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—- Requirements Document ---
Back at Computer Chip Corp., your CEO decides that it's better
(read: more realistic) to have the first version of the project concentrate on building up
the company's online customer base via the promotion of the www.ramforless.com service.
Then once a minimum monthly order volume is sustained, the company will commit to putting
resources toward automating the back office and fulfillment systems. "Until then,
we'll just re-key orders," the employees are told. The fulfillment manager's eyes get
large and he jots down a note to open several new data entry job requisitions. And you?
You just breathe a sigh of relief, because, for now, you don't have to tap into that 1970s
mainframe monster that handles all of the current order entry and fulfillment processes.
With those priorities in line, the ramforless.com preliminary
Requirements Document (aka The Plan) is just about ready to go. (Note that yours will
probably need to be a bit more detailed and will likely require a few revisions to get
there.)
www.ramforless.com Requirements Version 1.0
We want customers to be able to tell us
what kind of computer equipment they have. Then we'll tell them what kind of memory chips
work with their computers. If we know the make and model of their equipment, then we can
recommend chips in 8-MB, 16-MB, 32-MB, and 64-MB flavors. Sophisticated customers may
already know the model number of the memory chip they want, but these products are
changing all the time. We'll need a tool where we can make changes to the products we
offer in real time.
- Order and transaction processing
Customers will want to buy more than one
item at a time, so we'll need to let them build an order before checking out. Then we'll
need to accept major credit cards and calculate tax, shipping, and handling charges. Plus,
we'll be shipping within 24 hours of the order, so we'll need to verify the credit card
information before we accept the order.
We want to use a variety of
lead-generating tactics, such as buying banner ads, registering with search engines, and
sending direct email to get qualified customers to the site. We'll also want to know which
of these tactics gets the most customers to our site so that we can figure out which
advertising investments make the most sense.
- Fulfillment and customer service
Orders that arrive on the server need to
be relayed to the fulfillment center quickly so that we can pick, pack, and ship the
memory chips before the FedEx truck shows up at 5 p.m. We also want to be able to let
customers get the status of their orders so that they don't have to call us.
We want to host the site with a third
party. Staying up 24/7 monitoring servers is not our idea of fun. We've seen a number of
e-commerce software packages on the market but are confused about which one is right for
us. Help!
Once you've generated your own Requirements Document, you still have a
lot of details to iron out, and there are many choices still to be made before you can
open your doors in cyberspace. In the next lesson, we'll
tackle the challenge of designing an effective sales and merchandising environment. Then
we'll take a look at some existing sites that use these techniques.
On to Lesson 2
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