Privacy And Information Technology Essays - Business Software

Privacy And Information Technology Geoffrey Graves MG3700 Mid Term Exam 4/24/2000 Part I 1.) In order to produce an upwards swing in revenue, Toy World must track its customer's buying trends with more accuracy and more detail. The Point of Sale system that they are currently working from can be improved and made to reduce after-market inventory. Trend data can be used for a wide variety of purposes. One of the first problems is the store design and layout of items. Sale items and hot merchandise must be as strategically positioned as possible to allow a prospective customer to locate and remove the item from the shelf quickly and painlessly. By analyzing customer data, the new system must be able to sort items not only by popularity, but also by genre. Once data is collected, new stores can be quickly designed around the products. Some trends never die, seen by the toy world market data. Comparing one toy with another is extremely important in order to decipher just why it's a big seller. The POS system should be able to lay out all pertinent information about a toy obtained from sales data, and compare it next to a variable number of other ?hot? sellers. Data can be compared with toy descriptions after analysis of the item, and research of the toy's advertisements and media exposure. Also by doing this, under- stocking and over-stocking shelves can be prevented. A ?hot? toy can be kept in stock if the retailer orders a large quantity ahead of time after POS analysis. What of the items that don't sell much when the POS data is analyzed? The system should be able compute the quantity to order, to keep in the stock room, or to totally remove the item from inventory. 2.) At the ?snap-shot? of this case, Toy World's tactical strategic position was decent and had room for expansion, but the tactical position was lacking in many areas. If you ask the CIO of any successful company that has been around for about 25 years, he will agree that for maximum results and increased overall cash inflow, a large portion of the budget should be spent on IT. More funds towards improvement of the POS system would have increased revenue two or even threefold. Much of the data network at Toy World is too slow to handle the amount of traffic necessary to sufficiently analyze POS information. From IT Planning (Exhibit 5) the MIS spending plan as a fraction of sales, decreases from 0.9% in 1987 to 0.8% in 1988, around $4000. This shows a clear lack of good prediction when this % of sales data is compared with the revenue (Exhibit 3) of $10 million. IT spending could have been increased by 50%, (1.8-2.0) percent from 1986 to 1987 with practically no negative side effects. Strategically, the company was looking towards the future of sales. One of the major ideas that were worked into Toy World's ?electronic future? was e-commerce. If they were to win that race, the sales would predictably skyrocket. Toys are the perfect product to purchase online for tech savvy moms and dads at Christmas time. Though the technological problems were many, Toy World was still a leader in toys manufacturing and sale. 3.) As the CIO of Toy World, I would have a comprehensive and competent staff working in a team-oriented workplace. The new management team positions would be Systems Analysts would be hired in order to redesign the POS system. The system would keep the same base coding and structure but certain descriptive items must be added to the data analysis. This team would be in charge of analyzing the system and would work closely with the team of programmers to design the best way to integrate additions to the POS system. The Lead Programmers would work closely with the Systems Analysts with the intent of upgrading the IT systems of Toy World. They must be competent in ANSI C, C++, SQL, Visual Basic, ORACLE, UNIX (AIX), and any other database systems. Web Support and Development Experts would be in charge of an E-commerce storefront and the development of a company website. This team of web savvy programmers and web designers would maintain the web system and servers. The team would also update