According to New York Times, in March 2018 it was discovered that Cambridge Analytica misused the data of millions of Facebook users in order to influence the 2016 US presidential election1. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg denies Facebook role in 2016 election meddling, however the company role in the election is considered massively influential2. 

Ahead of 2020 election, on Jan 7, 2020, Facebook announced to tackle disinformation in the form of fake news and artificial intelligence (AI) manipulated videos also known as deepfakes3. It is obvious that Facebook is taking a proactive action in order to avoid the mistakes from 2016 election. 

In this case study, assume that Facebook hired you as the new chief information officer (CIO) to help the company adopt an information governance (IG) initiative in order to combat disinformation ahead of the US 2020 presidential election. 

Create a 20-pages written paper and 25 pages PowerPoint presentation discussing the IT governance strategy that you will employ to help the company meet its IG objectives.

Key Deliverable 

Your Company Information 

· Company Profile (Create a sample company and name XYZ company, This )

· Leadership Profile and Expertise (6 mem profile and their expertise)

1.History of Facebook. 

2. Discuss the relationship between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. 

3. Discuss the role social media played in 2016 US Presidential election. 

4. Discuss the opportunities and challenges of big data in social media. 

5. Discuss the value of information governance. 

6. Propose and discuss at least seven information governance principles this will help Facebook combat disinformation ahead of 2020 US Presidential election. 

7. Identify and discuss potential risks to information in social media. Weigh each risk and develop a strategic plan that Facebook can employ to mitigate each risk. 

8. Propose best practices for information governance that will be employed Facebook and discuss the justification for each one.

Very UrgentNo Plagiarism

Tableof Contents

Company Profiles ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 4

Phoenix Solutions Inc ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4

Leadership Profiles ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 5

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 5

Chief Financial Officer (CFO): …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 5

Chief Technology Officer (CTO) ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 5

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 5

Chief Risk Officer (CRO) …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6

History of Bed Bath & Beyond ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 6

Challenges Faced by Bed Bath & Beyond in the Last Decade …………………………………………………………….. 8

Major Competitors in Global E-Commerce ……………………………………………………………………………………. 10

Discuss the Opportunities and Challenges of Big Data in Global E-Commerce …………………………………… 11

Opportunities Provided by Big Data to the Global E-Commerce Organizations: …………………………….. 12

Customer analysis. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 12

Personalization. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 13

Customer service. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 13

Flexible pricing policy. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 13

Safer online payments. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 14

Demand Forecasting. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 14

Challenges of Big Data in Global E-commerce ……………………………………………………………………………. 14

Cost and time constraints. …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 15

Measuring the right metrics. ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 15

Failing to change the data into actions and Acting on the unwanted data. ………………………………… 15

Principles of Information Governance ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 19

Executive Sponsorship ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 19

Information Policy Development and Communication ……………………………………………………………….. 20

Information Security ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 21

Information Integrity

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 21

Information Governance Monitoring and Auditing …………………………………………………………………….. 22 Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 3

Continuous Improvement ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 22

Stakeholder Consultation………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 23

Potential Risks to Information …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 23

Ecommerce Information Online Security …………………………………………………………………………………… 23

Credit card fraud ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 23

Hacking into businesses. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 24

Tricking people. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 24

Risk from Internal Sources ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 25

Information integrity …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 25

Information control & retention policies. ………………………………………………………………………………. 25

Research and understand the legal requirements for information retention……………………………… 26

Create and follow the organization’s internal retention/storage policies. …………………………………. 26

Design/Create risk profile and risk mitigation plan …………………………………………………………………. 26

Develop metrics and measure results & executing risk mitigation plan …………………………………….. 26

Audit the information risk-reducing program ………………………………………………………………………… 27

Best practices for information governance that will be employed in Bed Bath & Beyond …………………… 27

IG is a Key Underpinning for a Successful RM Program……………………………………………………………….. 28

IG if Not a Process but an Ongoing Program ……………………………………………………………………………… 28

IG Policies Must be Developed before Enabling Technologies……………………………………………………… 28

A Practice of Cross Functional Team is Very Vital in Case of BBB………………………………………………….. 29

IG Program Must beaudited for Effectiveness…………………………………………………………………………… 29

Business Processes Redesign…………………………………………………………………………………………………… 30

Creating Standardized Metadata……………………………………………………………………………………………… 30

Senior Management must set the Tone and Lead Sponsorship for Vital Records Program Governance and Compliance…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 31

References ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 32 Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 4

Company Profiles

Phoenix Solutions Inc

Phoenix solutions mission is to provide the businesses, that are running in losses, with solutions that can help them achieve better results and guide them towards profits. We offer feasible solutions that can help the organizations survive in this modern competitive world. These solutions are crafted from the knowledge we obtained from the case studies we regularly research on.

