SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY

Faculty of Arts, Computing, Engineering and Sciences

SEMESTER TWO EXAMINATIONS - SUMMER 2005

Unit Title:	e-Business	Unit No:	12-5206
		Time Allowed:	1.5 hours plus 10 minutes reading time

CCC is a pre-seen case study

Stationery requirements:

· 3 x 8 Page Anonymous Answer Booklets

· Supplementary Answer sheets (Available upon request)

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES:

1. The normal examination regulations of the University apply (see script answer book). Please do NOT start writing until told to do so by the Invigilator.

2. Candidates must NOT use red ink on the script answer book.

3. The memory of any programmable/graphical calculator used during this

examination must be cleared before the start of the paper.

4. The exam paper is in two sections.

Answer ONE question from Section 1.

Answer TWO questions from Section 2.

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

academic year.

THIS PAPER CONTAINS 5 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 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, 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 is 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 ONE question from Section 1
1.	Carol (see CCC case study), has obviously heard of the term proprietary EDI systems but is unsure of what this really means. She is also a little worried with the idea of buying from large manufacturers, who only use on-line ordering systems, particularly given the initial problems with DCS.
	(a)	Explain EDI infrastructure and state its key characteristics.
	(b)	List the limitations and advantages of traditional proprietary EDI systems in comparison to Internet-based systems.
	(c)	List the potential benefits to CCC of engaging in an Internet-based value added system (Extranet) with both its suppliers and distributors.
		(40 Marks)

2.	"Hands-off development" is one of the five modes of implementing an e-Business.
	(a)	Identify the remaining four modes (strategies) and give one example for each mode.
	(b)	What mode of implementation do you think CCC would employ in relation to selling to consumers online? Give an elaboration of CCC's mode of implementation to justify your choice.
		(40 Marks)

Section 2
Answer TWO questions from Section 2
1.	When we design a client-server system we need to decide which functionalities should be implemented on the client and which on the server.
	(a)		Discuss the factors that affect the design of a Web-based client server system.
	(b)		With reference to the CCC case study and your knowledge of appropriate technologies, state
			(i)	One client-side technology and three ways in which it can be used to improve the system;
			(ii)	One server-side technology and three ways in which it can be used to improve the system.
2.
		(a)	State the three functional requirements of computing applications. Briefly describe stand-alone and client/server architectures.
		(b)	With the aid of examples explain how CCC mighy use each of Internet, Intranet and Extranet in their business processes, comparing and contrasting the use of each in electronic business and the communication protocols they use.
(30 Marks)
3.
	(a)		What is a 'domain name' and a 'domain name service'? What do you think the domain name would be for CCC's online retailing system?
	(b)		For the domain name "otho.cms.shu.ac.uk", draw a diagram to present the hierarchical organisation of domains. State and explain all the domains in this domain name.
(30 Marks)