Book Store free essay sample

The Christian bookstore is a company that is dedicated to helping those in need. Their store fronts sell many items such as Christian reading materials, music, movies, jewelry, and even home decor. What few people know is that the Christian bookstore donates 100% of all its proceeds to charitable organizations in hopes of making a difference in the world. As a customer, wouldn’t it be nice to know where your money went and who it helped? We are introducing a new app that allows customers to track their purchase amount around the world similar to the way you track a UPS package. Customers will be able to see where their money went, what it bought, and who it helped allowing them to feel a more personal connection to the cause. System Definition CBDonates app is a tracking app designed to help customers see the difference they are making by shopping at the Christian bookstore. We will write a custom essay sample on Book Store or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page After making a purchase, either in the store or online, customers will receive a tracking number on the bottom of their receipt. Customers can then access the free app by either downloading it from the app store or visiting www. CBDonates. com. Once the app is launched, they will be asked to enter their ten digit tracking number. This number will access information to where the funds from that day were sent. After the store makes a donation, each charitable organization will report to CBDonates and inform the customer of what their money is being used for. This information could include books, food, clothing, medical care, schooling, etc. depending on the type of charity. The idea is that eventually, the customers will be able to see what person, family, or town received help from their purchase. This gives the customer a sense of personal accomplishment and will distinguish the Christian bookstore from any of their competitors. According to Mark Stetler’s article, the average cost to create a small app is between $3,000 and $8,000. This amount is cost feasible since last year alone, Christian bookstore used their proceeds to touch almost one million lives. The costs include the developer’s rate, the technology costs, running costs, personnel, and maintenance costs associated with the app. These fees would be covered in small, monthly deductions from the store’s proceeds until completely paid for. This allows for donations to still be made to the charitable organizations during the development of this app. The Christian bookstore would like to have this app fully functional by Christmas time next year. The tentative development schedule is as follows; three months to brainstorm and research the app requirements, six months to put together a â€Å"rough draft† trial run, three months to fix and finalize the app before putting it on the market for download. During the three month editing phase, marketers will begin pushing the app’s capabilities to store customers. One year to get the app up and running is schedule feasible considering the size and complexity of this app is minimal. Technology required to create this app is fairly basic. A website will need to be created in order for people without mobile access to use the app. GPS capabilities will need to be accessed to show customers exactly where in the world their funds are being used. Systems, such as cloud-computing, will be utilized for data storage pertaining to tracking numbers and customer purchases. A communication technology would have to be developed similar to Facebook but on a much smaller scale. It be very simple and could only be seen by the customer and the companies. This would allow frequent updates from the Christian bookstore informing which charity received their funds, from the charity informing the customer what their funds were used for, and who received what the charity purchased. Since all these types of technologies exist, this project is technologically feasible. Component Design The Christian bookstore has decided to integrate a new technology system to increase and enhance its technological capabilities in order to store and track consumer donations. In a cost effective effort, Christian bookstore will integrate into its technology infrastructure Apprenda and cloud-computing service to provide data storage, software, and application services. Cloud computing will allow for programs and software to be downloaded from one central location without having to store physical hardware onsite. Cloud computing involves connecting large number of computers through real time communication network such as the Internet. The cloud computing service can run programs and applications from remote locations. Instead of loading software on each computer, one application can be downloaded from cloud service and users login to the web-based services where all software and applications are stored. Currently onsite computers handle the workload of running application, this causes decrease in functionality of computers and increases load time of data retrieved from local databases. With the addition of cloud computing information is gathered quickly with the use of numerous connected computers. With the cloud computing any program can be run off the cloud computing service such as sales, inventories, and data storage with any program ran an application will have its own dedicated server to handle the load. Instead of dealing with software licenses for a nominal fee these applications can be made available right from the cloud computing service. Employees will have the advantage of working with a sophisticated system to allow efficient project development, sales reporting, customer tracking and more. The elimination of have physical hardware decreases the need for onsite IS support. For many businesses the benefit of cloud computing is the lack of time to purchase, install and maintain IT infrastructure. Another benefit is cost savings. Christian bookstore will be able to use reduce capital and increase computer capabilities. This will allow for a reduction in IT support. Another benefit will be cloud computing service will handle the system maintenance further reducing maintenance standards. Using cloud computing service Christian bookstore will be able to access numerous resources and increase or decrease services as business needs change. Christian bookstore will use a pay as you go model in order to add or remove services. Cloud computing uses a shared infrastructure that enables physical services, and network applications. Regardless of the business model cloud computing allows the infrastructure for numerous users. The dynamic provision associated with cloud computing allow for automatic provisions on demand for an increase or decrease of expansion service and capabilities. The capabilities allowed by cloud computing are evolving allowing functionality for the end users. Implementation The Christian bookstore has, and will utilize, the new software we have invested in for many beneficial reasons. Reasons include keeping track of your dollars spent at the bookstore and creating a relationship between the customer and families across the world. With this application we have designed, it is important to have a smooth transition from our developers, to the users of the application. We understand the importance of the implementation of this software so that we can successfully achieve our goals that we have in place with this application. Implementation for this application starts with the development team who designs this application, and then later is handed to the users of this tool. We look to make this handoff as if it were invisible. We will use a marketing approach to achieve this strategy. We understand that the implementation will need two teams, the development team and the users. Each one has to move in the same direction as the other. During the prototype stage, users will work hand and hand with