We start with analyzing by taking various aspects of the client’s business into consideration. These may include the history of the business, policies, statistics, security standards as well as trends of the similar businesses.

Company Start Date:10/05/2019

Services: Business Advices

Contact Information: 343 Washington Rd, VA, 23464.

Website: www.phoenixsolutions.com Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 5

Leadership Profiles

Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

John Doe is the CEO, he is the boss and responsible for everything. The company’s strategy is decided by him. He will finalize on how resources should be divided on basis of the budget. As a CEO he will determine better route for direct the later marketing conditions.

Chief Financial Officer (CFO):

Mary Joe is the CFO, provides leadership, direction and management of accounting team and finances. CFO manages financials, budgeting and preparing financial reports.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Peter Jackson as a CTO he will handle all our technology and operations related tasks. He is responsible to keep up with the updated technologies to compete different companies in this fast-growing technological world. And he will also take a decision whether the company needs to update the latest technology or not. He is also responsible to relate the company’s technology and strategy.

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

Ray Jones is the role of CMO, as they Develop a road map to initiate communication with clients. Market company standards and strategies to the clients who needs an advisor in mitigating their company risks. Design the advertisement ideas to promote the services provided by the company in multiple social and digital platforms. Marketing and sales department is also responsible for investment in other companies. Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 6

Chief Risk Officer (CRO)

Victor Smith will be responsible for assessing, analyzing and predicting internal and external risks. As part of our company he will be visiting our client locations to ensure that the company act in the accordance with the government regulations. And he is the key factor of managing risk to the company.

History of Bed Bath & Beyond

Warren Eisenberg and Leonard Feinstein got together and started a retail store called Bed ‘n Bath in 1971. They initially started selling items related to the bathroom and bedroom which Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle was the reason for deriving the name which justifies the products they sell. The first store of Bed ’n Bath was launched in the streets of New Jersey where it started growing and making a name for the brand. As the brand name got popular the company started expanding and by 1985 they have expanded to seventeen more locations all over the country, with the growing popularity company slowly expanded their business by adding on other products that are not related to just bed and bath, so they have to change the name from Bed ‘n Bath as they are selling beyond those products they thought of changing the brand name to Bed Bath & Beyond(BB&B) in the year 1987. The beyond included the full potential of the company like selling furniture and domestic merchandise making it a single stop for a customer to get everything they need related to a house.

Growing sales and making a big one-stop store rocketed the company earning to new highs and by 1991 they almost made 134 million dollars in sales and on the next year 1992 company announced to go public on the stock exchange creating its IPO in the NASDAQ. With the new millennium organization took new steps into adding health and beauty products, with this company started acquiring smaller companies related to the business in the year 2002 which included retailers like Harmon’s as the organizations sales are setting new highs year by year which posted at 1.9 billion dollars by end of 1999 and increased to 5.1 billion dollars by the year 2004. By these profits BB&B bought out baby products retailer Buy Buy Baby in the year 2007 making it a complete family store.

By the year 2012, the organization acquired more companies and totally the organization owned around 1512 stores throughout the country which increased the overall profits for the Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 8 company to around 10 billion dollars by the end of the fiscal year 2011. They stood strong even in the great global recession of 2008/09 operating in profits through the tough times. Totally the organization as a whole runs throughout the country with different names based on the acquisitions namely Bed Bath & Beyond, Buy Buy Baby, Harmon, Christmas Tree Shops, Harmon Face, Christmas Tree Shops and That, all these stores helped the company to implement a strategy in attracting the customers into their huge display of products.

