You are the CIO of the newly established Data Mining, Inc. (DMI), a company that specializes in collecting, storing, and analyzing data on customer purchasing habits and then selling its findings to large e-business vendors.
First, here is some background on the company. DMI was conceived by the CEO of a major corporation, Cyberia, Inc., that manufactures and sells all types of outdoor clothing goods. Cyberia began almost a half century ago as a small catalog-based company in the Pocono Mountains. The business struggled but survived with a small and primarily local customer base. Realizing the power of the Internet, in the mid 1990's, Cyberia converted its catalog-based business to an e-business, advertising and selling its products directly over the Internet. Within a few years, Cyberia's market share and product line grew exponentially with customers from all over the United States. The management of Cyberia, Inc. attributed the success of its business to their ability to leverage the power of information technology by collecting and tracking data on customers' shopping habits and following up with timely, direct and focused marketing.
Realizing the power of deploying e-business technology along with a software system that would specialize in collecting and tracking data on customers shopping habits, the CEO of Cyberia, Inc. created Data Mining, Inc. to design, develop, and sell a system that would enable a business to become an e-business and to collect and mine data on the shopping habits of its customers.
The vision for DMI includes:
1. Sell the DMI system to every online market sector that can benefit from data mining technology:
a. Small and large businesses.
b. Local and worldwide.
c. Specialized product line (e.g., Cyberia) or diversified product line (e.g., amazon.com).
2. Have the system track customers shopping and purchasing habits by collecting and storing data concerning registered customers to include:
a. Website visits.
b. Web page browsing (which pages, frequency, etc.)
c. Ordered products.
d. Frequency, quantity, season, etc.
3. The system would apply data mining techniques to the customer information database of each e-business corporation and:
2
a. Produce lists of customers with specific recommendations for products to be marketed to them.
b. Automatically send marketing materials on recommended products to target customers.
c. Generate reports with raw data, summary data, statistics, etc.
4. The DMI System (DMIS) would be provided to each client at a reduced purchasing and maintenance fee. However, the client must agree to have their customer information database (i.e., market research data that was collected by the client's DMIS) shared with DMI. The idea is that, by DMI having access to the (distributed) customer databases of all of its clients, it can create a larger (centralized) databank to which it can apply its advanced data mining tools and then sell its findings (at a small fee) to its clients or other potential clients.
As the CIO of DMI, you realize that you need to develop a system that is, among other things, reliable, customizable, scalable, and secure. The system will be able to support the operation of each client's (new) e-business, provide each client with market information services based on its own customer base, regularly consolidate distributed customer information into a centralized customer information databank, and generate and widely distribute reports on broad market analysis.
Your Assignment
Present a design of the DMI System in a report document that includes the following:
1) Draft a statement of client's requirements (i.e., the requirements of a new e-business)-it does not need to be too detailed. [1 page limit]
2) Identify, list, and briefly explain each of the most important business processes (about 5 of them). Then include the processes in a detailed Data Flow Diagram (DFD) that models the system. [2 page limit]
3) Identify and briefly explain the database requirements and propose a high-level database design. Make sure to explain the DB requirements and propose a design using an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD). [2 page limit]
4) Propose a project plan for the design and implementation of the system (use MS Project). [1 page limit].