Integrating Organizations

 3–4 pages + project zip file  

E-commerce Web sites typically interact with or affect many different areas of an organization. Because of this interaction, e-commerce Web sites typically include functionality to assist in the communication that is required between the site and other parts of the organization. Sales or accounting may need reports. Marketing or sales may need the ability to update the product catalog. Manufacturing may need access to inventory levels, and the list goes on. In a typical large organization, the operational needs of the organization are available already through the main Web site. One of the most common ways to provide information to other parts of an organization is through the database used for an e-commerce site.

The next step in your E-Commerce Implementation Plan is to consider how your prototype database is used in your e-commerce site and how it might be modified to integrate well with other parts of the organization such as sales, marketing, accounting, and inventory.  For this stage of the project, you will examine the database used in your prototype and document the schema.  You will then design changes you would make to support the organization’s integration needs. Please refer to the unit resources for some articles that will help you complete this assignment.

The project deliverables are as follows:

• Create a section in the E-Commerce Implementation Plan document, and name it "Prototype Database." 
  • Create an Entity-Relationship (ER) diagram to represent the existing prototype database
  • Discuss changes that would be necessary to integrate with other areas of the organization (at least two examples of integration are required)
  • Create an ER diagram to represent the modified database
  • Discuss changes to the prototype site that could be made to support the integration efforts
• Make one change to your prototype site to support integration with another part of the organization.  For example, add a simple database export feature so some other part of the organization can pull sales data from the site or how the sales data can be sent to another Web site for consumption. It is possible you break the code and are not able to complete this step.  Spend no more than 2 hours on this step.  Regardless of the outcome, include a discussion of what you attempted, what you learned about the code from the attempt, and the outcome of the attempt. Important: Before making changes to your prototype site, make a backup of the entire project.
• Update previously completed sections of the implementation plan based on your instructor's feedback.
• Be sure to update your Table of Contents before submission.
• Name the document as follows: yourname_ITSD325_IP4.doc
• Zip all of the Visual Studio Project Web site project files as: yourname_ITSD325_IP4.zip