Group Assignment: Post # 2

B.I. tools (business intelligence) is the most important tool to help companies to understand their performance or make better decisions from their valueable databases.

In the following examples, we would like to describe how B.I. works and its benefits to companies.

Example #1 --- Interent order count and Customer count by Geography by Date by Product

In this report, we are looking for the buying behaviour of different people. We found our customers would prefer to buy our products by interent. This may be our users friendly and securely online purchase system, people are easy to shop online and purchase with safety protection. And we found that the sell of accessories is drop strictly, we have to make some change in the design or promotion.




Example #2 --- Order count by Product by Sales Channel by Promotion

In this report, we would like to know more about the success of promotion and sales channel. We found that the result of promotion is not good and cannot help in reseller orders. We have to promote our products in the other ways to increase sell orders.

And we found the internet orders are several times of reseller orders. We have to discuess with reseller how to increase sell orders by promotion or education. And we need to develop more sales channels to increase our market shares. We might set up a centre, people could buy our products through TV or phone orders.

Example #3 --- Standard Product Cost, Total Product Cost, Sales Amount, Gross Profit and Gross Profit Margin by Product by Date

In this report, we would like to know more about the cost and profit relationship. We found that accessories is the most profitable. We should develop and design more different accessories lines to make more profit. And we found bikes and components got around 10% profit in the past several years, we have to consider these products lines should be shot or not. We should pay more sources and attention to our most profitable products.

The benefits of allowing users to query a data warehouse in the form of an OLAP cube through their Web browser:

It is a tool to help companies to consolidate, analyse, and provide access to large amounts of data (current and historical) to improve decision making.

It contains a variety of tools for identifying trends and opportunities from the data.

Companies can gain from data by predicting future trends or extracting previously unknown insights from it. Moreover, it allows companies to take the initiative and proactively remain one step ahead of their comptitors.

It can help companies to make a good management analysis and decision making.

OLAP supports multidimensional data analysis. This allows the same data to be viewed in different ways or from different dimensions. And users can change the dimensions or data being viewed dynamically, unlike with paper-based reports.

Management can answer ad-hoc questions in a short amount of time, even when the data is stored in large databases.

Group Assignment: Post # 1

(Revised on 23 Feb, 09)

Several Internet Marketing methods as below with examples:

Blog
Sample: QOOZA BLOG (http://blog.qooza.hk/)
QOOZA is a web site to introduce about fashion, beauty and lifestyle. You can find many update information of these topics. This web site also provide BLOG service to their members, so the members can share their experience or happiness regarding anything which they have saw, used or happened. Furthermore, QOOZA also invite some famous artists or professional workers to show their background or share their experience in their Guest Blog. QOOZA use these methods to recruit more members to create their own blog or visit their web site, then they can attract more merchants to post their advertisements and earn more profit.

Interactive advertisement
Sample: Yahoo (http://hk.dictionary.yahoo.com/)
Yahoo provide many functions to visitors, one of them “dictionary” is for searching vocabulary, that means the visitor may be not enough the knowledge of English. So they provide a platform to some colleges to introduce their service through this interactive advertisement to recruit student.

Search Engine

Sample: Google (http://www.google.com.hk/)

Google is one of the large search engine of web site, you can search many different topics or title by this search engine. Also, you can find a lot of results from it, so you can search which one is more suitable for you. For example, if you want to search some news of your favor artist, you just type his name on it, this search engine will provides the sources of his news, photo, video, movie, etc. as more as it can. (see below web pages) As a result, most of merchants would like to join this advertising platform.

Online Partnership or Affiliate Marketing
Sample: Midland Realty and mReferral Mortgage Brokerage Service (http://www.midland.com.hk/chi/ and http://www.mreferral.com/english/index.html)
Midland Realty is a property agency, you can search property or transaction through their web site. They think that the visitors want to know more Mortgage information normally after their searching, so they make partner with mReferral Mortgage Brokerage Service (mReferral). The visitors can click to the web site of mReferral, they are not only to get the relevant information, they also can apply Mortgage loan through mReferral. In conclusion, both of them can obtain more benefit from each other and achieve the win-win situation.

RSS feeds
Sample: eBay (http://www.ebay.com.hk/ )

RSS Feeds: Real simple syndication (RSS) is a relatively new and easy way to distribute content via the Internet. For email marketers, it is a way to distribute messages while avoiding spam filters. Typical applications include email newsletters, blogs or even Web sites. Similar to newsgroups, RSS feeds require a special “reader” like Bloglines or NewsGator to view messages.
RSS Feeds are a fairly new format of XML that is intended to share information in a condensed format (such as a title, description and link to a new article). They are good for syndication. Many current browsers have native support for RSS Feeds, but older browsers will display RSS pages as XML code. To display RSS, you should upgrade your browser or download a feed reader such as Feed Reader.
For example, eBay, it’s RSS feed format is RSS 2.0, it will inform you through RSS feed when there are new information or news. Furthermore, when you read those topic, you can hyperlink to the relevant web page.


Social Networking
Sample: Facebook (http://zh-hk.facebook.com/)

Facebook is a large social networking. Everyone can join it as a member without any charges even you stay in everywhere of the world. The member can know someone after both of them have confirmed as a friend, and you can enlarge your friendship network with unlimited numbers. Furthermore, Facebook provide many online games or gifts to members, that the games and gifts are the advertising platforms of merchants. When the members play games or send gifts to another members, it can make many people who can know that products. For example, McDonalds post its food photos in facebook, the user can send these photos to his friends, so it will make more people to know what the new products of McDonalds.


Gadgets
Sample: Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/)

A gadget is a small technological object (such as a device or an appliance) that has a particular function, but is often thought of as a novelty. Gadgets are invariably considered to be more unusually or cleverly designed than normal technology at the time of their invention. Gadgets are sometimes also referred to as gizmos.
A series of machine-type monsters whose effects allow players to search for relevant gadget monsters. They are Green Gadget, Red Gadget and Yellow Gadget. Each of the Gadgets can search each other from the player's deck. They are also supported by Stronghold the Moving Fortress, Boot Up Soldier - Dread Dynamo, Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon and Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Chimera. They are found in the Machine Re-Volt Structure Deck.
They were notably used by Yugi Muto in the Ceremonial Duel against Atem in the last episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters.
Gadgets are a mildly well known set, due to their effects and appearance in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series. Players often use them to get ahead in what is considered card advantage, by gaining another Gadget in hand each time a gadget is summoned and protecting the Gadgets with numerous removal and negation-based cards like Sakuretsu Armor and Royal Oppression. The card known as Elemental Hero - Stratos (E. Hero Airman) tended to neutralize the use of Gadgets this way. Stratos has recently been restricted in play, allowing Gadget use to thrive again.

group member

Leung Yat Lung, Ian (Leader)
Leung Yin Yu, Bonnie
Yeung Ka Yu, Catherine