Petrie’s Electronics Cases

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Petrie’s Electronics Cases

•Petrie’s Electronics Case, Chapter 5, Questions 1, 3, and 5.

CASE:   PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS

Determining Systems Requirements

Although the customer loyalty project at Petrie’s Electronics had gone slowly at first, the past few weeks had been fast paced and busy, Jim Watanabe, the project manager, thought to himself.

He had spent much of his time planning and conducting interviews with key stakeholders inside the company. He had also worked with the marketing group to put together some focus groups

made up of loyal customers, to get some ideas about what they would value in a customer loyalty program. Jim had also spent some time studying customer loyalty programs at other big retail

chains and those in other industries as well, such as the airlines, known for their extensive customer loyalty programs. As project manager, he had also supervised the efforts of his team

members. Together, they had collected a great deal of data. Jim had just finished creating a high-level summary of the information into a table he could send to his team members (PE Table 5-1).
PE TABLE 5-1:   Requirements and Constraints for Petrie’s Customer Loyalty Project
Requirements
• Effective customer incentives—System should be able to effectively store customer activity and convert to rewards and other incentives
• Easy for customers to use—Interface should be intuitive for customer use
• Proven performance—System as proposed should have been used successfully by other clients
• Easy to implement—Implementation should not require outside consultants or extraordinary skills on the part of our staff or require specialized hardware
• Scalable—System should be easily expandable as the number of participating customers grows
• Vendor support—Vendor should have proven track record of reliable support and infrastructure in place to provide it Constraints
• Cost to buy—Licenses for one year should be under $500,000
• Cost to operate—Total operating costs should be no more than $1 million per year
• Time to implement—Duration of implementation should not exceed three months
• Staff to implement—Implementation should be successful with the staff we have and with the skills they already possess
From the list of requirements, it was clear that he and his team did not favor building a system from scratch in-house. Jim was glad that the team felt that
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way. Not only was building a system like this in-house an antiquated practice, it was expensive and time consuming. As nice as it might have been to develop a unique system just for Petrie’s,

there was little point in reinventing the wheel. The IT staff would customize the system interface, and there would be lots of work for Sanjay’s staff in integrating the new system and its related

components with Petrie’s existing systems, but the core of the system would have already been developed by someone else.
PE TABLE 5-2:   Alternatives for Petrie’s Customer Loyalty Project
Alternative A
Data warehousing-centered system designed and licensed by Standard Basic Systems, Inc. (SBSI). The data warehousing tools at the heart of the system were designed and developed by SBSI,

and work with standard relational DBMSs and relational/OO hybrid DBMSs. The SBSI tools and approach have been used for many years and are well known in the industry, but SBSI- certified staff

are essential for implementation, operation, and maintenance. The license is relatively expensive. The customer loyalty application using the SBSI data warehousing tools is an established

application, used by many retail businesses in other industries.

Alternative B
Customer relationship management (CRM)-centered system designed and licensed by XRA Corporation. XRA is a pioneer in CRM systems, so its CRM is widely recognized as an industry leader.

The system includes tools that support customer loyalty programs. The CRM system itself is large and complex, but pricing in this proposal is based only on modules used for the customer

loyalty application.
Alternative C
Proprietary system designed and licensed by Nova Innovation Group, Inc. The system is relatively new and leading edge, so it has only been implemented in a few sites. The vendor is truly

innovative but small and inexperienced. The customer interface, designed for a standard Web browser, is stunning in its design and is extremely easy for customers to use to check on their

loyalty program status. The software runs remotely, in the “cloud,” and data related to the customer loyalty program would be stored in the cloud too.
Just as he was finishing the e-mail he would send to his team about the new system’s requirements and constraints, he received a new message from Sanjay. He had asked Sanjay to take the lead

in scouting out existing customer loyalty systems that Petrie’s could license. Sanjay had conducted a preliminary investigation that was now complete. His e-mail contained the descriptions of

three of the systems he had found and studied (PE Table 5-2). Obviously, Jim and his team would need to have a lot more information about these alternatives, but Jim was intrigued by the

possibilities. He sent a reply to Sanjay, asking him to pass the alternatives on to the team, and also asking him to prepare a briefing for the team that would include more detailed information

about each alternative.
1.    What do you think are the sources of the information Jim and his team collected? How do you think they collected all of that information?
3. If you were looking for alternative approaches for Petrie’s customer loyalty program, where would you look for information? Where would you start? How would you know when you were

done?
5. Why shouldn’t Petrie’s staff build their own unique system in-house?

•Petrie’s Electronics Case, Chapter 6, Questions 1 and 5.
CASE:   PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS
Structuring Systems Requirements: Process Modeling Jim and Sanjay chatted in Jim’s office while they waited for Sally to arrive.“Good work on researching those alternatives,” Jim said.”Thanks,

replied Sanjay. “There are a lot of alternatives out there. I think we found the best three, considering what we are able to pay.”Just then Sally walked in. “Sorry I’m late. Things are getting really

busy in marketing right now. I’ve been putting out fires all morning. “Sally sat down at the table across from Jim.
PE TABLE 6-1:  Four Core Functions of Petrie’s Customer Loyalty System
Function
Description
Record customer activities
When a customer makes a purchase, the transaction must be recorded in the customer loyalty system, as the rewards the system generates are driven by purchases. Similarly, when a customer

uses a coupon generated by the system, it must also be recorded, so that the customer activity records can be updated to show that the coupon has been used and is now invalid.
Send promotions
Data about customer activities provide information about what types of products customers tend to buy and in what quantities. This information helps determine what sales promotion

materials are best targeted at what customers. Customers who buy lots of video games should receive promotions about games, game platforms and HD TVs, for example.
Generate point-redemption coupons
Data about customer activities is used to generate coupons for future purchases. Those coupons must be made available to customers, either as paper coupons sent in the mail or online, in the

customer’s private account area. Once created, the customer activity database needs to be updated to show the creation of the coupon. The loyalty points needed to create the coupon must

be deducted from the customer’s total points.
Generate customer reports
From time to time, either in the mail or electronically, customers need to be sent account reports that show their recent purchases, the coupons they have been issued that have not yet been

redeemed, and the total points they have amassed from their purchases.

“I understand,” Jim said. “But to stay on schedule, we need to start focusing on the specifics of what we want our system to do. Remember when you wanted more details on what the system

would do? Well, now we start to spend some serious energy on getting that done.”

“Awesome,” replied Sally, as she pulled a Red Bull out of her oversized bag and popped it open.

“I’ve got a list here of four core functions the system must perform,” said Sanjay, pulling copies of a list from a folder on the table (PE Table 6-1). “Let’s look at these.”

After reviewing the list Sanjay had given them, Jim said, “Nice job, Sanjay. But we need to put this in graphical format, so that everyone can see what the inputs and outputs are for each function

and how they are related to each other. We also need to see how the new system fits in with our existing data sources. We need ?”

“Some data-flow diagrams,” Sanjay interrupted. “Exactly,” said Jim.

“They are already done,” replied Sanjay, handing diagrams to both Jim and Sally. “I’ve already created a first draft of the context diagram [PE Figure 6-1] and a level-1 diagram [PE Figure 6-2]. You

can see how I’ve defined the boundaries of our system, and I’ve included our existing product and marketing databases.”

PE FIGURE 6-1   Context diagram.

PE FIGURE 6-2   Level-1 DFD.

1.    Are the DFDs in PE Figures 6-1 and 6-2 balanced? Show that they are, or are not. If they are not balanced, how can they be fixed?
5. Why is it important for the team to create DFDs if they are not going to write the actual system code themselves?

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