SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY

 

 

SCHOOL OF COMPUTING AND MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

 

 

SEMESTER TWO EXAMINATIONS - August 2003

 

Unit Title:     

e-Business

Unit No:

12-2206-1

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time Allowed:           

2 Hours

 

 

CCC is a pre-seen case study

 

 

 

 

 


Stationery requirements:                   

·         Three 8-page answer books

·         Supplementary answer sheets available on request

 

 


INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES:

 

1.         The normal examination regulations of the University apply (see script                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 answer book).

 

2.         Paper is in 2 sections.  Answer either Question 1 or question 2 in section 1.  Answer all questions in Section 2.

 

3.         Answer each section in a separate answer book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THIS PAPER CONTAINS   PAGES INCLUDING THIS SHEET

CCC case study

 

Having worked for several small bakeries in the Yorkshire area, Carol Chaffey initially started making celebration cakes for family and friends as a sideline. Her reputation was such that within a few years she was producing cakes and gateaux commercially for local restaurants and pubs.   Carol and her father established Carols Celebration Cakes (CCC) in 1996 in Accrington, Lancashire at a corner unit on Accrington High Street and were forced to move to more substantial existing premises in 2000.  Company's production line and offices are now based in Blackburn and the annual revenue at the present time is in the region of £12,000,000 with net profit estimated nominally at 10%.  CCC makes celebration cakes for supermarkets and department stores throughout Europe.  These are 'home made' shrink-wrapped individual portion cakes. 

 

Carol Chaffey herself leads the sales team which consists of eleven members including Carol.  Ten sales representatives spend most of their time visiting clients to present new products, special prices and deals, and receiving orders.  Carol on the other hand is based at Blackburn and most of her time is spent dealing with members of her team usually by telephone although they have briefing every morning.  The idea of attending a meeting every morning is not particularly popular among the sales team and in particular with five of the members that lives in Preston and need to commute.  All special prices and promises made with regard to expected delivery time need to be approved by carol.  A number of factors such as quantity in stock, pending orders, raw ingredient acquisition, supplier's lead time, and expected machine down time for maintenance influence Carol's decisions.  According to Carol this is no easy task and one that would have been impossible if it wasn't for John, Adam, and Dharmesh who have been with CCC for at least three years now and Carol tends to rely on them for a considerable amount of information mentioned above.  These three also tend to deal with majority of queries from their respective team members.

 

The expansion of business has led to an inevitable increase in paperwork. In order to cope, an experienced administrator/accounts clerk was employed, and a desktop computer was purchased along with the requisite accounts and payroll software. Carol knowing little about computers,  signed up on a computing course, run at the local technical college. The course covered typical office software but also included sessions on using the Internet for business.  During these sessions Carol was interested to see examples of companies similar to hers in size, business nature, and customer/supplier relationships.  The course happened to coincide with the company's move to a new telephone system with the local cable company. As part of the telephone package for small business clients the cable company provided low cost dial-up Internet access, together with 5 ‘free’ e-mail addresses and 60 Mb of web space on their business server. Carol with the help of her brother Paul, set about creating a web site along with their other tasks.   The web-site is primarily used to advertise CCC and although no record of access takes place Paul estimates the site accounts for about 5 orders per month. Forays into the use of Java and other web page enhancements have led to problems including the site being inaccessible for a number of periods in 2001.

 

CCC's customers usually only deal with large bakeries and they order their products via Internet based EDI systems.  There is tremendous amount of pressure that is placed on the company by its customers to embark on a plan of investment to enable more efficient ways of doing business.  They are particularly frustrated by the need for the sales personnel to receive acknowledgement from Carol herself before he can close a deal.  Sometimes Carol is not available in which case a message is left for her to which she attends upon her return.  Response is usually made within the day though.  CCC's suppliers are also geared to receiving orders online and providing their customers with a considerable amount of information online that comes particularly handy when Carol needs to make quick decisions with regard to orders and special deals.  In particular, she is provided with username and password to one of the customer's Website.  When she logs in, she is straight away provided with all product information (prices, special prices, availability, ingredients, etc) that she usually orders and she finds that this saves her a lot of time.  She also finds that products tend to be a little bit cheaper if orders are placed online.

 

Although the specialised celebration cake production has now become the major part of CCC's turnover, Carol is also considering establishing an online shop to service consumers throughout UK.   Plans are that customers would place their orders online, and that the system would accept online payment by credit card.

 

Section 1      Either answer question 1 or question 2 in this section

(35 marks)

 

Question 1

 

You need to create a Knowledge Management Framework for CCC, so that you can specify a complete eBusiness knowledge management system. You need to consider the six aspects of the business Knowledge Management system.

 

Look at one area of CCC where you think knowledge management is important – for example in customer care, Research and Development, staff development, the sales process or finance (you choose). You do not need to draw a picture of the Knowledge Management Framework.

 

a.         Discuss how CCC will decide what knowledge it needs to acquire. Give examples of knowledge CCC might need to acquire.

(6 marks)

 

b.         Describe how CCC's will obtain knowledge through business experiences with stakeholders, and by purchasing knowledge & skills from outside sources.

(6 marks)

 

c.         Discuss how CCC will improve itself in a variety of ways through the use of knowledge within the business.

(6 marks)

 

d.         Discuss how CCC will distribute knowledge through the business to those who need to use it to make decisions within business processes.

(5 marks)

 

e.         Discuss how CCC will ensure that all knowledge contained within the organisation is usable & used.

(5 marks)

 

f.          Discuss how CCC will choose, configure, keep and revise knowledge as time goes on. Give specific information as to how CCC will retain knowledge that exists as tacit knowledge in people’s heads, or how they will deal with the issue of people who move on from the business.

(7 marks)

 

Question 2

 

a.         Create a CCC supply chain, showing all of the players in the chain and what kind of business they are (i.e. whether they are "factory", "hub", "warehouse" or "outlet").

(7 marks)

 

b.         Describe how CCC will cultivate new customer relationships.

(6 marks)

 

c.         Discuss the ways which CCC will measure performance in the eBusiness.

(6 marks)

 

d.         Describe the types of partnerships and collaborations with other businesses CCC need to make and why.

(7 marks)

 

e.         Discuss an eBusiness (not necessarily in the same industry) which CCC should admire in terms of strategy, values, product and service. Which attributes should they copy? Which attributes should they try and improve upon?

(9 marks)

 

 

 

Section 2    Answer all the questions in this section 2

(65  marks)

 

1.           Explain briefly what an actor is and with reference to CCC infrastructure give two examples of possible actors?  What is a use case?  Give three examples of use cases for CCC online trading system and present a use case diagram for your examples.

(10 marks)

 

 

2.           What are the three functional requirements of computing applications?  With the aid of examples of these functional requirements for CCC's online trading system, compare and contrast stand-alone and client-server architectures.

(11 marks)

 

3.           What is a 'domain name' and a 'domain name service'?  What do you think the domain name would be for the CCC's online retailing system?  With reference to this domain name and with the aid of a diagram, present and explain the hierarchical organisation of domain names.

(11 marks)

4.           For online retailing, Carol needs to ensure the security of transactions.  The 4 cornerstones of security are

·        Integrity

·        Privacy

·        Authenticity

·        Non-Repudiation

Briefly describe them with examples to CCC and their customer's requirements.

(11 marks)

 

5.           Verisign is a leading certificate authority.  What is a certificate authority? What is a digital certificate? Discuss services that Verisign could provide CCC if Carol was to opt for online retailing.

(11 marks)

6.           With reference to CCC's online trading and appropriate technologies state and explain three advantages of client-side-programming.

(11 marks)