| The solution proposed makes the assumption that the sales person has access to a computer when he completes his work at the end of the day. Using a hand-held device like a PDA or a Personal Digital Assistant, a salesman can search for a particular book based on parameters like author, publisher, category, costs, taxes etc and display the information to the customer. If the customer is an existing one, her details will be displayed when her unique member id is keyed in.
A certain customer may be entitled to discounts or sometimes, other user-specific information may need to be made available to the salesman before he interacts with the storeowner. All this information can be retrieved from the PDA at the right moment. Once the storeowner decides to place an order, the salesman can then key in the details of the order right then and there and store it. He can calculate the price of the book, the taxes to be paid, etc and give the storeowner the final price.
In this manner, the salesman goes around making transactions with various storeowners in a particular region. When he returns home at the end of the day he can then upload all the information stored in the PDA to his computer that will in turn connect to the main database to afford complete data synchronization for the entire company to view.
Once the database is updated, different people can view the details that may be of interest to them. For example, the business manager might want to view transaction details that will help him decide which books to advertise and promote more, which books to publish and what kind of customers the storeowners are. He can even view the feedback given by the salesman or the shop owner.
The warehouse manager can view the details of the number and types of books that have been sold and simultaneously replenish the stocks in the warehouse. He can also keep track of stocks more easily.
The person in charge of keeping track of the money spent on the books, the finance or accounts-in-charge can also track the amount of money spent in buying books, discounts offered to the storeowners, tax redemptions etc.
What we can do is to help set up the web interface and help in synchronizing the information on the PDA to the database and in the implementation of the solution on the operating system of the PDA (be it the Palm OS, Pocket PC or Symbian EPOC).
You might ask why the sales person can’t directly access the database in real-time while making the sale. Why wait for the salesman to upload the data from the PDA to his computer at the end of the day. Well, the completely real-time solution would entail using wireless technology and heavy dependence on the speeds and connectivity offered here. Statistics prove that this technology hasn’t really caught on yet and speeds and connectivity of airwaves are not that great either. Also, this kind of an option can be quite expensive too. |