SoftWear Silhouettes is a rapidly growing mail-order house specializing in all-cotton clothing. Management would like to expand sales to the Web with the creation of an ecommerce site. The company has two full-time system analysts and one programmer. Company offices are located in a small, isolated New England town, and the employees who handle the traditional mail-order business have little computer training

a. Considering the company’s situation, draw up a list of software attributes that SoftWear Silhouettes should emphasize in its choice of software to create a website and integrate the mail-order business with business from the website.
b. Would you recommend C O T S software, custom software, or outsourcing to a SaaS? State your choice and defend it in a paragraph.
c. List the variables that contributed to your response in part b.

a.
1) Ease of use
2) Performance effectiveness
3) Performance efficiency
4) Flexibility
5) Quality of documentation
6) Software that will maintain operational consistency for picking, packing, shipping, and so on
7) Web pages that at a minimum capture the same data as the mail-order business

b. The recommended solution is to either use C O T S software, such as a customized online ordering system, or to use a SaaS. The advantages of using a SaaS are that the online ordering will be done by the SaaS, which can send order details to SoftWear (typically using an X M L document). SoftWear can update their databases with the information received, merging it with the mail-order business transactions.

c.
1) Satisfactory user interface
2) Adequate capacity of computers
3) Efficient storage of data
4) Useable with other software
5) Adequate tutorial
6) Need for an integrated system