Final Project Case Scenario

For this project, imagine that you work for a small brick-and-mortar business specializing in designer clothing, shoes, and handbags. Your business offers discounted designer clothing and accessories for men and women.

There are two full-time employees and three part-time employees. Currently, the store only has a basic website with a list of a few products, and customers can only purchase items instore.

This is a problem because the business is not able to reach customers as easily as its competitors. The business owner has identified the following companies as its primary e-business competitors:

Bluefly

Zappos

Kohl's

Macy's

HauteLook

Nordstrom Rack

Lyst

The ultimate goal of the business is to promote growth with an online presence and become more customer-focused. The business owner wants to streamline the business processes involved in integrating a brick-and-mortar business with an e-business.

She is aware that there will be some potential consumer privacy and security concerns associated with this change, and she wants to ensure that company data is protected internally. She also wants to be confident that the business's suppliers and technology vendors do the same.

The business owner is looking for a technology solution that will meet the following key technology requirements: integrating online shopping, managing inventory and shipping, providing order status and online payment processing, facilitating collaboration internally and externally (with staff and customers), managing customer contacts, providing reporting, and being able to use the new technology to manage the current brick-and-mortar processes (sales, payments, inventory, and customer contact).

Currently, the physical location struggles with managing customer information and does not have a reporting tool to help management make informed decisions.

Your job will be to research two different technologies and the business market competitors that use those technologies, and to make a recommendation on the technology solution that you feel would best position your store to expand its business. Select two of the following technologies to focus on in your business systems analysis paper:

Big data and knowledge management

Wireless, mobile computing, and mobile commerce

Social computing

Cloud computing

Business analytics and business intelligence solutions

Intelligent systems