The main strategy that Bed Bath & Beyond used to attract its customers is “Big Box” which is a popular strategy in the retail world. This strategy includes have a large area where you can have a display of the products in an order and draw the attention of the customer into the products they like and motivate them to buy other products. Even analyzing the data of customer buying products the racks in the store are so deliberately placed with products that most customers tend to buy together. With this strategy and already acquired stores throughout the country Bed Bath & Beyond flourished with all the big stores making good profits. This is the strategy that most of the big retailer companies used before the e-commerce era in the market. (Chavie Lieber, 2015)

Challenges Faced by Bed Bath & Beyond in the Last Decade

With the market slowly shifting towards e-commerce and most of the people are getting used to buying things online and getting them delivered directly to their houses this puts a dent into the strategy of all the mega-retailers as they want the customers to come into their buildings to attract the customers in buying more than what they wanted. This is one of the major concerns that started the crippling of the well-established planning of Bed Bath & Beyond. Not only the e-Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 9 commerce but the other retailer giants like Walmart, 7-eleven following the same “Big Box” strategy and with a greater number of stores and bigger warehousing pulled the chunk of the customer base. Now there are two major concerns faced by the Bed Bath & Beyond one is the strategy that is about to go out of date and the other one is the competition from the major retailers in the market.

With these concerns’ management must act quickly and find a way to mitigate the opposing risks in a timely manner but the management did not act fast and smart as they did not put much effort into mitigating the growing e-commerce effectively. Bed Bath & Beyond started their e-commerce site but it has some downfall compared to their competitors as it lacked in many areas like having limited products in specific categories and some of them are not listed and not available to buy online. Along with this, they did not implement a good delivery mechanism and customers used to wait for long periods of time to get hands-on the product that they have ordered from the Bed Bath & Beyond e-commerce website. Along with this they also did not think of having cost-effective governance and putting a check on their infrastructural cost. (Chavie Lieber, 2015) (Stefan Paiovic, 2019)

There is another lapse on the management team of Bed Bath & Beyond where they had the opportunity to increase their business using the technologies and the data acquired by the sales they have done from the past years. With the growth of big data and data analytics, every organization has logs of data from which they can analyze patterns and come up with several methodologies to implement which in turn pull the depleting customer base and bring back the losing popularity and the brand name of the company. But all this information is gathered but Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 10 nothing was implemented which impacted the sales and now the customers are long gone as they are enjoying the new technologies and shopping by just relaxing in their patios. We have to adapt to the changing technologies and there are many examples like Nokia and Blackberry which lost their market because they did not take the right measures based on the changing technological advancements. As it is not too late for the Bed Bath & Beyond there is still a chance to adapt to the current market demand and work in the direction of implementing the changes to get back into the right path and save the organization from the ultimate disaster of filing a bankruptcy-like the above-mentioned companies.

Major Competitors in Global E-Commerce

E-commerce is nothing but buying or selling goods on the internet platform securely by using encryption. Even though e-commerce was introduced half a century ago due to the limitation of the internet in those days it was not used by many organizations and retailers, but due to the advancement of technology and the availability of internet is made easy now the entire world is using e-commerce to shop everything from their house. The major global leaders of e-commerce are namely Amazon, Alibaba, Jingdong, Rakuten, E-Bay, Shopify, Walmart, and Groupon. Among these Amazon and Alibaba share the large volume of e-commerce transactions around the world.

There are totally six types of e-commerce and most of the major e-commerce companies use Business to Consumer (B2C) and Consumer to Consumer (C2C) but Alibaba is the only company which also does Business to Business (B2B) along with C2C and that is the main reason Alibaba is in top place if we consider Gross Merchandise Value(GMV). But GMV has Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 11 nothing to do with the revenue of a company as revenue is dependent on sales and other means of earning like advertisements and in this Amazon is on top compared to all other e-commerce websites.

Delivering goods quickly to the customer is one of the important aspects of an e-commerce website, and that is the main reason for Amazon and Alibaba to be a global e-commerce giant as they have Amazon prime and Ali express options to deliver the products within one day of ordering. This is something Bed Bath & Beyond has to rethink as they have free shipping available only for few selective products and as Bed Bath & Beyond sells most of the world-known brands and customers are using different e-commerce sites to buy the products which are not listed in the free shipping category. This is slowly causing the customers to move away from Bed Bath & Beyond. (Stefan Paiovic, 2019)

So, Bed Bath & Beyond must take quick measures to counteract this slowly depleting customer percentage by implementing the best practices and analyzing the data from the transactions and help the organization to get the sales back that it has been losing.

Discuss the Opportunities and Challenges of Big Data in Global E-Commerce

Data is playing major role for organizations growth. Data is growing tremendously in different ways which is very difficult to process. For many organizations data is helping to read the consumers’ minds. Present billion number of E-Commerce consumers will use internet and mobile to make the transactions. Buying or selling of goods and services online through internet by transferring money is known as Electronic commerce (E-Commerce). Usually these transactions will be done in four ways: Business to Business, Business to Customer, Customer to Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 12 Customer and Customer to Business. Since these transactions are done online it is necessary to store all the details of those transactions electronically which brings the importance of Big data into E-Commerce.

