, at www.sedar.com, select your company, and select “View This Public Company’s Documents” to access news releases and financial reports showing income statements and balance sheets. Select only the sections of the reports containing the desired portions of financial statements you need to examine, and print them out and enter the data into your spreadsheet. Create simplified spreadsheets of the balance sheets and income statements for the past three years. You must compare the three e-commerce hosting services identified PLUS one other hosting site that you find on your own. To submit the complete assignment, you must: create a spreadsheet to compare the three identified e-commerce hosting sites and the e-commerce hosting site that you find. Ensure that your comparison includes (1) evaluation criteria based on customer requirements and other factors you deem to be important and (2) the raw data and an assessment for each hosting site for each evaluation criterion. For instance, you may include as a criterion “Storage” and find one web host offers 10 GB. The raw data is 10 GB; an assessment might be “H”, “M” or “L” OR a number from 1 (low) to 5 (high) or other evaluation that you choose. prepare a PowerPoint presentation that represents the presentation you would give to management explaining your selection. It should explain all the criteria that you included in your evaluation, the strengths and weaknesses of each hosting alternative; it should also identify your choice and the reasons why you made this choice. For each slide, include “notes” that represent what you would say if you were giving the presentation.