Case study: AroundLondon Book Stores
AroundLondon Book Stores (ALBS) is a medium sized chain of high quality bookshops spread across
a number of university campuses around London. They currently have 20 shops and an efficient
warehouse/distribution operation. ALBS are now thinking to expand the book stores’ service by
allowing students and staff to buy books online as well as offer support to those who browse their
online catalogue but prefer to place orders in person or by the telephone. Rather late in the day and
after seeing their customer base declining, ALBS would like to respond to competition, particularly
with online companies such as Amazon and eBay. They feel that offering their services online will
also allow them to cut down some of the costs in stores. They would also like to attempt to provide a
new service, which will allow their users to loan a book online (which will be delivered to their home
address) and return it within two weeks, something similar to the library loan system. The book stores
also provide study packs with copies of journal articles relevant to specific courses, which students can
buy at a discount price.
ALBS are keen to provide high quality service to students and staff, however they would like to
expand the book stores’ service to other potential customers that leave around the area. They believe
that the key to increased market share is having both online and hybrid telephone ordering capabilities.
They would like to attract more customers and therefore they are open to suggestions regarding
extra functionalities their new computerized IS should support.
The book stores provide good descriptions of the books they sell. While publishers do provide
descriptions of the new books (however these tend to be boring and overly positive), the shops’ staff
prefer to write their own honest and helpful reviews. There is also the possibility for students, staff and
other customers to write reviews themselves.
You are consultants called in to assist ALBS with this restructuring of their marketing and sales
business model from an IS perspective. They have a tight deadline of 8 months for the online system
to go live and the analysis, design and development and promotion of the new system should be within
the budget of 50.000 pounds decided by the Board of Directors.
In outline ALBS have sketched the system they need as follows:
Students, staff and potential customers (lets call them CUSTOMERS for a matter of
simplicity) can browse and search the online catalogues for books of interest.
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CUSTOMERS can order books/study packs online using conventional electronic "shopping
basket" and "check out" functionality. They can choose from several different shipping
methods and rates based on a formula related to the urgency and the weight of an order.
CUSTOMERS should be able to read descriptions or reviews of books as well as have the
option to provide their reviews as well once registered and logged in to the system.
CUSTOMERS should also be given the option to loan a particular book and then return this
back to store within two weeks. They would still expected to go through the shopping basket
and checkout functionality and the books will be delivered to their preferred address.
CUSTOMERS may also phone in or email with their book orders and any other requests.
Their orders may be very precise (a particular book or a study pack), but they may also be
vague. They may just say that they want “the book on Economics and Statistics” that was
reviewed on page 12 of last Monday’s Economist. Such queries might be based on a structured
form filling approach.
Sales staff of the book shops take the phone calls or read the emails and interact with the
customers. They also handle any online orders that are flagged with problems during the
otherwise automatic online ordering and shipping request process. Among the actions that
they might take are: confirming a book's details, making book suggestions, taking an order
(perhaps for many books). They will also have to deal with enquiries about previous orders,
log returns, etc.
All payments will be by credit card. The checking of credit card details will be done by the
company’s bank, through a link to a system known as VISACheck. The VISACheck system
acts as an interface between the book Stores and their bank's credit check services.
CUSTOMERS need to be registered to the website and logged in in order to proceed to
payment.
For a number of new books or very old books, the book stores direct their orders to their
central warehouse where they can be checked (e.g. if the books are in stock etc). In the case a
book is not available, then a further check is made online with their principal wholesalers
(RAREBOOKS). If RAREBOOKS have the books in stock, then they usually need 5 days in
order to deliver them. If they don’t have the books, then they can further pass the request to
their organisation office, where staff can perform book searches and track down where they
can find those titles.
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In general, if some of an order is available for despatch, then it will be sent off at once.
Despatch is not a part of the system the ALBS is considering, and is undertaken by the
Despatch Department. It is however necessary to be able to give information on the status of
an order, so the Sales system does need to have access to the despatch data.
This new sales system is strongly supported by the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors see the
new sales system as an efficient mechanism that will enable both the web-enabled and the telephone
ordering processes, something that has proved impossible in the past. It is about being efficient,
getting more volume through the warehouse and hence being able to negotiate better discounts from
suppliers. Perhaps one day soon, if this works, they will close the shops! They believe that people
know what books they want and therefore ordering them or loaning them online is a minimum hassle.
They believe however, that the existing customers of the book stores (students and staff) are the
principal users of the new online system and therefore paying money for advertising in order to attract
other new potential customers is a waste of money. They also feel that paying staff to read books and
write reviews is diverting attention from the core business and as a waste of resources and money.
The Managing Director of the Book stores, however, has different ideas about the new system. From
his perspective the new system presents a unique opportunity to “push” sales rather than just rely on
customers to request a book themselves. Also, he sees this project as the first step in the development
of an interactive web-based department store that would allow customers to browse through an
expanded inventory and be able to buy all sorts of different products related to studying (such as
stationary). He has the ambition to open book stores across other universities in the UK, not just in
London. He wants the system to be able to produce monthly sales reports as well as to collect as much
data as possible on actual and potential customers, their pattern of web searching and their orders, their
preferences, number of books ordered in the last year, etc. in order to support active marketing and
decisions on expanding the current product line beyond just books. He is a very strong advocate of
staff writing reviews and he feels strongly that people do go to their book stores because of the honest
and sometimes funny reviews they produce about the books.
As part of the development of the system, and as early as possible, the implementation (putting the
system into use) of the new system needs to be considered. ALBS have considered this and have
come up with the following two implementation options for the core of the new system:
Implement the system as a distributed application, with the telephone sales staff located in its
ten principal book shops. The idea would be to employ the current permanent book shop staff
on the phone lines for some of their time, and thereby provide a service equivalent to ‘a stroll
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in good company through your local book store’. The new system would then come under the
day to day management of the individual book shop managers who would be able to
customise it to their particular local needs. The shops staff, however, are not particularly keen
on this idea. As one senior staff argued: “I did not choose to work in a book store in order to
sit with a head-set in front of the computer screen all day”. Most shop staff anticipate that the
telephone ordering services would be provided by a call centre, with those new call centre
staff responsible to take orders and enquiries for all book stores. However, hiring new staff to
handle the calls means extra cost for wages and training, something the Board of Directors of
the School may not approve. Also, while the permanent sales staff have the experience in
writing reviews it is unknown whether any new call centre staff would be able to write good
reviews.
Outsource the whole telephone ordering operation of the system to British Telecom, who will
run the sales service on behalf of ALBS employing their own call centre staff. In this case
ALBS will develop the software, but its (client software) will run on British Telecom’s
computers. The system will have to be capable of being learned in about two hours by staff
with no knowledge of the book trade. They would not be able to provide reviews of books so
an alternative system would be necessary.
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