Big data is a data processing application with which large volume of raw data (Structured and unstructured) could be analyzed in order to get the required information. The volume of the data is so big that it can be process with normal data analyzing software.

Big data will revolutionize the Ecommerce with the ability to process huge data and analyze it to make better marketing decisions. It will be easy to understand what a customer wants and likes, which will help in providing better customer experience. Creating customer profiles and maintaining those profiles will help in reading the customer buying habits and preferences. It will also help in keeping tabs on competitive pricing in sales. Most importantly analyzing date will help to reach customer’s expectations by providing excellent customer service. Big data works on machine learning algorithms that analyze and predict events. This helps in understanding sales patterns to ensure product availability and avoid out-of-stock items.

Opportunities Provided by Big Data to the Global E-Commerce Organizations:

Big data is providing number of opportunities to E-Commerce organization which will help them to increase the sale and customer satisfaction.

Few of them are listed below:

Customer analysis. When a consumer using the internet they leave a lot of digital trace in the web. As per the research worldwide 3.4 billion people are being online which is creating Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 13

huge data per second. This helps the organizations to target customers. Where big data helps the organizations about the customer information like their age, location, what they are interested in etc. Which will help to focus on the sales and new marketing strategies to grow the business. (Ryan, 2018)

Personalization. Digital consumers request offers that suitable to their preferences.

because of this organizations need to focus on the consumer’s adoption to the products and services which they can provide. By using the tools like big data organizations can figure out the requirements. By knowing the usage and history of customer purchases, organizations are sending the automated recommendation to the consumers. This way companies like amazon are targeting each consumers and providing them customized offers which will lead to increase the user experience (Ryan, 2018).

Customer service. Customer service is also a major aspect in the web based companies

where customer can get instant help which will lead to increase the sales and consumer satisfaction. For e-commerce companies which is important to figure out the frequent user difficulties and complaints. Because more than 90% of consumers will pay more for a better consumer experience (Ryan, 2018).

Flexible pricing policy. Big data will help the organizations to increase or decrease prices depending on the present condition of the market, supply and demand. Based on the data analysis organization will provide the discounts or increase or decrease the prices to the Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 14 consumers which will help the organizations to increase the sales. These will be offered based on the purchase history of the consumer, holiday seasons, special day of the week etc. (Ryan, 2018).

Safer online payments. For E- commerce companies it’s difficult to provide the security for financial information and online payments. Based on the researches fraud loss in e-commerce is reached to almost sixty billion. Because of this web-based companies and consumers are afraid of online transactions.

Here big data helping the organizations to improve online security and making the online transactions very safe and identify the suspicious transactions. (Ryan, 2018)

Demand Forecasting. Other main challenge to the e-commerce organizations to maintain the ideal number of stocks, which is difficult to calculate the demand. Here big data will work on the calculating the demand. By this analysis companies will keep the minimum amount of stocks or based on the demand, so that companies can avoid the situations like out of stock (Ryan, 2018).

Challenges of Big Data in Global E-commerce

Social media, digital forms provides the information to the customers purchase the product based on the rating, reviews and price differences with other companies. It’s difficult to the e-commerce companies to make the huge data as useful information. Big data gives the decision making by providing the analysis. But companies need to educate the employees about how to use the information to reach the consumers, which is challenging and lead to many risk factors (Deshmukh, 2013). Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 15

Following are the list of challenges to the e-commerce companies using the big data analysis.

Cost and time constraints. Handling the huge data and processing that to valuable information will cost more. As per the ViaLumina survey, 50% of the information of the organizations is duplicate or outdated or not necessary (SMALLWOOD, 2014). And poorly managing the information can cost million dollars. Outdated and duplicate information which is no value to the organization need to be removed. Wrong information will be risk to the organization and which is also cost more. To avoid this kind of situation, use the Information governance tool and management tools which can help to reduce the cost (Brookes, 2018).

Measuring the right metrics. Many organizations will struggle to find the right measures with huge scale of information. By collecting the huge amount of data and converting that into valuable information is big challenge for the small organizations because it will cost more and need to figure out the right measures. Organization should track their metrics which will be unique to their goals (Brookes, 2018).

