Random walk shoes

IMED 2409 – Chapter 8 – Web Server Hardware & Software

Assignment:

Complete Exercise E3 (200 WORDS)

Complete Case Problem C2. Random Walk Shoes, parts 2 (100 words min) & 3 (100 words min)

Exercise 3

Assume you are planning Web server computer capacity for a business that has 5000 business customers and sells about 1200 different products. Each customer buys between 10 and 50 items two or three times each month. The business had 300 employees, 200 of whom regularly interact with the company’s online sales system. As you learn more about disk storage options for the Web server, you learn that many companies selling Web servers offer a configuration option for controlling those computers’ disk drives called “RAID”. Using the Web and your library, investigate the purpose of RAID controllers. Learn what these controllers do and how they do it. Form an opinion regarding the suitability of these controllers in the Web server you are planning. Summarize your findings in a 200-word briefing report suitable for presentation to a nontechnical manager.

Case 2. Random Walk Shoes

Amy Lawrence, the owner of Random Walk Shoes, has asked you to help her as she launches her company’s first Web site. In college, Amy was a business major with an artistic bent. She helped to pay her way through college by decorating sneakers with her hand-painted designs. Her business grew through word of mouth and through her participation in crafts fairs. By the time she earned her degree, Amy was running a successful business from her dorm room.

Amy expanded her sales efforts to include crafts fairs in nearby towns. She hired two college students to work for her, and she convinced several area gift shops to stock samples of her merchandise. The gift shops were not an ideal retail outlet for her products, however. Most people who want to buy decorated sneakers want to choose specific designs or have special designs created just for them. Customers also want to choose the specific shoes on which the design is placed. One of Amy’s student workers suggested that she consider selling her products on the Web.

Realizing that the Web would give Random Walk Shoes a chance to reach a much wide audience and would allow customers to choose design–shoe combinations, Amy began gathering information and developing estimates about her planned Web activity. She bought a digital camera and took several hundred pictures of shoes, designs, and shoe–design combinations. She then hired a local Web designer to create sample pages for the Web site, including catalog pages that contained the digital images.

When the Web designer had completed a prototype of the site, Amy worked with the designer to calculate page sizes (including the images). The average page size was 100 KB. Amy and her employees then navigated the prototype site several hundred times to develop an estimate of how many pages an average visitor would download. They concluded that an average site visitor would visit 23 pages during each visit. Amy worked with the Web designer to develop estimates of the activity they expect to occur on the Web site during its first two years of operation. These estimates include:

• The database of Web page information (including the images) will require about 400 MB of disk space.

• The database management software itself will require about 200 MB of disk space.

• The shopping cart software will require about 200 MB of disk space.

• About 8000 customers will visit the site during the first month, and site traffic will grow about 20 percent each month during the first two years.

• The site should accommodate a peak traffic load of 3000 visitors at one time.

Amy wants to include features on the site that are similar to those found on competing sites (a list of links to businesses that sell customized shoes on the Web is included in the Online Companion for your reference). Amy wants the site to provide a good experience for visitors. If the site is successful, it will generate sufficient revenue to allow an upgrade after two years. However, she does not want to spend more money than is necessary to get the site up and keep it running for the next two years.

Required:

2. Consider the advantages and disadvantages of each major operating system that Amy might use on the new Web server computer. In a one-page memorandum to Amy, make a specific recommendation and support it with facts and a logical argument. If you do not believe that one operating system is clearly superior for this application, explain why.

3. Consider the advantages and disadvantages of each major Web server software package for accomplishing the goals that Amy has for this site. In a one-page memorandum to Amy, make a specific recommendation regarding which Web server software package she should use. Provide an explanation that supports your recommendation.

IMED 2409 – Chapter 9 – Electronic Commerce Software

Assignment:

· Complete Exercise E2 (200 WORDS)

· Complete Case Problem C1. Ingersoll-Rand Club Car Division, parts 2 (200 WORDS) & 3 (100 WORDS)

Answer Exercise 2

Annette Jackson owns a small crafts store in central Missouri. She wants to expand her store’s reach outside the region to increase her profits and simultaneously reduce her inventory. Annette’s teenage daughter suggested that she consider selling online to expand her total sales. She asked you to help her estimate how much it might cost in the first year to create a simple store with a catalog of about 100 items. Annette wants you to investigate two CSP offerings and report back to her what you find. Because her store is small, limit your research to basic commerce and mall-style services. Annette would like to consider the following information for the two CSP offerings you examine:

• Costs: initial setup fee, monthly fee, and transaction fees

• Amount of disk space the CSP would provide for Annette’s 100-item store

• Promotion and marketing opportunities

• Customer communications capabilities, such as automated e-mail confirmation of orders

• Shopping cart or other order entry mechanism

• Storefront-building wizards for creating a new store

• Upload capabilities for product names, descriptions, images, and costs (can they be uploaded from files or databases, or must the merchant enter each item individually?)

