IFSM 636 Fall 2001Dr. Seaman

Final Exam

Ground rules:

  1. This is a take-home, open-book exam. You may complete the exam anywhere you want, and consult any written sources you choose.
  2. You may NOT receive help of any kind on this exam from ANY person other than myself. I am available to answer clarification questions via email () or by telephone (410-455-3937).
  3. You are not to work together in any way or discuss this exam with each other.
  4. Please download and save this document as a Word document and type your answers directly into this document. The spaces provided for answers are not meant to indicate how long your answer should be. Use as much or as little space as you like.
  5. The completed exam is due by 4:00 pm on Thursday, Dec. 13, to me via email.

Below is a description of a business organization, the Craft Superstore. The Craft Superstore is a retail store that sells all kinds of craft supplies, such as fabric, yarn, buttons, needles, scissors, etc. Read the description below carefully and then answer the questions that follow, based on the information in the description.

Craft Superstore

The Craft Superstore is a retail business that sells a large variety of materials and supplies that its customers use for various craft hobbies. The store has yearly revenues of $500,000, making about $75,000 profit and employing about 20 people. The store’s success has been in spite of its rather poor location. The owner attributes this success to their ability to provide a very large selection of merchandise at discount prices. The store also has a website that is used for advertising special promotions and sales. All of the employees of the store must be very knowledgeable about the different crafts and hobbies that their merchandise supports, including what materials and tools are appropriate for different tasks. This allows employees to be helpful to customers with questions. It also provides opportunities to suggest additional purchases to customers who appear to be selecting the materials they need for a particular project. For example, if a customer is purchasing several skeins of yarn and a sweater pattern, the employee waiting on that customer might guess that he was preparing to make a sweater and might ask the customer if he also needed any knitting needles or buttons. The store owner suspects that this strategy does increase sales, but she believes that it could be exploited more. In fact, the owner believes that the store is losing sales to such customers when they forget some item while at the Craft Superstore, but then go to some other, more conveniently located, store when they remember the forgotten item. The store already has an effective computerized inventory system that is tied directly to the cash registers, so inventory is automatically updated with every sale. There is also a simple employee database that keeps track of payroll information, as well as basic information such as hire date, position, expertise, etc.

Part I:Below is a problem statement written to describe the problem/opportunity that this project is motivated by:

Problem Statement:

The Craft Superstore has an opportunity to increase sales by recognizing when a customer is buying materials and supplies for an identifiable project, but has not yet selected all the materials and supplies needed for that project. If the Craft Superstore employees can recognize this situation, then the customer can be reminded of the missing items before they complete their purchase and leave the store. This would cut down on the number of lost sales that occur when a customer forgets to purchase an item while at the Superstore, and then does not find it convenient to travel back to the store when they remember the item. Taking advantage of this opportunity would increase revenue.

The next step is to gather information for requirements. Suppose that your systems analysis team has decided to gather information via interviews with the store manager, two store employees, and a customer. You have been charged with creating the interview guides for all these interviews. Write out these interview guides below, using as much space as you need. There should be three, for the manager, the employees, and the customer. These interviews should be designed to get all the information you need to complete the baseline project plan, the analysis, and the systems proposal. This means that you need to ask not only about processes (e.g. how a customer is handled by employees in the store), but also about various feasibility issues (e.g. financial information, political information, etc.). Make your interview guides as complete and detailed as you can.

Interview guide #1 (for the store manager):

Interview guide #2 (for the store employees):

Interview guide #3 (for the customer):

Part II: Now it is time to conduct the interviews. Go back to the interview guides you wrote, above, and make up answers to all the questions. Type in these answers after each question (type the answers in italics so that I can distinguish between the questions and the answers). Since you are making up these answers, there are no “correct” answers, but they should make sense and not contradict each other.