Failing to change the data into actions and Acting on the unwanted data. The volume and velocity of the data is increasing which is the big challenge to the organizations to validate the data. Another main challenge to the e-commerce organizations will be handling the bad data. If the organizations don’t realize about using the bad data which will lead to loss the attention of the consumers. For this organizations need to maintain their database and clean up the unwanted and updated data. Which will also help to decrease the cost to for data storage and it won’t hurt the company sales. Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 16 Clean the unwanted data. By implementing plans which will improve the sale and upgrade and maintain the resources (facilities). And also, by avoiding the previous mistakes. And another way to lower the cost to the smaller e-commerce organizations is to lease the space (Brookes, 2018)

Leading E-commerce companies Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, Rakuten, Walmart and Group-on are one of the reasons to decrease the sales of BBB. Because they are providing multiple services like on day delivery, free return options and reach consumer expectations that makes the customer to move to web based organizations.

Value of Information Governance

Information governance is a set of policies, process and controls implemented for maximizing value and mitigating risk associated with creating, using, disposing and sharing enterprise data. The primary goal of information governance is to ensure compliance with laws and regulations, mitigate risk and protect sensitive information of customers and company data. Information governance helps organization with legal compliance, operational transparency and reducing expenses associated with legal regulations. Organizations can establish consistent and logical governance framework for employees to handle data through their information governance policies and procedures. These policies guide how organizations and their employees handle information (itbusinessedge, n.d.).

Information is the key and essential resource for running and operating any organization or business. Certain investments are made on resources, process and technology to assure that information can support the business growth. While dealing with enterprise information, Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 17

governance is required to assure that the value and risks are addressed in disciplined way. Information governance provides a strategic approach in increasing value and managing risks associated with information use. Many organizations are focusing on the agility and profitability of information governance program. Because of constant changes in business requirements, consumer expectations, increased regulations and ongoing changes in technology, information governance is more important than ever and should be an ongoing program (Infogovbasics, 2019).

Turn Information into Valuable Asset

Most of the organizations have huge data but it will be valuable when it is accessible, appropriate and used for the organization’s growth. This is also a major challenge on restricting access to right people, retrieving appropriate information. Information governance turns this data into business information by setting policies and procedure to ensure secured access of the information to authorized people, making good decisions about what information to keep and discard information to meet regulatory compliance.

Reduce the Cost of Information Discovery and Litigation

Organizations spends lot of time and money in discovery process of the appropriate information. Business will retain all of its information and discovery team’s responsibility is to assess every piece of information that might be appropriate. Information governance enables detailed and thorough discovery with relatively less man power and cost. Constant managing of information reduces the volume of discovery and simplifies the effort of finding and producing appropriate information (Smallwood, 2014). Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 18

Improve Compliance and Reduce Risk

Information governance underpin information by a process of automated categorization, clearly defined procedures for archival and destruction of information. As regulatory environment grows and changes, gathering data for audit can be easily achieved. Failure to enforce information governance can lead to vulnerabilities which can have serious consequences (Infogovbasics, 2019).

Discard Unnecessary Information from Organization

As per information governance survey most of the organizations are not fully aware of the data content they possess. As the volume of information grows, it increases the risk of turning data into usable information which can lead to inability of operation and market opportunities. A major part of information governance is ensuring the disposal of unnecessary data. Removing data enables organization’s ability to automate deletion process in meeting document and regulatory requirements.

Categorize and Organize Information for Easy Access

In organizations with huge data, it is often difficult to locate the information we need which leads to loss in productivity. Information governance ensure that there are as few versions of data as possible, categorized and stored appropriately for easy access to people who needs it.

Reduce the Effort to Recreate Business Information

As per one of the information governance survey, majority of the organizations has to recreate business information because of duplicates or lack of identifying original information. Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 19

The cost and effort required to recreate business information is substantial. Information governance will enforce the automatic classification of information. As long as information is of value to the organization it will always be available.

Consistent Information Policies across the Organization

Information governance enforces the discipline required to have a centralized policy to manage information that can be applied in the organization. These imposed standards will provide flexibility to meet the needs of business and regulatory requirements.

Reduce Cost of Information Storage

Information governance helps in maintaining as few versions of information as possible and deleting unnecessary data, organizations can save a significant amount of money in terms of storage and IT infrastructure.