the developers to get daily feedback and help with the overall design of the application. The marketing perspective of implementation is one that involves the users in the new technology design phase. In return, this will boost or increase the satisfaction of the users. Allowing the users to test out the application will eliminate the gap between the user and the developer. The person who will be in charge of this can be from the developing organization, an intermediary, or an individual from the user organization. This person will be responsible for making this handoff invisible, a seamless transition to build a strong relationship between the two. This implementation step encourages immediate insight on the development from day one. This will increase the level of understanding and cooperation throughout the organization. â€Å"Perhaps the easiest way to accomplish this task is to think of implementation as an internal marketing, not selling, job. This distinction is important because selling starts with a finished product; marketing, with research on user needs and preferences. Marketing executives worry about how to position their product in relation to all competitive products and are concerned with distribution channels and the infrastructure needed to support product use. † (Leonard-Barton, 2013). Maintenance When we look at maintaining a program, we have to be able to adapt to what maintenance we will be conducting. The purpose of having, or establishing, a software product after delivery, is to correct faults and improve performance or other attributes. What we need to understand, is when conducting maintenance, we have to understand the purpose behind the maintenance. It is not just to fix defects but more to utilize an effort to use for non-corrective actions but more it is the problems that users might be having functionality issues (Pigosky 1997). When we look at the Christian book store we have to be able to understand that the ability to constantly adapt its ability to be able to reach out to all people. Not only does the store have to be able to manage to reach out all of its customers they also have to be able to adapt to different versions and platforms. With the constant changing of what is going on with technology the store has to be constantly on its game and conduct routine maintenance even when not in use. When dealing with its software maintenance it should be scheduled and planned. It is a process that needs to be implemented and, in most cases, will need to be budgeted into its account. When conducting a maintenance process, there are six things to consider. 1st thing to consider is the implementation of the maintenance plan. This has to occur during the development stage and issues that should be presented are the errors that was experienced in the beginning stages. The 2nd step which is primarily the main responsibility of maintenance group. What the maintenance group at this time is to verify its validity of the software and its integrity. Once the software is investigated and checked, it will then go through a series of other testing to verify if there are flaws in its system. The 3rd process would be the actual implementation of the modification. What that means is that there has to be the execution of the modification, this will occur after all plans have been approved and processed forward. The 4th step is once the store has implemented a proposed modification then it becomes a little more unique. After the modification is completed then it will need to be resent to the individual(s) that requested the modification. This can involve more testing before the final stamp of approval is implemented. At this point though there will be very minor changes entered. What can happen at this stage of the maintenance process is the project/modification can either continue to move forward, or it will be scratched completely and start over. The 5th step in the maintenance process is the ability to be able to move the software from one platform to the next. Just because a certain site can work on let us say just on a Microsoft platform it needs also to be able to be used on a Mac or even Linux system in order to maximize the full potential of consumers. Its platform because it offers a mobile feature also needs to be accessible by its mobile platform as well. The final step in the maintenance platform is its ability to retire its software. It’s a step that no one really sees. It is more of a process that if all goes well then no action is needed. Should there be a change needed it would have been identified in the early stages. The end state of the maintenance it is a dual relationship between the company/individual requesting the maintenance and the software maintainer being able to monitor the software provided. Recovery The information on the Christian book store is stored in multiple servers. By being able to encrypt its information utilizing the industry standard of secured socket layer (SSL). It prides itself on being able to provide absolute assurances when it comes to security and protecting its customer’s information. What we need to understand is how the information should be lost or should it be destroyed what are the options that the store provides in order to recover it. After having a conversation with one of its hardware maintainers, David explained to me some of the features that it utilizes for recovery. When the system is rebooted it recovers its information not only a server both with physical hard drives but an internet hard drive similar to that of a cloud base program. The main reason it utilizes both of these (and others similar) is because it offers its IT managers the opportunities to maintain, track, and monitor transactions. It allows for the ability to save tons of information in a secured format. It also allows the maintainers the opportunity to be able to provide its customers a larger platform that they didn’t have before. Now with their current internal cloud that they currently have it allows its maintainers the ability to both control internal procedures where employees are all able to track (depending on permissions), transactions of all sorts. It offers the management the ability to recover something as simple passwords and even misused card transactions. While this may seem as a security versus recovery the way it is explained it makes sense. Should transactions be compromised and even if someone in the company did it can be retraced and tracked back to the original user that made the transaction or authorized it. Since the system is backed up on a consistent basis. Occasionally three times a day. With this system put in place it offers the flexibility for not only this company but others to be able to provide a secure platform with the ability to provide a product to its customer base for a variety of information available. Understanding how to conquer these issues, and to be able to use them as a guide to creating your message, and how best to deliver that message, will be the difference between success and failure of the bookstores. In order for any company who relies on technology to reach their customers and track donations to be successful there should be a resurgence plan in place. They must make sure that the facility maintenance systems are being closely monitored to avoid any inconsistency. With technology changes, one complication that could occur is the required changes might not be compatible with the current system being used. Christian bookstores goal is to set themselves apart from their competitors. Although the small app isn’t fully functional, the companies still donates a portion of their proceeds to families in need. Once the app is up and running consumers will be able to how their purchase from the bookstores makes it possible for families around the world to maintain from day to day. By donating 100% of their proceeds, Christian Bookstores are connecting people and possibilities around the world.