MGS 523 

MAJOR
PROJECT
 
 
 

MAJOR
PROJECT

What is involved in doing the Project? 
The project will include these elements: 
 

• An Executive Summary of the project. 
• A Weekly report detailing the activities of each group member 
• Budget 

A comprehensive report that will include recommendations, a start-up budget and a  monthly budget of recurring costs. 
• A well designed web site complete with a store front and where practical information/technical data using PDF files. 

WEEKLY
REPORTS

• Review competitive web sites and store fronts.
• Look for web sites similar to the one which matches the company of your project
• Make a list of the features on the site and the things you think are useful, and the things you would avoid

• the economic environment applies to how well the business is doing in the particular economy. For example some businesses are doing very well in the economy of 2000, some are highly stressed. Economic factors include employment, cost of living, wages
• Use search engines to find "economic" information about the business sector within your company is operating
• find "economic" information which effects the customers of the web site

• If your target company already has some kind of web site - Evaluate the content material. Is it adequate? Are graphics or pictures of the product/service important. Are they available in digital format or must they be scanned?
• If your target company does not have any web site presently - Evaluate what would be the best content material (text , images). Explain what graphics or pictures of the product/service important. Are they available in digital format or must they be scanned?

• Are there any regulations or legislation that applies to the content on the web site. Are there any litigation considerations (could they be sued for anything you may create for them - you do not have to know this in detail, just general awareness is acceptable)
• for information on some legal issues, please feel free to use the links and content at

 www.witiger.com/senecacollege/IEC719/outline719c.htm

language considerations

slang, jargon, 

 www.getcustoms.com/quiz/phrases.html 

 http://ilearn.senecac.on.ca/homepage/Tim.Richardson/INB524/badtranslation.htm 

cultural sensitivities

use of colours, shapes, special images

Somebody asked about web cams so I have provided some links to those which I mentioned in another course
WTGR

One of the practical uses for web cams is to allow viewers to see traffic patterns

 http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/traveller/compass/camera/cammain2.htm

One traffic cam gives a good view of the Yonge and Steeles interesection.
This particular cam shows "streaming video" which means the image constanting refeshes without you having to relaod the page on your browser.
 http://www.zordoc.com/webcam/index.html
the zordoc cam refreshes very fast , allowing you to see almost every vehicle or person passing in front - which has implications for public privacy

There are also cameras for providing views of downtown Toronto
http://www.city.toronto.on.ca/rescu/index.htm
 

frivolous uses of internet resources to show silly cams, like the beer fridge cam

One of the most popular uses of web cams is to show street scenes in major tourist attractions of the world

 http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/
the cam for Times Square is also fairly good quality and individual people's faces can be determined, which may or may not cause some people to feel unfortable. The question we can ask ourselves is "should areas of the city, in which there are live web cams, be posted, so people have the option of avoiding that if they do not want to be on the web"
Cam #3 is very "close-up" and you can distinguish people's faces quite clearly
 www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/cam3.html

cams across Canada

 http://www.montrealcam.com/en-tour-bourse.html
This cam is located in Montreal at the corner of at the corner of Peel and   Sainte-Catherine, the busiest intersection in Greater Montréal. 

MAJOR
PROJECT

 www.witiger.com/senecacollege/MGS523/project523.htm
"Determine the availability of a domain name with the .com (or .ca) extension. Provide the company with several optional names, including the costs of registration."

What you will do in class today is read through the following links and descriptions so you will understand the aspects involved in domain names: then you will search internic.ca for names relevant to the company you are doing your project on. Check for additional names and phrases which would be appropriate.

ie. if www.dentist.com is taken, check for www.torontodentist.com

ie www.torontodentist.ca was available Oct 11th, 2001 !!!
 

The Kalakota book "Electronic Commerce: A Manager's Guide" is perhaps the oldest e-commerce book used in North America. The book is dated 1997 and has been superseded by some newer
 books which have the advantage of being more contemporary. Nevertheless, it remains a useful book, and has a particularly good section on Intranets - in fact 4 chapters of the Kalakota book are devoted to Intranets
Chpt 10 - Intranets and Supply Chain Management
Chpt 11 - Intranets and Customer Asset Management
Chpt 12 - Intranets and Manufacturing
Chpt 13 - Intranets and Corporate Finance

You do not have to buy this book for MGS 523 - but, if you are really interested in intranets, this book is available in the Seneca Campus bookstore
WTGR

Intranets
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Chapter 10

Intranets

Intranets are private computer networks built with standard Internet technologies. Access to these networks is restricted to an authorized group of users, usually within a company or a department of a company. Access privileges to select parts of the intranet can be extended to external vendors and suppliers to form what is known as an extranet.

Intranets and Supply-Chain Management

Keeping with the theme that one of the biggest applications of e-business for a company, is in the category of saving costs - one of the biggest areas in which to save costs is cutting expenses from the materials gathering and components purchasing area: essentially your supply chain.
 

Industry activities to deal with enhanceing effectiveness of Supply Chain Management

• JIT Just in Time
• quick response
• vendor managed inventory
• continuous replenishment
• p 285 Kalakota

"What has changed is the need to quickly share and disseminate information across the supply chain"
- this follows a shift from product orientation, to sales orientation to market orientation.