Principles of Information Governance

Executive Sponsorship

One person should take the responsibility of leading the IG team or committee towards reaching/achieving the goals of an organization. The principle of executive sponsor is very important and necessary principle to follow in e- commerce business in order to gain success. Not just in E-commerce any organization needs a leader who can manage and helps to communicate the organization’s goals and objectives to the team of IG. The organization goals and objectives are addressed by information Governance. IG strategic plan is very crucial to the success of the business. A Chief Executive Officer (CEO) can also be an executive sponsor and Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 20 it is one of the best practices to run the business in success path. If the CEO is not an executive sponsor, then another person should take the responsibility as executive sponsor to run the show. Executive sponsorship is very high level and responsible to take crucial decisions, manage budget and reach the expectations of management. Role of Executive sponsor involves in to guide the team to follow the rules, guidelines and he/she can communicate any other factors which helps to put the business in top place. An executive sponsor role is more of daily involving into the task of developing the new program which is planned to execute to help the business grow faster. Bed Bath & Beyond require an executive sponsor to understand the factors which bring the business down and would need to study the factors which can help boost the business. Executive sponsor (He/she) need to form an IG team and guide them in order to reach the business objective/goal. Executive sponsor (He/she) cannot just manage the new program but also need to actively participate in building the program and all other levels of execution. The main important task an executive sponsor must be responsible for is reporting the growth of the business to the upper management.

Information Policy Development and Communication

E-commerce business must deal with lot of information. Information includes sensitive and non-sensitive. Organizations should come up with clear set of policies which are defined in a way to access the information and make use of the information for any business activities. In E-commerce lot of sensitive information is involved such as payment information, company product or other sensitive information and customer personal information. Organizations need to get the trust by protecting the sensitive data. To achieve this goal organizations needs to build policies and those policies should be communicated on regular basis to employees in the Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 21

organization. Organization is also responsible in letting the employees know the consequences if they violate the IG policies.

Information Security

Providing security to information is a key to gain the success in any business. Information should be protected in all the phases such as when it is stored as well as when it is in use. There are quite a lot of incidents happened in real time business such as data breach or information theft by intruders or outsiders. E-commerce must deal with sensitive information such as customer information, payment information and other product related information. Implement security measures to store the sensitive information is a key to avoid data breaches. To protect the information from malicious activities which may compromise sensitive information security measures needs to be implemented. Threat to information comes from various directions and has unpredictable dimensions. An insider in a company or outsider may also responsible for information theft and alterations. To avoid these activities security measures needs to be in place. Another possibility of information loss is when an employee lost his/her laptop. Implementing security measures will help to protect the information in such (lost laptop) scenarios.

Information Integrity

Information integrity is nothing but making sure the data, which is stored should be accurate, correct and authentic. The stored data should not have any duplications. IG program efforts to remove duplicate data which helps to save the storage cost, labor cost and to reduce risk. Data quality can also be increased by implementing information governance programs. E Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 22 commerce business collect lot of information in various ways. Manage and preserve the information is a key and need information technology labor to maintain and provide security to the data. Information integrity can reduce the information technology labor cost by providing quality, accurate and redundant data to the decision makers. Policies must be enforced to maintain the information to make sure information stored is not altered by any trusted sources.

Information Governance Monitoring and Auditing

Monitoring and auditing plays key role in identifying the data loss/ information loss. Policies have been enforced and followed by every employee. But still monitoring is needed to make sure every employee is safeguarding the information as well as not doing any illegal activity which causes information loss. Monitoring every activity of an employee helps to keep the system safe. Auditing is also very important activity to do as it finds out what went wrong. E commerce business has number of activities on daily basis and each activity should be monitored and logged as it can be a reference to see in future to find out the break if something went wrong. Confidential information should not be leaked to outsiders. Keep track of all social media activities of employees to make sure every individual is following the company guidelines and policies to obtain better business growth.

Continuous Improvement

IG is not a onetime program in an organization. It is a continuous program to implement in order to keep the business on track of success/ profits. E commerce is a platform where number of factors affect the growth of a business. Ig program should constantly study the factors and their effects on the business. E commerce business has lot of competitors and IG program Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 23

should make sure what and implement strategic plan so that our business does not get effected. As said, it’s a continuous process of finding out the best practices where customers gets satisfied in every possible way.

Stakeholder Consultation

Stakeholder consultation is important in developing Information governance program or policies as the person who work closely with the information should probably know why information is needed and how it is managed. It is very important to involve business units to get the Ig policies more effective. Information technology department has the capacity to safeguard and technical confidence that they can do their part to make the IG policy more effective. It is highly possible to face legal issues in e commerce organization and it is very important to defer them to the in-house legal counsel department.

