What is the expected cost of the portion of development work needed to include dynamic links to customer databases?
Added by Patricia M.
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This includes understanding the requirements, such as the type of databases, the data to be linked, and the functionality needed. Show more…
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Davis Humanics (DH) is a company founded in 1982 that provides human resources services to about 7,000 companies with a total of nearly 100,000 employees. These services include payroll processing, tax filing, health insurance and claims management, and retirement plan management. DH has annual sales of $2 billion and about 1,000 employees. DH has grown rapidly and has clients of all sizes, ranging from smaller companies with fewer than 50 employees to Fortune 500 companies. As DH grows, it is having trouble maintaining a consistent quality of service. Account managers must each handle more clients, and it is becoming difficult for those account managers to maintain a high degree of personal contact with the human resources executives who control DH's contract. In the past, account managers worked with a small set of client contact people, but now they must work with more people, many of whom they have never met. In addition to account managers, client personnel have regular contacts with DH operations staff (who handle input tasks), DH systems staff (who help customize the interfaces between DH systems and handle input systems), and DH professional staff (lawyers, actuaries, and human resources professionals who consult with DH clients and their legal counsel regarding the operation of their retirement and benefit plans). Because DH's clients are so different in size and how they operate, DH has to be flexible in handling input data. For example, DH's payroll-processing service allows clients many different ways to send in time card data. The largest clients arrange for customized computer-to-computer transfer of information. Some large clients use EDI transfers. Most medium and smaller-sized clients email or fax the time card information, but a significant number of them mail paper lists that DH must scan into its systems. The health insurance claims-handling operation is even more troublesome. In addition to having clients send information in various formats, the insurance companies demand that information be submitted in specific formats, each of which is different. The complexity of DH's operations is growing as rapidly as the company adds new clients. Sandi Higbee, DH's director of Operations, asks for your help in outlining a Web-based customer relationship management (CRM) system that will help manage the account managers' ever-increasing levels of customer contact. Sandi reviewed the products offered by several leading CRM vendors and believes that substantial customization will be necessary because DH's operations are so complex and different from most companies that sell products or simple services to customers. A good CRM system for DH would need to monitor all types of customer interactions with DH account managers, operations staff, systems staff, and professional staff. In addition, the system's web interface should allow DH clients to access parts of the CRM system so they can track DH's follow-up on their work requests and pending inquiries. DH evaluates all capital projects, including IT projects, using ROI. Sandi is worried about this because she believes that many of the benefits of this CRM project will be hard to quantify. On the other hand, the cost of the CRM project (software and hardware purchase and cost of consultants who will customize the CRM software to meet DH's specific needs) will be very easy to quantify and will be large. Sandi expects the vendor-consultant teams to submit bids of between $1 million and $2 million for this project.
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How can a database be accountable for expenses? I. The success of a specific interactive program can be tracked II. Customers can access accounts online III. Customers can be organized by demographics IV. Customers spend less
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