Words like commerce, trade or business for a layman will mean nothing but a way of exchanging goods and money and for this we need a place called market. The simplest definition of “Market” or “Market Place” will be nothing but the world of commercial activity where goods and services are bought and sold (Princeton n.d. ). And the activity being done in a market is often termed as commercial activity. But the way various commercial activity human beings used to do has seen lots of change. Initially it was a barter system.
People used to exchange goods. Later on currency came into picture. Buyers start giving money for the goods they buy. Now with the advent of information technology and its use as business information system the whole process of buying and selling got changed. This technology introduced money in plastic form and from coins and notes it got the shape of sleek credit cards and debit cards. This form of money got application not only in buying product through shops with money getting transferred from buyer’s bank account to seller’s bank account. Thereafter, this process of transferring of product and money got another got a new form. The internet, the World Wide Web and the website has given shops a virtual look.
We can call them as cyber shops. The website gives the detail of a range of products available. The customer has to select the things he or she wants to buy and has to pay for the same through its online account. The selected product is shipped to address the buyer has entered. Since shops have got a virtual look in the same way even banks have gone into same ways and they now offer their account holders, an online account. The online account and the associated money transferring technique form the back bone of this form of commerce. The commercial activity of this type is called as e-commerce. So, e-commerce is the term for electronic business transactions, commerce or Internet trade.
e-Commerce or e-business, therefore, refers to the business transactions between companies (B2B) or between companies and their customers (B2C) that are wholly or partially conducted over the Internet or similar public or private computer networks (x-solutions n.d.) The EDS website offers a range of product with detail. Each product of EDS has got some specification and this has been properly highlighted on the website.
The desired product can be searched through its product code. And if the customer is not sure about which snowboard he or she wants then he get a list according to his budget or the feature he expects. And once the buyer has selected the desired product, he can enter the shipping address and can make payment though his online account. The transaction process connects the EDS website to the banks website and a secure transaction of money takes place via banks’ servers.
Once the bank confirms about the payment, the EDS supply division gets the address where the product has to be shipped and the whole process of buying and selling gets completed. Since the EDS website confirms all the processes stated above it is a very good example for citing about e-commerce and the processes it involves. EDS internet site and possible changes or development If we look into the things and search of something which actually rules the world of business, we will find that it’s nothing but the innovation and the same can be applied to the case of e-commerce. The website of EDS can be made better by making some more changes.
With every product there should be short video in which a skier showing very good skiing technique using the same specified product. We can even add some still pictures of skiers with that snowboard. This is just a way to describe the product and make its presentation more effective. Apart from this, the website should give an option of enjoying interactive simulation board.
The user will be given an option of choosing the board and the ski resort then the simulator will show a 3D view of how the skier will appear while skiing with the selected board. EDS internet site for e-commerce and security related issuesNow the EDS website actually initiates only incoming wire transfers and any thing it has to ship out is the snowboard. The process of requesting a snowboard gets completed only after getting wire transfer confirmation from bank. So the real thing where EDS has to be cautious is the money it has to receive after every request.
And this is also the tension of financial institution through which the transaction is getting done. There is a need to be cautious against any fraud and proper security has to be maintained. Interactions must be anonymous. Authentication of server and user is very important. Any attempt of eavesdropping must be flattened.But there are some of the security related issues like Disruption or denial of service attacks, Defacing web sites, Unauthorized changes to database records, Fraud, Misuse of data about vulnerable populations, Spreading viruses, Employee misuse of the Net, from which not only EDS but all companies involved in e-commerce should be careful of (access-ecom n.d.).