Potential Risks to Information

Ecommerce Information Online Security

Ecommerce online security is defined as set of rules which can help in identifying a way to achieve safety in ecommerce transactions. Strict and effective rules are to be implemented by the companies/organizations to protect themselves from the external and internal cyber-attacks (Smart Insights, 2018). Failing to Handle information and/or protect it can cause several risks. They are as follows:

Credit card fraud. Intruders cause the cyber threats to a company/organization with the intention of stealing the credit card information of the customers of the company. It is a seen as the biggest risk to any company. It will let the hackers use the credit card information to perform Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 24 transactions which is a huge risk to the company and its customers. Hackers can use several methods to gain access to the credit card information. The methods are listed below (Latoya Irby, 2019).

Hacking into businesses. The easiest way for a hacker to get information is, as discussed above, by intruding into businesses where all the credit card information of the customer is stored. Sometimes the number of people affected by these attacks could be millions as there are some organizations have millions of customers. Recent data breaches like Equifax, JP Morgan have made it to news, but there are several other minor breaches which have not been known to people outside the business, and a business need not necessarily inform the customers about the data breaches to the organization and its information.

Skimming. It is a process of gaining the credit card information by using a small device which is usually placed in the credit card swipe at ATMs, hotels, stores etc. All the credit card information is copied into the device. By placing malware into devices like phones and other devices like laptops and tablets, specially designed software is pushed into devices by sending it through some downloadable files and emails. It is easy for a hacker to get into a device which is connected to an unsecured network.

Tricking people. Sometimes hackers can directly call/text you professing to be department of IRS, credit-fraud department and other federal agencies. They might say that some kind of fraud activity is detected and to fix this immediately the person’s information is necessary. There are several cases where people fell prey for it and ended up giving out valuable and sensitive information like credit card number, addresses and phone numbers. The hackers, Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 25

after getting this information, will use it for several fraudulent activities. The list of the things the hackers could do with the information is: selling it, creating duplicate cards, for online shopping. Apart from the outside intrusions and attacks, the internal management for data plays a key role in mitigating the risks. Impact of these risks are very high. The risks that could arise as a result of following bad practices in the organization are as follows.

Risk from Internal Sources

Failure to create awareness of the policies: In an organization, if the employees are not educated about the company’s information policies, they will be not aware of the consequences of their actions.

Information integrity. The information in the organization should be unique and the integrity of the information should be implemented. As a result of not following these key rules, the information becomes redundant and will increase the storage costs. Impact: High

Information control & retention policies. Another risk in any business is information retention. Legally, all the information of the business is to be retained by the organizations. This is legally required by Federal, state and counties. Failure to retain this information for certain periods (as required by laws) will land the business in trouble. Impact of this risk is very high.

Developing a strategic plan that Bed Bath & Beyond and Risk Mitigation. The following information will talk about the identifying the risks involved in the information related to Bed Bath & Beyond, evaluating the seriousness of the risks, and developing strategic plans for reducing them. Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 26 Research and understand the legal requirements for information retention. Laws imposed on the organization’s information by federal, state, county and municipality should be researched and taken into consideration before acquiring it. Then this data should be retained for legal purposes. This data may have to be produced whenever necessary within the legal retention period. Failure to retain or produce the data may result in some serious issues to the company. Impact of the risk of not retaining the data is very high.

Create and follow the organization’s internal retention/storage policies. Some of the organization’s information may be stored even after the expiry of legal retention policies to use it in future for producing a copy to a customer or using it for internal audits of statistics purposes.

Design/Create risk profile and risk mitigation plan. Educate the Bed Bath & Beyond employees about the risks involved in the process of implementing the organization’s goals. This should be considered as an important step of the reducing the risk. This process is controlled by the higher-level management of the business (CEO). After developing the risk profile, risk-reducing plans are created.

Develop metrics and measure results & executing risk mitigation plan. Create metrics to estimate and analyze the results gained by implementing the risk mitigation/reducing plans. It will help IG to understand and analyze the efforts and results obtained by the risk mitigation plan. After this step is done, risk-reducing plan is implemented by conducting frequent meetings and preparing reports on risk-reducing metrics. Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 27

Audit the information risk-reducing program. The metrics for risk-reducing effectiveness can be used for auditing purposes, and the result of this auditing program can serve as an important information for improving the program.

Best practices for information governance that will be employed in Bed Bath & Beyond

Bed Bath & Beyond was considered a “Category Killer” when it initially started. When the company went public the share prices were $1.13 and they rose until the late 20’s. Company during its transition acquired many small companies in different categories and was doing well. The Profit rose from 25% -30% however there are reasons for the downfall of the company.

