Business Requirements Analysis

Binkington Industries is an organization currently in its infancy. The mission of this organization is to provide expecting and new mothers with different options in accessories for their baby. Binkington Industries is offering alternative designs to several standard baby items, (e.g. pacifiers, bibs, etc.) at reasonable prices. The designs will be stylish and offer fun alternatives for the regular mother who can't afford expensive, high couture baby items.

The company will also focus on being an outlet for baby gifts. To give something that nobody else at the baby shower would have thought of. Binkington Industries is looking to the internet to get its business off the ground. To do so there are several technological steps that must be taken to implant Binkington Industries as a face in the e-commerce world.

First, the company needs to develop and implement a web site to include a catalog sales function. Beyond the site providing an attractive image and display the products it must function properly and provide easy navigation for shoppers. The company would also like to develop real-time inventory levels for sales as well as providing customer service tools like order tracking. Finally, Binkington Industries must utilize advertising technologies to spread the name across the internet; this includes banner ads, pop-ups and so forth.

The following provides justifications and Use Cases for each of these steps in Binkington Industries path for success.

Online Sales

As a new organization, Binkington must enter the internet world with usable and efficient online sales software. This includes a customer being able to view the products, possibly compare products, and put them in the shopping cart for purchasing. Without this implementation, the company is left dead in the water. Every online sales merchant has this in place and there is no alternative when it comes to servicing the online customer.

This use case will be simply identified as Binkington Online Sales Site. The name will fall in the same lines as Binkington Implementation of Online Sales. There is a clear purpose behind this case, as it will provide the online "store" for Binkington Industries products and become the internet face of the company. The company's mission to provide reasonably priced alternatives for high style baby accessories will be built into the site and create an online environment that is not only welcoming, but a fun and efficient diversion from similarly-minded online sales sites.

Binkington is a very small company with only two current actors. Together they will develop the website and implement the tools to create an online shopping-cart. The first task will be to register our company domain name, ensuring nobody else will be able to use www.binkington.com (not a real web site). Alternates can be decided on if the issue arises; currently there is no match to this domain name.

Some companies may have the start-up capital that would warrant hiring an outside source to build the web site and create the content it is based on. Unfortunately, Binkington is not operating within these parameters, so a little more time and energy will be spent to not only learn the basics of HTML, but also develop a site with advanced e-commerce capabilities. With the cost of web development reaching the tens of thousands for a nuts and bolts site created by a design shop, start-up companies without those means will need to get more hands-on with their products and image.

The software capabilities that will go along with our HTML applications will include a database that will allow customers to search through our products for something specific, links to similar products a customer may be interested in, and so forth. For the most part, our products will be different variations on a single item (i.e. several designs of the familiar pacifier), where a customer will actually need to see the product to make the decision.

Kevin Hakman, writer of the web tutorial "E-Commerce" explains the importance of having a finely tuned shopping cart, "You can't send customers their products until you calculate the bottom lines. And more importantly, you still need to determine whether they have the funds to pay for their purchases. So before you accept those orders, you'll need to calculate tax, determine shipping costs, and securely process the customers' preferred methods of payment." (Webmonkey, 2006)
Several software plug-ins will need to be implemented, including one that calculates taxes. We will focus on purchasing the software that best matches our current needs, as for the time being we will not need too many bells and whistles, just effective shopping cart software that runs properly and is easy to navigate for customers.

Moving further into the requirements for the Binkington website, we would need to implement the capabilities for real-time inventory available for sale as well as customer order status. Some of the issues we are facing that require software capabilities include, dialog with the customer, transaction management and processing, shipping, payment types, product availability, back-orders, processing orders, looking up order status or notifying a customer of their order status, and technical support.

Fortunately, the software that is available for customization is becoming more readily accessible and feasible for a start-up business. Software like ColdFusion, for example, will provide the basis for an online entity that can then be tweaked and plugged-in to to be come an effective means for online shopping. Michael Calore in "Getting Paid on the Web" explains that, "Cash payments on the Internet involve the transfer of funds from one person's bank or credit card account to another person's account. It's the same basic idea as sending a check through the mail, except a Web payment is faster, easily traceable, and more secure. These types of low-level e-commerce, different from the more complex world of shopping carts and inventory management, are sometimes called "e-cash payments." Several companies have developed payment systems that you can use either on a one-off basis, as a subscriber, or as a full-fledged credit merchant." (Webmonkey.com)

Web hosting is another issue that must be resolved. Anyone can put a site on a free, or incredibly inexpensive, host; unfortunately, they face the swarm of random advertisements that may have nothing to do with our company and will detract from the product. It would be a viable option to choose a host that, despite a larger fee, would offer Binkington Industries the space and freedom to develop a professional site.

The company will start rolling next month based on a word-of-mouth campaign and small print advertisements in high customer traffic areas. The web site would need to be online and functional within the end of the month to ensure that potential customers are able to have somewhere to go and shop. The use case to develop a web site with online sales technology and customer service capabilities would effectively end when the site is functional and "live". However, the continued maintenance of the site would include updated software and improved capabilities.
Internet Advertising

The third step in developing a jumpstart into the online environment is through internet based advertising capabilities. The first step would be to do some data mining, to get more information about who our potential customer is, their habits and how we plan to market our product to them. We know who our customer is, new and expecting mothers. Apart from that, we hope to cater to other women who are looking for baby gifts.

Part of the issues facing how we market ourselves include, what avenues we want to advertise in, how we want our image to be seen, what is the value of our company and its products, essentially what is our brand. One of the most useful tools will include banner ads.

"The most effective banners are often simple and direct and don't rely too heavily on the viewer's imagination or interpretative powers. With a little luck (and if you've done your homework), the banner will grab viewers' attention. Even so, you'll only have a few seconds to communicate your message before the users return to the content they were actually looking for. So your message must be concise and focused. Most of the time, you want your banners to stand out from the content of the page.

The easiest way to get your ad noticed is to use a design approach different from the design of the site that will host your banner. Use colors or a style that contrast with the site's design. Try shifting the weight of the banner to the side opposite of whatever portion of the Web page is design heavy. Or choose a font distinctly different from whatever font the hosting site uses," says Douglas Bowman in his article "Ad Banner Design".

The design of banners and all other advertising tools will be taken by the founders of Binkington Industries in order to stress the importance of the mission and vision held for the company. The case for online advertising is gaining steam, a study in 2002 demonstrated that online advertising was increasingly influential, "In a just-released study conducted by the Online Publishers Association and Millward Brown IntelliQuest, it has been shown that a young, affluent audience not only is online more than they consume other media, they're also receptive to online advertising, using it more than other advertising for learning about new products and decision making." (Study Makes Case for Online Advertising)

With the strength of online advertising, Binkington Industries will take its specifically designed banners and pop-up ads to similarly minded web sites in an effort to enter the community that new and expecting mothers have developed over the years. The most important goal to gain strength in this market is to be accepted by mothers who are interested in finding fun, yet safe items for their children. Trust is the most important strength an organization can have in this particular business market. By developing a professional, efficient and fun website, new mothers can have a little fun and feel at ease about buying accessories for their newborns. The website for the most part will be "the" image of the company.