E-commerce and other snowboard manufacturersApart from EDS, there are companies giving its customers an option of buying snowboards through their website.Burton is a very good example of it. They can be accessed though their website. The Burton maintains a very good website. The website is very descriptive with full details of the product it offers and the main dealers of Burton’s product. The online shopping option termed as Burton online store is available at the URL , provides the customer a very good way to buy its products which includes snowboards, jackets, pants, layers, sunglasses, goggles etc. Their catalogue includes apparels, tools and tuning, accessories and many others.But shopping for products of Ride Snowboards is a bit different. ridesnowboards.com/default.asp?Lang=English, for the online shopping wing of the company Ride Snowboards is a bit different. It has got some online dealers like dogfunk.
com, skipro.com, sierrasnowboards.com, etc. The customer can connect to any of the listed dealers and rest of the thing is very much similar to that of what is being used by EDS. Nitro Snowboards, a Seattle based company producing snowboards and other gears, also gives its customer an option buying things online through its website. The website has been designed using macromedia flash. The animation though Flash has made the website very much descriptive and gives it a holistic look if we look with the sense of skiers. For online shopping, the website connects its customers to the URL of some of the famous online dealers like.
On these websites, the customer have to select and pay in the same way, they have to do on online shopping arm of Burton.If we look into the case of the above mentioned three companies, each one of them have some distinct feature. Burton’s website concentrate on the whole range of product it offers. It sells the product on its own but also gives its customers to get connected to other online dealers. Then Ride Snowboards and Nitro Snowboards have concentrated mainly on the products while for shopping option, the customer has to get himself connected to authorized dealers.As an IT professional I would rate the Burton’s site as the best suited for e-commerce. The EDS’ website should be designed with keeping that of Burton in mind.
The website must have some more feature and things must be presented in a better way so that it can gain an edge over Burton in e-business.Internet and IntranetE-commerce relies totally on Internet. It is the internet which actually created a virtual world with address of an entity is a domain name. But in reality this world is nothing but network connecting millions of computer of the world. The Internet is the worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a “network of networks” that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web (wikipedia n.d.).
If we talk about Intranet, it is a network of computers more or less like a LAN within a campus or enterprise developed on internet technologies.This type of network is contained within an enterprise. It may consist of many interlinked local area networks and also use leased-lines in the wide-area network. It may or may not include connections through one or more gateways to the outside Internet (course n.
d).The main purpose of an intranet is usually to share company information and computing resources among employees. It can also be used to facilitate working in groups and for teleconferences.In EDS if applied, the Intranet network will be of great help in information sharing between different departments of the company.
The details of how a particular department is functioning can easily be accessed by the top management. This will help the authorities to take appropriate decision without losing much time. Its implementation will require an installation of computers in each department. Using DBMS technologies, the output of each department and its performance can be maintained in centralized database and can be accessed just by a click of mouse.
Assignment 2Transaction Processing Software and the prototype developedA TPS or Transaction Processing Software is an information system that processes data arising from the occurrence of business transactions; usually used for daily routine transactions and record-keeping, especially sales, payroll, reservations, shipping, and worker tracking (321site n.d.).Now in this case, the application developed deals with information being received by the system on daily basis.
With every order, a new set of data gets into the system. The application program developed in this case updates information like total number of orders received or total amount of money the company has got with these orders, after every transaction.EDS system internet system and security issuesIn transaction processing systems, security is very essential. Some of the securities issues which have to be looked into are data security through some encryption technique, authentication of user and then authorization.
By authorization, it means what an authentic user is allowed to do. The private information of the customer must not get public. It should always be in encrypted form and any access to it even by the system administrator must not go unnoticed.The manual technique lacks fully secure data encryption. The operator will get to know all the details like credit card number and all about the customer thereby comprising the security of private information and increasing probability of fraud or theft.Order Entry System and what measures EDS should take in case of loss of its Order entry system. html)The Order Entry System allows tracking of orders made by the customers. The users of this system are customers and employees. The system maintains product’s information; order information, customer and employee information in the database. The user of this system, employee/customer has to login into the system using the unique identifier given to them.
When the customer logs into the system, a product catalog is shown to them. This page allows them to add products into the Shopping cart, view more information about the product, view customer information and order items in the cart. The system also displays the list of top 5 products on the left hand side of the screen. The top 5 products is determined by the total number of orders received for the product from all the customers.
