| 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.
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