• Existence of an online user manual for the merchant

Use your favorite search engine to find CSPs that might meet Annette’s needs. Produce a report of about 200 words summarizing your findings.

Answer Case 1. Ingersoll-Rand Club Car Division

Ingersoll-Rand is a $9 billion diversified manufacturing company that sells its products worldwide. Its well-known brands include Ingersoll-Rand tools and portable power generators, Bobcat construction equipment, Thermo King refrigerated transport systems, Dexter and Schlage locks, and ARO industrial fluids equipment. The company’s Club Car division manufactures and sells a variety of small electric cart vehicles to golf courses and industrial users. The division also sells a rough-terrain version designed for farmers, ranchers, construction workers, and recreational users.

In 2001, the Club Car division was experiencing a sales decline. The downturn in the general economy was affecting golf courses, which, in turn, were reducing the size and frequency of their golf cart orders. Club Car had a general sense that this major market segment was causing their revenues to decline, but their information systems were not providing enough data about exactly which sales were being most affected by the economic downturn.

Club Car sales managers relied on their sales representatives for information about likely future sales. Sales forecasting was a matter of judgment, guesswork, and a few spreadsheet software models scattered throughout the regional sales offices. The sales representatives had little influence on how the carts were customized for particular customer segments or for individual customers.

The company decided it needed better information about all of its sales and marketing activities, so it spent more than $2 million to install a comprehensive CRM system. This system was designed to automate the entire customer sales cycle: prospect evaluation, proposal writing, product configuration, and order entry. However, the users at Club Car division found the new system difficult to use and therefore were reluctant to spend much time learning how to use it. Thus, the promised benefits of improved productivity and more detailed reports were not forthcoming. Sales managers did not see the ultimate benefits that the system might provide. Salespeople found that the new system was requiring them to spend time entering data into the system rather than seeing customers. The order entry staff found the system to be cumbersome and unfamiliar.

When Club Car’s president realized that the CRM system was not delivering on its promise, he had the management team go back and re-examine the key elements in the division’s customer relationships and asked them to choose one or two issues that needed attention. The management team identified two major issues. First, the order entry process required the time of salespeople and order entry staff, but it did not include any interaction with customers. Second, the division was not producing accurate and timely sales forecasts.

In 2002, Club Car division re-launched its CRM efforts and focused on these two problem areas. The new effort included the sales representatives in redesigning the order entry process. The division was able to reduce the data entry time and effort required, especially the time of salespeople. Salespeople do have remote access to the system, so they can work on-site with customers to configure the carts to the customers’ exact specifications. Salespeople can obtain pricing information and explore various alternatives with customers while they are at the customer’s site. They can also examine manufacturing schedules and provide more accurate delivery date estimates. All of this remote, real-time information access helps salespeople close deals and increase sales volume and profitability.

Sales forecasts are more accurate now because the information about sales orders is automatically collected when the sales representatives close sales at the customers’ sites. The CRM system combines this real-time sales order information with general industry information on cart demand, cart replacement cycles, and economic trends in their customers’ industries. The increased accuracy of sales forecasts allows the company to create more stable production schedules, which means that more customers receive their carts on the delivery date they were promised.

Required:

2. In the CRM re-launch, Club Car division focused on two CRM elements. In about 200 words, explain why this approach would work better, in general, than implementing a comprehensive CRM system that could track all of the division’s sales activities and related information in real time.

3. In about 100 words, describe the benefits Club Car division might obtain by using cloud-based CRM software

IMED 2409 – Chapter 10 – Electronic Commerce Security

Assignment:

· Complete Exercise E3 (200 WORDS)

· Complete Case Problem C1. Bibliofind, Parts 1 (200 WORDS) & 3 (200 WORDS)

Answer Exercise 3

Third-party assurance providers such as BBBOnline, Inc., and Truste sell their services to businesses that want to encourage Web site visitors to trust them with their personal information. Review the Web site of one or more of these third-party assurance providers and identify the security features the provider considers important in Web sites that it approves. Select two of the security features you identify and write a 200-word explanation of why the assurance provider considers these features to be important elements for preserving the privacy of site visitor information.