A greeting message “Welcome <username>” is also displayed in this page. The product catalog has “More Info” and “Add to Cart” links for each product. The “More Info” link gives detailed information about the product. “Add to Cart” link adds the product to the Shopping Cart. The product catalog lists the orderable products only. (orderable products has product_status value “orderable”). When ‘order items’ button is clicked, all the items in the cart are ordered and the cart is reset.The employees in the system can add/ modify/ remove products in the system.
Similar to the Customer, when the employee logs into the system a greeting message is displayed. The product catalog consisting of all products is displayed. The employees can select the products from the catalog to modify/delete the product details. Product details like name, description of the product, product status, list price, catalog URL can be modified. The loss Order Entry System will cause great problem to EDS. The company will lose simply lose track of the order it will receive through internet. The loss can be minimized by temporarily connecting the customer to one of its online dealer and proper arrangement with that dealer can help it in maintaining the track of order it received in that period and the money transacted.Assignment 3 Differences between MIS and TPSTransaction processing system only logs data for storage.
It is more or less concerned with the input and changes caused due to these inputs. Customer information is one of such inputs.MIS is very much different from TPS. It retrieves this stored data and uses algorithms/queries to generate hitherto unknown information or statistics from the data. It is more of a device for helping top executives of the company in making any decision related to future action of the company.Selling of customer’s information to other companies Selling of private information of customers is an act of crime. Though it is one of the most sought after information and can achieve good amount of money if sold to other marketing companies. But these things will certainly make a dent in reputation of EDS.
There are some failed dotcom companies who have sold the private information. But these practices are unethical and are against the rule of fair business. After all the customers give these information to EDS only because they have faith on it and its system. The system can give its customers on order form an option whether their information can be divulged to other companies or not. The heart transplant first decreased in the year 1992.3. After the year 1992, number of heart transplants again shot up to 4034 in 1993 and 4068 in the year 1994. But this remained the highest number of heart transplants in a year and again the number of heart transplants starts decreasing with values 3942 in 1995, 3713 in 1996, 3534 in 1997 and a major fall in 1998 to 2961.
The number decreased below 3000 after a big gap of almost 10 years. It was in the year 1987; the number of heart transplants was less than 3000 and was 2737.4. In the year 1990, single lung transplant overtake the number of heart lung transplant. 5. From the chart it is very much clear that number of transplants either it be heart, single lung or double lung or both, was at its peak in the period 1994-1996 and after that there has been a fall in the number.7.9. In the year 2012, US birth rate per 1000 teenagers would fall below 30. 11. In year 2019, US birth rate per 1000 teenagers would fall below 30.
In the previous chart, it was 2012 but according to new chart 2019 is the when US birth rate per 1000 teenagers would fall below 30.13. A decision support system is actually a tool which uses the already available data to make a prediction of future. A decision support system is a highly flexible and interactive IT system designed to support decision making when the problem is not structured; an information system that utilizes decision models, a database, and a decision maker’s own insights in an ad hoc, interactive analytical modeling process to reach a specific decision by a specific decision maker (321site2 n.d.).Te transplant model is a very good example of a DSS.
In this case, one can easily make an assumption related to heart and lungs related diseases and with studying the trend of transplantation, the hospitals can make a decision related to the number of donors they will the purpose of transplantation in near future.A DSS as a system supports technological and managerial decision making by assisting in the organization of knowledge about ill-structured, semi structured, or unstructured issues. A structured issue has a framework comprising elements and relations between them that are known and understood. Structured issues are generally ones about which an individual has considerable experiential familiarity (answers n.
Considering the kind and quantity of data we humans now generate there is a need of some device which can help us in analyzing things with different perspective in a very small time. For this DSS is of great utility. It is not just an application but a generalized capability for addressing decision makers need.Management Information Systems (MIS) is the application of information technology to support business activities. Decision making at managerial level is just one of the many processes that gets a boost by using MIS. Actually it involves the whole business because of its rapidly changing nature. Its influence is up to most basic business processes with the aim to make it more productive (bus n.d.).;It only involves a routine steady flow of data and depend too much information technology tools and is of great use at executive level.
References
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