From Fiscal Year 2016-2019 the company’s profit went down and the company is at a verge of extinction. The reasons are many: Inexperienced Management and leaders, Confusing Stores, less concentration on E-commerce section of the company, too many choices which were confusing, Insensible usage of Coupons and many more.

We can relate the downfall of the company to improper usage of information or stats. This can help us relate it to how important Information Governance can be.

Information Governance is a model which helps in developing Discipline and helps in Records Management and a subset of Governance, Risk Management and compliance.

We will be describing the Best IG practices that might help BBB grow back as a company/organization.Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 28

IG is a Key Underpinning for a Successful RM Program

Practicing good IG is foundation for building a legally defensible RM program(SMALLWOOD, 2014), in case of BBB the board of directors and the CEO/founders were not showcasing the right legal mechanism. Example would be from the video where it describes the Directors were drawing $4 million in salary even though company was in losses compared to the competitors who were drawing an average of $1.3 Million. This showcases how important information Governance model is which keeps the right stake holdersinvolved and there is transparency.

IG if Not a Process but an Ongoing Program

The rise and fall of a company dependon how the company manages the changes(SMALLWOOD, 2014). In case of BBB also, it was not updating itself with the time. As the text states it’s a Program to improve and innovate. The Video states how the stores of BBB got more and more confusing and best example is when it states there were 20 different kinds of Dustbins to choose from in BBB which makes the life of Customer’s pretty hard.

IG Policies Must be Developed before Enabling Technologies

As per this practice(SMALLWOOD, 2014), if BBB can develop strict policies before implementing it in the system would help the organization. We can relate this to the coupon issues where the famous 20% discount on BBB where so frequently used that the customer’s got Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 29 so used to the coupons. Also, the employees were very liberal is expiry date of the coupons(CNBC, 2019).

A Practice of Cross Functional Team is Very Vital in Case of BBB

The company’s downfall is also because the top management were not experienced technically nor in the field of retail. Compared to the competitors who bought in CEO’s who were experienced in E-commerce and retail business? Example would be Amazon’s Jim Cramer who is experienced and knows how to innovate while keeping the business running as usual(Sozzi, 2018).

IG Program Must be audited for Effectiveness

A timely auditing is one of the most important practice in IG(SMALLWOOD, 2014). Which helps you know how your organization is doing. In case of BBB it was something they should have implemented way before and probably should have seen the downfall coming. Though the stats are online, and it tells that the downfall was predicted but no one really inspected or showed interest in making the E-commerce website user friendly.

The video gives us an example on how the website had too many steps before a customer could select the product and make a payment compared to a user-friendly UI of amazon.com.This shows a regular audit on why there is a deficit in sale and customer information would have helped company predict the consequences. Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 30

Business Processes Redesign

Business processes must be redesigned to improve and optimize the management and security of information(SMALLWOOD, 2014)and especially the most critical of information, electronic records, before implementing enabling technologies. For Instance, using the right business strategy before implementing the technology, instead of concentrating on too many products had BBB concentrated on making it User-friendly, it would have helped them grow as an organization.

Best example would be that of Starbucks, though they are from a different market altogether but the strategy of re-designing all the stores and making them look alike helped Starbucks come back strong in the Market. I believe BBB can also come up with a strategy to re-design not just the management and employees but also the stores to make them look better and should be user friendly.

Creating Standardized Metadata

Creating standardized metadata(SMALLWOOD, 2014)terms should bepart of an IG effort that enables faster, more complete, and more accurate searches and retrieval of records.

A good system for data maintenance is a must especially in business driven by Customer Information. In today’s world it is a must to go throughCustomer’s Information and be as quick as possible. In case of BBB it is important that they develop a system, which gives them stats of different customer’s and create reports which give them the right approach. Big data helps in Bed Bath & Beyond – The Raise and Struggle 31 creating graphs which help the higher management to take the right decisions for improving of the business.

Senior Management must set the Tone and Lead Sponsorship for Vital Records Program Governance and Compliance

Would conclude the examples with one of the most important practice required(SMALLWOOD, 2014)in case of BBB, the senior management should play key role and act as someone to look up to. The senior management should not only maintain the records and govern them but also as a public limited company keep it transparent. Bed Bath & Beyond needs a change achange which should bring good.

There are many IG practices which would help BBB as a company, but we have carefully chosen the 8 best practices we believe would help the company in terms of Information Governance, Risk Management and Compliance Issue.