Title Of Assignment
The business of Eat2Go, as evident from the case, is growing. The growing magnitude of business calls for more efficient business processes to remain productive and increase efficiency. Currently, the sales receipts and other information are fed using manual or batch processing. This often results into backlogs and delays in entry at source. Before looking for the requirements of the input, process and output hardware, it is important to look at the input, process and output needs.
Following seems to be some important needs for Eat2Go in terms of input, process and output. Input Needs: The first set of data that needs to be collected is about the customer. The company needs to input all relevant information about the customer ranging from its contact details to its demographics. This is essential in order to ensure proper targeting for various marketing campaigns. Second set of data is that of the purchases. There are two purposes for this data. One is from operational perspective, while the other is from analytical perspective.
From the operational perspective, the record of inventory needs to be updated, and from the analytical point of view, this data is required in various data mining techniques like market basket analysis. For similar purposes, Quantity purchased also needs to be entered. The price of items sold also needs to be entered for the purpose of tax calculation, and that of other financial ratios. Likewise, the amount of discount given is also an important parameter. The customer feedback also needs to be entered so that their complaints and suggestions can be dealt with timely.
Other important parameters for input are date of sale, ingredients used, quantity of ingredients, date of order, date of receiving items, and Cost of ingredients Processing Needs: Processing needs include updating various accounts on the happening of any transaction, data mining for various analysis like market basket analysis, updating inventory level and finding out optimal levels of inventory to hold, sorting of customer feedback, calculation of financial information and finding out the acceptance of new dishes Output needs:
Output needs include record of Sales – cash and credit, generating information / graphs that may help in taking decisions like addition of new recipe, decision support information for incorporating customer feedbacks, inventory record level and requirements, customer data associated with his traits, level of inventory, and financial ratios Following are information system resources required by Eat2Go. Data There are two types of data that would be required by Eat2Go, internal and external. The internal data includes all the above mentioned inputs and the external data includes upcoming seasons and festivals.
Hardware The hardware requiremnents for Eat2Go includes a workstation with standard capabilities. Pentium IV is recommended, but Dual Core is preferred. It would cost 280 to 300 $. Secondly, for the purpose of output on hardcopy, a printer would be required. For this purpose, a standard low end laser printer would be sufficient. It would cost around 150$. It also requires a PDA. The cost of a PDA is around 150-200$. Software In order to save the licensing fees, they can also opt for open source software like Linux, Open Office etc. They would also need some specialized software like CRM, SCM and front end TPS.
The front end TPS is a system that is easy to built, thus it can be built in-house. Approaching the classmates who are expert in system development can work. For CRM and SCM, the initial cost is too much for them to afford. The most feasible option is using some online SCM and CRM like salesforce. com etc. With such solution, initial cost would be almost zero and subscription would depend upon usage. People The three partners would be the main users of these systems. Telecommunication They would need internet connection for a number of tasks, especially if they use online CRM and SCM. Procedures
Partners must develop the procedure. HARDWARE Item Cost (USD) Desktop PC (Dell Dual Core) 300$-500$ Printer (HP Laser Jet P1005) 130$ PDA (Imate) 200$ SOFTWARE Category Cost CRM (Subscription from salesforce. com) 10-20$/month SCM and TPS (In house development by College Graduates) 100-200$ QUESTION II Andrew Langston’s company has been successful in Seattle. In fact, he is now considering expanding his business to your city. You have been put in charge of organizing the telecommunications technology for the new office. Go online to find out the types of telecommunications services—cable, DSL, satellite, fixed wireless, etc.
—that firms offer in your area. Which would work best for your QuickBiz office? Why? A number of options do exist for telecommunication. Let us explore some of them briefly. DSL: Digital Subscriber Line is often abbreviated as DSL. DSL is the internet service on telephone line. The range of its download speed lies somewhere between 256 kbps to 24000 kbps. But, the speed may vary on a number of factors like whether the bandwidth is dedicated or shared etc. Cable LAN: In this setup, all the PCs are connected to a stronger system called Server. The server, using some other media is connected to the internet.
This is very low cost setup and being guided in nature, data is more secure. However, there is always the issue of its extension limitation. Optic Fiber: The biggest advantage of fiber optics is that it transfer data the form of light, thus its speed is far greater than any other medium. However, this type of setup is very expensive and too costly for a small firm to adopt. Broadband When one media transmits signals of multiple signals simultaneously, it is called broad band. It can give speed up to several megabits. GPRS General Packet Radio Service is often abbreviated as GPRS.
