Problem Definition
EasyWare Incorporated is a manufacturer of computer hardware. So far, the department responsible for purchase order management has received orders by telephone and has manually entered them into a PeopleSoft Order Management system. The customer service department uses the information in the PeopleSoft system as well, but finds that not all information they need is available there. An additional concern is that shipping information is not included in the Order Management system. As a result, customers do not receive notification when items are shipped and customer service representatives must access the shipping information in a two-step process: first extracting the Order ID from the PeopleSoft system, then extracting the shipping information from the shipping log using the Order ID.
Because a high volume of sales cannot be handled efficiently with this setup, and because currently information available to the customer service department is incomplete, customer satisfaction becomes an issue. Management decides to make the following changes:
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Make order entry possible by way of a secure web server outside the firewall which communicates with an application server that supports JMS.
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Add a Siebel customer service system that receives information about each purchase order.
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Before order fulfillment, require approval by a credit check specialist for orders over $10 000.
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Before the order is entered into the Siebel system, add information about shipping date and time to each item. The information should be retrieved interactively from the shipping company’s web site via the Internet.
Customer service representatives can then have easy access to all ordering information.