The PowerBuilder: Executive Summary

Sergio Wong

The Customer's Current Situation

The Internet has become a ubiquitous tool for the advertising and distribution of a business's wares. However the process of getting the business on line can be both expensive and time-consuming. This problem arises due to the different kinds of expertise that are needed for what is a relatively simple project. For this purpose, the business incurs a myriad of expenses that are due to web-designers, database administrators, system administrators and market researchers. Even if money is not an issue, the problem of integrating these tasks and maintaining the system is no small one.

The Customer's Objective

First and foremost, businesses such as manufacturers or retailers want a quick and easy way to get their products on the Internet. The product website is the portal through which customers are informed of deals and products and through which purchases are made. However the front-end mechanism has to be integrated with the back-end database, i.e. businesses need to make sure that all sales made this way are recorded in their inventories for better tracking of supply and demand. Last but not least, in order to strategically place their products, businesses are interested in data analysis such as buying trends.

Our Recommendation To Achieve The Customer's Objective

Our solution integrates the marketing, distribution and inventory maintenance needs of the online business into an all-in-one Internet software application. Through different user-friendly interfaces, the business is able to do the following without having to deal with any code or databases explicitly.

-create/update customer web-site
-customize product displays based on user preferences
-run trend analyses to track sales performance of products
-update/maintain inventory of products
-apply different selling models based on needs of the business