1st Workshop Output

The purpose of this workshop was to identify the supply and sell sides of the organization and provide an initial idea of the technologies that we found as most appropriate, after a first level scanning of WOU’s environment.
The most important parts of the environment scanning are as followed:

EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

The external environment of a company consists of the Macro and Micro or Sector environment. We conducted a small preliminary research to come up with any Opportunities(+) or Threats(-) that we should be aware of at this initial phase of e-business adoption.

Macro Environment
• POLITICAL VIEWS (+) member of MercosurTradingCorporation (Can help our suppliers export xines more easily)
• ECONOMIC VALUES (+) Good banking services in Uruguay (Can help us with suppliers transactions)
• SOCIO CULTURAL ASPECT (-) Uruguay not well known in UK (Diminish this threat with effective advertising of Uruguay through the site)
• TECHNOLOGICAL (+) new and evolving ICT (Can provide huge push to transforming and redesigning business procedures of WOU)

Sector Environment
• SUPPLIERS (+) Small suppliers’ power, Lots of wineries (Ability to select the best and more IT developed suppliers)
• CLIENTS (+) plenty wine lovers in UK (Big target group, lots of opportunities)
• COMPETITORS (-) Argentina, Chile, USA, Australia, France, South Africa etc. (Immense competition, have to find the most suitable ICT solutions to be effective and gain acces to market)
• SUBSTITUTE (-) Beer (Diminish this threat with the right wine vs beer advertising through site)

INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

We also made a small research of WOU's internas environment to identify possible Strengths(+) or Weaknesses(-).
• Resources: Few personnel units, Warehouse, Few mini vans , Online site, (-)Small funds.
• Unique Attributes (+) GREAT wine from Uruguay, rare popular Tannat variety, Innovative selling procedures


After the above analysis we came up to a business model presented in the uploaded picture


Wikinomics Reference
Furthermore we considered of the third chapter of the Wikinomics book (Tapscott and Williams, 2007) as a good source of inspiration, in order to come up with constructive ideas of involving technologies to the project. More specifically, feedback with the customers will be encouraged through online social networks and the blog feature of the site, as well as reviews of wine critics. Also the use of open source technologies like MySql, PHP, Apache from our part will be a positive and useful (in terms of cost effectiveness) approach to the peer contribution model suggested in the chapter.

Technological factors

Web Development can be split into many areas and a typical and basic web development hierarchy might consist of:

Client Side Coding
JavaScript client side programming tool.
AJAX Latest way of using client and server side tools to improve the user experience. (ASP and JS or PHP and JS)Flash Rich graphics
Microsoft Silverlight Microsoft's browser plugin that enables animation, vector graphics programmed using .net technologies Markup languages (such as HTML, XHTML and XML) Style sheet languages (such as CSS and XSL)

Server Side Coding
ASP (Microsoft proprietary)
ColdFusion (Adobe proprietary, formerly Macromedia)
CGI and/or Perl (open source)
C Server Scripts (TrustLeap G-WAN, freeware)
Java, e.g. J2EE or WebObjects PHP (open source)
Python, e.g. Django (web framework) (open source)
Ruby, e.g. Ruby on Rails (open source)
Websphere (IBM proprietary)
.NET (Microsoft proprietary)
Database Technology
DB2 (IBM proprietary)
Microsoft SQL Server
MySQL
Oracle
MS Access
Web servers
The 2 most popular web servers are
Apache 52% of market share (Open source)
Microsoft IIS 33 % of market share
Cross browser compatibility
Cross-browser refers to the ability for a website, web application, HTML construct or client-side script to support all the web browsers. The website is nowadays expected to support browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari in addition to IE6 and IE7 and above and Netscape.
Accessibility standards
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops strategies, guidelines, and resources to help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities. The following WAI resources are intended to provide basic information for people who are new to Web accessibility.It is essential that the Web be accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities.
AAA Standard for Accessibility
Security Issues
SQL Injection,
Web Server Security and Database Server Security,
File Upload Forms are a major security threat
Web Site Security Center: Check & Implement Web Site Security
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO), the use of various techniques to improve a web site's ranking in the search engines and thus attract more visitors.Domain Extension - .com or .net For the Global Market. Use .co.uk for UK Country specific traffic
Host Location - If your attracting UK business host in the UK.
URL Names - include relevant keywords - unique to each page.
Robots.txt - A file which permits or denies access to robots or crawlers to areas of your site.
Navigation Structure - Keep it simple.
Meta Tags - Title and Description. - Unique detail for each page, related to page content.
H1 Tags - Use for the short on page content description.
H2 and H3 Tags- Use for Headings for sub category's within the Content
Page Content - Critical Component.
Keyword Visibility - Within page Content.
Image Alt Tags - Helps with Accessibility.
Privacy Policy - Assures trust and confidentiality.
The site should confirm to the W3C standards

Conclusion

For WOU I would recomend to use PHP and MySQL which works on the Apache webserver.　The reason to use these technologies is that they are Open Sources, which means they have been developed through peer contribution, and therefore, are free.

Hosting cost for PHP and MySQL is the cheapest too.

It is a bit difficult to work with these as compare to few other more mature technologes, but the out come is the same.

intranet

INTRANET

A term coined from two words INTRA which means within or inside and NETWORK which is a system of several connections or branches. This gives a general idea of what an intranet is and shows the explicit difference between itself and the more commonly known INTERNET which is an unrestricted system. According to Alban intranet is (1999, p 25) a network within an organisation which adapts internet technology 4 use in its information setup. It is a private network that gives the organisation some form of privacy in the not so private internetwork which it has to be a part of these days in order to survive in the business world. Its uses however are not restricted to this but many automated operations now run on the intranet to give even more value to the business processes of these businesses which have been wise enough to adopt this system.

Some of these applications or processes which run on the intranet as their platform include Database management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) etc. The CRM for example is used to document and analyse customer information to generate enough data to improve business, determine potential/ target customers and form an even extensive bond with existing customers. The intranet also handles internet functions like email, file transfer and web services in general.

For WOU it is quite clear that a CRM is in order and a sure necessity in order for it to survive as a business even though its product is a gold mine and this needs the intranet up n running. For a small company which has a few staff an intranet with a CRM is preferred to one with an ERP also because the latter is a very complex methodology adopted by large firms with multiple operations looking to keep a standard on every level but for a sole proprietorship like WOU a system that handles customer relations is ideal especially when it enables real time feedback retrieval from the company’s website. In many ways intranet has saved people money and increased efficiency and the best part is it’s affordable and relatively easy to setup.

There are four (4) steps to Intranet mapping

1. 1. Determine requirements of the business
2. 2. Planning
3. 3. Design
4. 4. And finally implementation

Happiness^ ^

VOIP

This week, we learned SLEPT of environmental scanning. Our group asked to focus on technological factor. My task is about VOIP technological. VOIP is stand for Voice over Internet Protocol. It is a general term for a family of transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications over IP networks such as the Internet or other packet-switched networks. The basic steps involved in originating an Internet telephone call are conversion of the analog voice signal to digital format and compression/translation of the signal into Internet protocol (IP) packets for transmission over the Internet. This technological has already used by E-business. It has lots of benefits:
1. Bandwidth efficiency(As long as you have access to a broadband connection, you can use your VoIP system anywhere, such as in a hotel room or at a friend's home),
2. VOIP runs both voice and data communications over a single network, which can significantly reduce infrastructure costs.
3. The prices of extensions on Voip are low, easy to configure and troubleshoot.
4. VOIP service makes your phone system highly flexible