Part III: Now let’s say that your analysis team has set to work on this information, and structured it into a set of requirements, diagrams, etc. Then the team made the following recommendation for solving the problem

Recommended Solution

The recommended solution is an automated system for identifying regular customers, tracking their buying habits, collecting information on their craft interests, and giving guidance to the checkout clerk on additional items to recommend when they check out. The system will work as follows. The system will contain “customer profiles” and “project profiles”. Customer profiles will be based on information from questionnaires that customers fill out on the store website or in the store. The questionnaire asks customers about what crafts they are interested in and what kinds of craft projects they do. Customers will be offered a special “savings card” in exchange for filling out this questionnaire. The customer would then present this card whenever they visit the store when they check out, in order to earn points towards future discounts. The card will be scanned, and the customer will be identified by the system and associated with their stored profile. The card will also enable tracking the customer’s purchase history. The system will also contain project profiles, which are generated in two ways. First, crafts experts (i.e. store employees) will be asked to describe typical projects that their customers tend to do, and the combinations of items that a customer would typically purchase for that type of project. For example, a typical knitting project might include the items yarn, buttons, knitting needles, and a knitting pattern. These profiles are also generated by tracking customers’ buying habits. For example, over time it may become clear that customers who identify themselves as interested in “sewing clothes” often buy a combination of fabric, lining material, buttons, thread, and a pattern. So this would become another “project profile” in the database. So when a customer comes to the checkout, the system tries to match their set of purchases against the project profiles in the database (and also uses information from the customer’s profile if the customer has a card) and if there is a partial match, alerts the clerk to suggest the missing items from the profile to the customer. Then, if the suggested item is in fact something that the customer forgot to purchase, they will have an opportunity to go back and purchase it before they leave the store. The system will be based on an Oracle database (which is the type of database system they already use for inventory) that is integrated with the current inventory and checkout (point of sale) system. Existing hardware is adequate, as they already have cash registers linked to the database server (which has plenty of excess storage capacity) and several PCs for use by managers to view and enter information in the databases.

You are not so sure that this is best solution. Below, outline two other possible solutions. For each alternative solution, give a description (at about the same level of detail as the recommended solution, above) and also a rationale of why you think it is a better solution, based on the interview data you generated earlier.

Alternative solution #1:

Alternative solution #2:

Part IV: Suppose now that the Craft Superstore has decided to go with the original recommended solution, despite your good suggestions. There are now several design decisions to be made.

First is the form used for the customer to enter their information. Below is a paper-based form that one of your colleagues on the systems analysis team has designed for use in the store. Your task is to redesign it for use on the website. List below as many modifications as you can think of that you would make to this form to make it usable on the website and to take advantage of GUI mechanisms to facilitate data entry. Describe also how you would use color and graphics.

Paper-based form:

Craft Superstore

Customer Interest QuestionnaireToday’s Date: ______

Customer Name:______

Address:______

City:______

State:______

Zip:______

Phone:______

Email:______

Please circle all the crafts you currently engage in from the list below (circle all that apply):

Dried Flower ArrangingRug HookingEmbroidery

CrochetingRug BraidingNeedlepoint

Sewing – clothingKnittingQuilting

Sewing – home furnishingsWreath MakingApplique

Other ______

Please circle all the crafts you are interested in trying from the list below (circle all that apply):

Dried Flower ArrangingRug HookingEmbroidery

CrochetingRug BraidingNeedlepoint

Sewing – clothingKnittingQuilting

Sewing – home furnishingsWreath MakingApplique

Other ______

Your modifications:

Part V: There is another tricky design issue that needs to be resolved. This doesn’t have to do with the automated part of the system, but with how work processes will need to change with the new system. The problem is how to handle a customer who has come to the checkout, has started ringing up their purchases, and then has remembered something that they have forgotten when they were prompted by the system (by way of the cashier)? Should the customer have to put all their purchases back into their cart or basket, go back and choose the forgotten item, and then come back to the checkout and get back in line? Or should the people in line behind them have to wait while they go back and get the item? Or is there some other way to handle this? Come up with a reasonable solution to this problem and describe it below. Creativity is encouraged.

Your solution to this design problem: