Halicon International is a worldwide known multi-channel retailer, which also has online stores. It sells luxury gifts, the latest designer clothes and fashion garments for both women and men, accessories and also food. Global prestige and reputation of Halicon are built upon its brand values, which are British, Service, Sensation, Luxury and Innovation. Halicon has a workforce of approximately 5,000 employees of different nationalities and backgrounds and it handles a clientele of approximately 100,000 per day during the peak seasons.
Goals and Objectives of Halicon International
- To provide real-time data and information about the business.
- To maintain an edge over competition by providing the best quality service and products.
- To leverage existing systems by advancing their processes to make them more efficient.
- To lower on-going costs, but maintain them AGILE by ensuring efficient activities.
- Minimize the Architecture complexity.
- To push towards business transparency, differentiated offers to customers and maintenance of a good customer base.
Data Storage and Retrieval System Need
Halicon is an international business retailing different products such as luxury gifts, the latest designer clothes and fashion garments, accessories and food. This means that the business has huge volumes of data and information to be recorded and stored for efficient and easy inventory management. This information or data is stored in documents that need to be pre-processed and filed. Halicon requires an excellent data storage and retrieval system that processes information and data very fast and efficiently. Effective retrieval of the documents or information depends on available workforce and the investment made. Data storage and retrieval system will help Halicon provide business transparency and thus, enhance company’s public image on a global scale. This will ensure the company maintains a regulatory compliance. For instance, in case of tax audits, the information will be easily available and accessible giving the management confidence that the business is in full compliance with the law.
Data storage and retrieval system improves business productivity and efficiency. A good system ensures minimum time wasted on the search of misfiled or missing documents hence saving company’s costs. Save time enhances office productivity and efficiency while minimizing anxiety and stress in the long-run. Another advantage of a good data storage and retrieval system is improvement of the working environment, because storing files and documents all around the office provides a poor and stressful environment for workers consequently leading to customer’s negative perception of the company. Moreover, an electronic data storage and retrieval system will save Halicon tremendous storage space and minimize costs of labor and equipment, which otherwise can be used for other profit maximizing purposes (Prywes, 2010).
Need of an Online Access of Business Data to its Customers
Online access to company’s information and data provided to the customers is a big advantage for the business because it enables expansion and increased job opportunities. It further enables firms to market themselves to potential customers on another platform, which may connect with millions of people worldwide since majority of the world population is active online. Providing online access to company’s data advertises business to millions of people increasing its customer and reaching the main goals of potential growth, expansion and enhanced productivity. Businesses can also use the online platform to provide their customers with commensurate value and thus, build on customer trust with time. In such a way, customers are able to monitor company’s trends on their own, which eventually attracts them closer to the brand created by the business. Halicon may disclose business data through an online platform for the customers to identify company’s offers and activities easily, which is a form of marketing (Federal Communications Commission, 2015)
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Challenges of Poor Data Storage and Retrieval System
- Firms that use poor systems of data storage and retrieval face the challenge of tiresome and cumbersome processes of storing and retrieving data. For example, in manual systems, the data has to be manually retrieved and if the files have not been sorted, it becomes hard for a responsible person to search for particular files (Prywes, 2010). In addition, the process of indexing, collecting catalogues and maintenance of vocabulary can be quite difficult and time consuming as in the case of libraries.
- Processes of cataloging, maintenance of vocabulary and indexing require sufficient time and qualified personnel because in some situations the lack of expertise may lead to poor job performance.
- Use of poor systems of data storage and retrieval may be costly to the company because it will require hiring more staff in order to manage the whole process incurring extra labor costs. This reduces the profits generated by the company.
- Businesses that employ poor data storage and retrieval systems provide hostile working environments for their employees because disorganized workplace affects workers causing stress and confusion. This means that performance will be quite low ultimately affecting the general productivity of the company.
- Use of poor data storage and retrieval systems also negatively influences company’s image since the customers view this as negligence and lack of interest in the general operation of the company. This makes the customers feel that the company is not concerned about its brand and the provision of quality service or goods (Prywes, 2010).
- Businesses with poor data storage and retrieval systems faced the challenge of fraud and theft cases as the money can be laundered from the company because no clear and effective record is kept in the business accounts. This may lead to profit decrease and wrong business decisions (Prywes, 2010).
- Ineffective processes of data storage and retrieval may lead to either slow delivery or provision of inaccurate information whereby clients may opt to shift to alternatives with better service in the long-run. For example, if banks had poor systems of retrieving data, then customers would spend days trying to access information about their accounts.
Plan on Data Quality Implementation
Improvement of data storage and retrieval system is achieved through the life cycle of data, which ensures the standard quality of data. During the initial stage of the life cycle of data, the model is defined, which involves the types of entities to be used, their respective attributes and domains. The next stage is model implementation that implies creation of a repository for physical data or an empty data bank. Further, the values of data are obtained, collected and filled into the empty data bank. A view is then defined and used to describe the portion of the data required for any application or customer. The retrieval stage implies easy data retrieval from the data bank. The data is then manipulated or processed using different methods, which include analysis, synthesis, classification and manipulation. Finally, analyzed data may be presented to the customer.
Quality Principles in the System
- The first principle is ensuring the quality of final products through rewording and inspection before they reach the customer. This will ensure that the final product maintains the quality standard set by the governing body and meets the expectations of the customer. Moreover, it ensures that company’s gain remains strong in the eyes of the customer, who ultimately makes the decision whether to buy the product or not.
- The second principle is eliminating the reasons that may hinder the process/sequence of production. In such a way, the system ensures that the final product meets quality demands of the market and minimizes the costs of production.
- The third principle aims at designing processes that eliminate defects during the production process, which ultimately ensures the quality of the final product. Through this design, companies save time and minimize costs preventing the instances when products have to be returned to the production line to fix their defects.
Storage Technologies that Will be Used in the System
Storage technology preferred in this system is the virtual storage system. This type of technology facilitates effective utilization of space (tape cartridges and storage disks) and improves functionality of storage systems (Klingler, 2012). The reasons behind choosing this storage technology lie in its advantages over other technologies. First, it enhances utilization of disks through pooling whereby a shared storage pool necessitates effective allocation of data by removing constraints of the storage capacity, which normally hinder applications’ performance (Gnanasundaram, Shrivastava, & Ebrary, 2012). Second, it allows data migration without any disruption while input/output access is maintained. Thus, moving or replication of actual data is still possible without any impact on the client. In addition, several storage devices are seen as a single one, which enables centralized management of data (Kusnetzky, 2011). Other advantages of this storage technology include reduced use of energy, enhanced speed of loading and backup, enhanced space in the disk. Moreover, it assists IT administrators in undertaking back up tasks easily and removes the need to purchase any software hence saving costs.
Electronic Information Preservation
The best electronic information preservation method is the administrative metadata, which is applied to contextual information that is required in understanding content’s authenticity and accuracy. Administrative metadata is mostly used to enhance the prospect of preservation through electronic record and thus, preserves and manages any electronic documents.
Search Facility and Need of the Searching Capabilities
The best search facility in this case is the archive, which generally searches for materials based on the information used to store that particular file, document or web snapshots. Thus, needed data or information should pop up easily after a short query, which can be one or a few keywords from the file, is written in the search box. This, in turn, triggers the search engine to show the results of not more than 20 pages starting with the file that has the most keywords in it. A search box is vital because it makes the whole process of data or information retrieval quicker and precise (Castillo & Baeza-Yates, 2012). People can acquire the information they need without wasting business time and thus, provide efficient customer service.
Effective search depends on having an organized data. As shown in the chart above, in web searches, for instance, only 30% of the total results are considered relevant.
Need for Web Crawling
A web crawler system is used to download pages from the web automatically, which follows a set of predefined rules. It extracts the pages and links and then indexes them providing fast searches while also reporting malicious links and errors found in coding or statistics (Castillo & Baeza-Yates, 2012). Thus, web crawling enables narrowing down the searches to specific file or information.
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Type of Mining to be Used in the System Usage Mining
The best type of mining in this system is the usage mining. It allows site administrators to acquire the data through promoting the ability to log in to the web servers and enrich the data provided through internal links’ instrumenting. This type of mining is better as compared to the rest because software packages enable Halicon to carry out an access log’s analysis and identify the browsing patterns of their customers (Castillo & Baeza-Yates, 2012). This particularly benefits the company as it can apply acquired information to improve its website design hence increasing their sales volumes and ultimately enhancing customer experience.