Tool Man

"John is a sales representative selling tools to garden centres and DIY stores. He travels over 1000 miles a week to see new and existing clients. For the past 20 years he has carried around a large diary, an address book, a large road atlas and numerous A-Zs as well as numerous small coins for phones. He prides himself on his punctuality, but even he is occasionally late as he struggles to find a new client or is delayed by traffic. He always takes along a calculator, and a bulky sales catalogue with the latest price lists and order forms. He is usually on the road four days a week, six hours a day and spends every Friday in the office ensuring all his administration and sales are handled properly. He has always said he quite likes the time spend in his car between appointments, as it is his time when he can listen to CDs undisturbed."

John could use a number of ICT technologies to change and hopefully improve his working style, these include: PDA, GPS, Laptop, software, Mobile phone, and the internet.

A PDA is a Personal Digital Assistant; this would be an extremely useful device for him because it could be used instead of his large diary and an address book. All the information contained within the books can be entered into this device which is relatively small and light compared with his books. In addition, a PDA allows the user to search for an address or an appointment in his diary, which means that this is more efficient than looking through a diary or address book looking for the correct details.

A GPS is a Global Positing System; this piece of equipment would be useful to John because this would replace his road atlas and his numerous A-Zs. This piece of equipment uses satellites and software to guide user to their destination. By using a GPS John will saving time searching for his destinations, in his A-Zs, as he will only be required to enter the postcode of his destination and then he will be guided there. As John prides himself on his punctuality, a GPS will give him accurate times for when he is going to arrive at his destination, this will help him to ensure that he arrives on time. May GPS systems today have IQ routes, which mean that they sent the user of different routes depending on what day and time they are travelling. In addition, you are able to avoid routes if you hear that one is blocked, and some GPS systems automatically change routes if it knows that there is a delay on yours. By using this piece of equipment John is likely to save himself a lot of time, which would be important to a busy many such as him.

A laptop again would be a useful piece of equipment for John as he would be able to store a wide and a large quantity of data onboard. He would be able to upload his product catalogues on the laptop, and will then be able to show clients the products onscreen. In order to ensure that his laptop in full working order, he will have to have a number of software applications already installed, this will allow him to carry out a range of tasks such as work processing. The internet would allow John to access a wide variety of infomation, and will also allow him to send emails to his clients.

John having access to a mobile phone would mean that he would not need to take coins with him so that he could use a payphone; he would be able to make a phone call whenever it was necessary and wherever he was, providing that there is a signal.

However, there are a number of possible implications for him in employing a lot of ICT, these include: loss of data, getting lost, no signal, losses a piece of equipment etc. To overcome these problems, I recomend that John has a back-up of all his data and may wish to have a hard copy of his data and maps in the boot of his car, because he will then be able to use them if there is a problem with any of his equipment.

Ebay - The Online Market Place

The major purposes of ebay are to buy and sell products by a community of individuals and small businesses. Ebay has a presents in 37 markets including the United States and the UK.

The target audience of ebay is anyone who has access to the internet and the ability to buy goods over the internet. I feel that it has such a diverse target audience is because of the wide variety of precuts which are auctioned. Ebay describe its audience as ‘unique’ and in February 2008 it had 13.2 million members.

The auction process works by:
1. You register with ebay
2. The seller creates an advert for an item and lists the item on the auction site. In the item listing the seller specifies the length of the auction and the minimum bid they will accept for that item (reserve).
3. A potential buyer selects the item and specifies the maximum amount they will pay, this must be greater than the seller’s minimum bid.
4. Ebay informs the highest bidder that they have won the bis, then the seller is responsible for arranging payment, when payment is received the seller send the item.

Ebay fulfils its purpose as an online market place because it has a record amount of buyers and sellers, their visitor numbers speak for themselves when asking how successful the site is. There are a number of benefits and limitations of the service. The benefits are that you are able to buy almost any item at a reasonable price, and you can sell items which you don’t want anymore. The limitations are that not all buyers or sellers are genuine and that there is a selling fee for selling your goods. In addition you are only selling to people that have access to the internet and are willing to buy goods in this way.

Ebay is so successful as a shopping model because it has made local small markets into global ones at a low cost to the seller. People like buying used and collectible items at car boot and garage sales, however, has now made this available to almost everybody in the world 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and can be done anywhere.

Amazon

I have just recieved an E-Mail from Amazon, which was confirming my order with them.

Tesco E-Mail

This morning I recieved an e-mail (HTML) from Tesco Direct, with their lastest offers and products.