This technology is often embedded in cell phones. In GPRS, the data transfer is done through using the network of mobile service providers. Wireless: There are two major wireless technologies, wifi and wimax. With the emerging use of laptops, the use of wireless mode is increasing. There is no one best of all solution. The ideal solution varies from case to case. Thus, one must try to match the requirements with the features of each of the option. The general practice is to have one medium as primary, while other as secondary or contingent, to ensure business continuity. Question III
ONLINE ADVERTISEMENT STRATEGY FOR IT FITS OUTFITS It Fits Outfits is planning to open its Web site catering to the college population. As part of the advertising team, you now have to work with Adina Silverman to develop a proposal for online advertisement. Banners and search engines are the two main methods that your company can use to spread word of its new site online. Do some research and prepare a one-page report detailing how It Fits Outfits should advertise online. What search engines should it advertise with? On what sites should it place banner ads? Explain the reasoning behind your choices.
In the current global times, internet marketing has shown great potentials. However, with the bombardment of internet ads, only those campaigns are expected to succeed which are designed intelligently. Let us have a look at the huge potential this channel possesses. It is estimated that 2% of total expenditure on ads in done on internet ads, which accounts for 3 Billion $. Newer estimates are even more encouraging as it shows the growth to 9% (21 Billion $ worth) and expected to reach 11% by the end of the year 2008. The internet ads have overtaken the radio ads, and now it is the time to overtake the magazine ads.
Advanced countries like UK, Norway, Sweden etc. have the proportion of internet ads over 15%. Google, generating 90% of its revenue from internet ads, has the growth rate of 40%, which is far ahead of giants like Microsoft or Yahoo. These statics are sufficient to convince that internet advertising is a successful business model for marketing. Usually, it brings success when the target users are internet users. Moreover, the success is also dependent on the websites chosen and the adwords chosen. Following channels have been identified for this purpose. Search Engines The most commonly used search engines are chosen for this.
These are Yahoo and Google. Moreover, ad words like “fashionable clothes”, “stylish jeans” etc would be bought from these search engines and the model of payment would be and ads would be pay per click. Banner Placement Sites that have been chosen to display the banners are MSN Messenger, Facebook, music download sites and Blogs related to topic in which youth are interested. The reason for choosing these sites is that these sites are being used by youths most frequently these days and they spend most of their time on these sites. Moreover, these sites display targeted ads, based on the profile of the user.
Thus, it helps in better reaching the customer with lesser wastage of advertising budget. QUESTION IV Carl DeBoer have been notified of a town meeting near their South Dakota farm. The meeting has been called by the town’s managers to discuss and debate the use of pesticides and fertilizers in the county. You are one of Carl top managers, and he’s asked you to help them prepare for the meeting. You know that decision support systems (DSSs) and geographic information systems (GISs) have helped fine-tune the use of pesticides and fertilizers on the DeBoer farm.
Develop a list of pros and cons of using such systems that Carl will probably hear discussed at the meeting. Prepare a short speech on the benefits of using DSSs and GISs to assist in the application of fertilizers or pesticides in case the town president asks you to speak. Decision making is one of the foremost tasks that a manager has to perform. The term decision making itself encompasses four major functions, as described by Mintzberg, like change manager, conflict manager, resource distributor and negotiator. This shows the importance of decision making for the manager.
The decision making is done on two grounds, qualitative as well as quantitative. Usually, the quantitative information plays major role in decision making. Few decades back, when the technology entered into the business world, it was expected that the art of decision making on quantitative grounds would enhance, however, for years, it could not happen, as data began to pile up, but very few were able to extract useful knowledge out of it. This made the people realized the need for computer programs that are capable to deduce useful trends from the piles and piles of data.
This gave birth to technologies like data warehouse, OLAP, Data mining, knowledge discovery etc. In order to make these technologies business-oriented, the systems like decision support systems emerged that used those technologies and provided the concise information that is helpful in taking the decision. One of its greatest applications, especially in the field of agriculture, is that of precision farming. The trend of precision farming has gained momentum in the advanced countries. It is the combination of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Decision Support System (DSS).
This helps in enhancing the effective use of pesticides. The task of GIS is to identify, capture, store, process data with reference to geographical coordinates. DSS applies its rule base on the data by GIS to identify the locations with the correct amount of pesticides required over there. It also tells what kind of pesticide is required. This technology is already being used by Carl DeBoer and the results are excellent. Not only the use of pesticides has been optimized, but the productivity of the land is enhanced. Having such a positive experience with precision farming, we would recommend this to all other farmers.
The biggest hurdle in this method is that of cost. Secondly, the use of technology requires frequent maintenance and gets obsolete quite early. However, statistics tell that the decision making is better with precision farming, thus positive ROI. The pros of precision farming outweigh its cons. First of all, it ensures the effective use of pesticides, thus it’s a cost saving. It also ensures higher productivity, thus higher profits. Above all, it provides more of quantitiative premises to take decision and it is adoptable to the environment.
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