Pull versus Push Supply Chain models 
p. 288 Kalakota
- explained by WTGR on the blackboard with a diagram

- Pull based models require a lot of information about the customer
- the trend has been away from Push based systems to Pull based systems
Managing Retails Supply Chains 
"ideally electronic commerce should provide retailers with an integrated system for planning and controlling all business processes in the supply chain stretching from suppliers to consumers" p. 304 - Kalakota

Intranets

• Planning Systems
• means having the right product at the right place at the right time
• requires being able to obtain good "order information" from the customer
• POS - Point of Sale data gathered at the retail terminal is part of this
• Demand Forecasting (cause you can't have some products ready instantly)
• allows you to be more competitive in supplying things 'faster'
• customer demand triggers order movement up the supply chain to the raw material supplier
• the trend has been away from Push based systems to Pull based systems
• Execution Systems
• facilitate the physical movement of goods and services through the supply chain
• focus on operational efficiency
• entails finding new ways to streamline day2day operations
• reduce costs
• improve productivity
• need for cross functional integration
• execution systems are basically the way you do things to make sure everything done the right way !
• Performance Measurement Systems
• keeps track of how things are going well, or poorly
• necessary to evaluate good and bad results in a specific way so you can make changes
• most often this means talking about some specific accounting or financial software package that gives performance numbers
• Integrating Functions in a Supply Chain
• the key thing about integrating is getting all the key functions to work together
• the key functions are
• Managing Information about demand
• Managing the flow of physical goods
• Managing the manufacturing process
• Managing the money

Q. What is supply chain management?
"A supply chain is a collection of inter-dependent steps that, when followed, accomplish a certain objective such as meeting customer requirements. Supply-chain management is a generic term that encompasses the coordination of order generation, order taking, and offer fulfillment/distribution of products, services, or information. Numerous, independent firms and customers are involved in a supply chain (e.g., manufacturers and parts suppliers; parcel shippers, senders and receivers; wholesalers and retailers). The WWW and extranets (connected intranets) have  shown a great potential in linking and managing these entities into a virtual organization."

Intranets
and 
Extranets

go here to download the ppt for Chpt 7
 http://www.prenhall.com/divisions/bp/app/turban/cw/ppt/

Featured in Chpt 7
is reference to ANX - the Automotive Network Exchange, which is the world's largest extranet

Applications of Intranet page 244
the major functions that an Intranet can provide

• corporate / departmental / individual web pages
• database access
• for better information about customers
• inventory
• assets and resources
• search engines and directories
• for companies handling massive quantities of text documents
• eg. insurance and banking companies
• interactive communication
• chatting, audio, videoconferencing
• in order to save costs
• document distribution and workflow
• very helpful in organizations were more than one person handles a file
• eg. government agencies, eg. licensing agencies, health offices etc.
• groupware
• telephony
• integration with electronic commerce
• internet based sales have to be processed
• processing can be economized with intranet structure for order fulfillment
• eg. Amazon.com
• extranet
• geographically dispersed parts of the organization

• corporate policies
• corporate procedures for caring out complex actions with many variables
• timetables for people and events
• scheduling information
• directories
• people
• names, tel contacts
• titles and functions
• departments
• part of reducing duplication of activity
• enhanced use of existing resources
• departmental "evangelism" (common in large organizations)
• Human Resources
• benefits and services to employees
• performance evaluations guidelines
• employment equity information and guidelines
• stock information
• intra-corporate employment opportunities
• educational information
• corporate training programs
• schedules
• descriptions, curriculum, participation forms
• product catalogs
• purchase orders
• manuals
• to enhance capability of service technicians 
• to empower wholsalers and retailers
• services
• travel services
• in-house services , eg. printing
• archives
• text, stories, documents, records
• images (eg. for a newspaper)
• video clips (eg. for a broadcaster)

within
Online
Communities

Webrings
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Online
Communities

Webrings

"Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is developing into a major element of corporate strategy for many organisations. CRM, also known by other terms such as relationship marketing and customer management, is concerned with the creation, development and enhancement of individualised customer relationships with carefully targeted customers and customer groups resulting in maximizing their total customer life-time value....Narrow functionally-based traditional marketing is being replaced by a new form of cross functional marketing - CRM.... the focus is shifting from customer acquisition to customer retention"

Why is time and money spent on CRM worthwhile, Payne notes "Research shows that a 5% points increase in customer retention yields a profit, in net present value terms, of between 20% and 125%"

 http://www.ittoolbox.com/peer/AP_website.htm
Professor Adrian Payne, 
Director Centre for Relationship Marketing, Cranfield University
 

CRM for Dummies
 http://www.crmassist.com/peer/docs/crm_dummies.asp
by Sambasivan TN for Origin Information Technology

"...why the sudden talk about CRM?... With a general slowdown of the global economy companies are finding it hard to get going....Gone are the days where you had a technological edge over your archrival. With new and affordable technologies your competitor is just a matter of days behind you in terms of product launch. So what are you left with as a key-differentiating factor? ...customers need to be looked at more seriously than ever before ... information is the key to success. Information about the customer made available to the person coming in contact with the customer can go a long way not only in clinching the deal but also creating a very good relationship with the customer for future business...
Organizations over the past had products as their key focus. The way an entire organization works would be built around this focus area. Since this cannot be used as a key-differentiating factor anymore, companies have begun to focus on the customers. This not only brings about a change in focus, but also changes the way the entire organization works"
 

Sambasivan adds
"not all customers are equally profitable. The key herein lies in identifying the customers who pay you more for the kind of services that you offer and focusing your valuable efforts into taking special care of those customers. This not only helps by improving your bottom line, but also helps you to focus your efforts where it is required the most."
 

Sambasivan concludes
"The need for accurate and timely information to the sales team is really important. The advantages being that the knowledge gathered by a particular person who has been interacting with the customer, now lies with the organization and not with the person alone."