SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY

 

 

SCHOOL OF COMPUTING AND MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

 

 

SEMESTER TWO EXAMINATIONS - August 2004

 

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 two sections.  You are required to answer

 

Ο      Two questions from Section 1.

Ο      Three questions from Section 2.

 

4.         Answer each Section in a separate answer book.

 

 

5.         CCC is an open case study, published to the students at the beginning of the academic year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 £1,200,000 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 of 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 on 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 live 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, acquisition of raw ingredients, 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 that they provide.  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 visits are made, 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 supplier'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       Answer two questions from this Section.

 

1.         (20 marks)

"Hands-off development" is one of the five modes of implementing an e-Business.

a.         Identify the remaining four modes (strategies) of implementing the way the Web can be used in e-Business. (6 marks)

b.         What mode of implementation do you think CCC would employ in relation to e-Business? Give an elaboration of their strategy in order to justify your choice? (14 marks)

 

2.         (20 Marks)

a.         Describe the 4 common features of an eBusiness supply chain.

            (8 marks)

b.         Produce an annotated diagram of the "Supply Chain" for CCC and discuss how the components of the supply chain are enabled by CCC becoming an eBusiness for any of its customers. (12 marks)

 

3.         (20 marks)

Diagram below is a depiction of the Knowledge Management Framework that shows the six activities that an e-Business needs to undertake to manage knowledge.  For each activity, state two examples of activity that CCC may undertake to manage Knowledge.

 

Section 2         Answer three questions from this Section

 

1.         (20 marks)

a.         What is an Intranet? (4 marks)

b.         Briefly identify four potential benefits to CCC from the deployment of an Intranet. (16 marks)

 

2.         (20 marks)

The followings depict five parts of the use case diagram for a University library system. The five diagrams are referenced "A", "B", "C", "D", and "E". Without the use of the words "extend" and "include", for each diagram, write a complete and concise business rule that explains the process.  Label your answers with the corresponding letters from the diagrams.

 

 

 

3.         (20 marks)

In general, computing applications have three functional requirements.

a.            What are the three functional requirements of all computing applications? (6 marks)

b.            If CCC are to opt for trading online, they would need a Web-based computing application. Use at least two examples for each of the functional requirements in the context of CCC to briefly explain all three.

               (14 marks)

 

4.         (20 marks)

a.         What is the communication protocol of World Wide Web and with reference to OSI model of communication, explain to which layer protocol belongs. (6 marks)

b.         Why do we say this protocol is stateless?  Discuss what the implications of statelessness are on electronic commerce and how we overcome these problems. (14 marks)