Ictbuild Ltd.is a medium-sized company that develops software and systems for use in the construction industry. It originated approximately 15 years ago as a founding company. After struggling to survive due to a period of national economic downturn, the company began to prosper and expanded rapidly from five employees to 30 employees and has continued to expand ever since. The company chairperson, its founder, is an entrepreneur with some construction industry knowledge but little computer expertise. In view of his character and past experiences, great value is placed on the sales staff. These staff travel to clients offices giving demonstrations and all have portable PCs and mobile phones. Most of the construction information is graphical in nature and, therefore, the sales staffs also carry portable digitisers.
The research and development staffs are predominantly involved in developing and maintain software that is specific to construction industry applications. The team has for many years used networks.
Ictbuild also employs several technicians who install software on existing client hardware or on proprietary PCs and networks that are delivered as a complete system to the client. A large proportion of the company's income is from the maintenance contracts that they encourage clients to take out and from revenue generated by upgrading their Ictbuild software. The company also employs a small number of construction industry specialists. These staff forms a buffer between the sales staff, who generate ideas for new products and features, and the programmers, who transform the ideas into reality.
Ictbuild also makes use of large proprietary databases of building component descriptions and costs for use by quantity surveyors and estimators. Ictbuild's clients using these pay for a licence from the copyright owners (not Ictbuild) to make use of them.
Issues
Remote Working - some people wants to work at home, I think there is a problem there because if you let them work at home I'm sure that everyone would want to and there'd be no one at the company working. I don't think they should let people work at home unless they are having a health condition which makes them not able to come to work, that would be an exception. What would be the use of renting a place for the company when everyone is working from their homes.
Software Manager - Since the previous software manager resigned and is now going to take up a senior position in a rival company, I don't think that this should affect the work here in the company. Everyone should be working the same way as before. Though the previous manager was the sole owner of much key information, I think that people here in the company can change and use that information to try to make things better at the company.
Traffic - staffs are stuck in traffic on the way to work, well this wastes time and I think the staffs should at least try to leave to work earlier so that they won't get stuck in traffic if they know what time the traffic jam usually is.
Website - not having a website is a loss in this age. This age is the IT age and everyone is working with computers and using the Internet. By having a website I think the company will build up its image and prosper in the next few years.
2.
Well possible design approaches for developing this website, you can use many web producing applications but I will be using Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 to develop the web pages. You can also choose if you would like to develop the webpage in different types of formats such as .ASP, HTML, PHP. The most secure will be PHP but as samples I will show you with HTML since it will be quick and easy.
Below are Sample design webpages, it is just a rough design of how the page will be designed , it is nothing fancy or full with details, it's just the outline.
This is the login page where staff members would need to enter their ID numbers and passwords in order to login and update information or check information. By having this system, staffs would be able to login from out of office and from at home. This would be very convenient for them.
Here, when staffs after login, when they need to have conference remotely with clients, they can choose from the client names of available client names and offline or online will light up when they choose the name to see if they are able to chat or not.
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Here, clients can enter their problems and submit them. After a few hours they will get a reply from the enquiry team and see the solutions that they gave.
Set Up and development costs
- Payroll (8 Employees) $ 4,000
- Marketing and Strategic Alliances $ 1,000
- Tech/Equipment/Start-Up $ 2,000
- G & A $ 15,000
- Total $ 1,200,000
Development
main page $500
Graphic design $100
Multi-media $25
Maintenace $50/month
Website hosting $20/month + $80 intern fee
Statistical report $120
Training $80/session
Consultation free
Database
For database you can choose from different database programs, the mostly used ones are MS ACCESS and SQL Database.
I would choose to use the SQL Database, it is more professional like and secure. Below is just a sample that I produced in the MS WORD just to show you what data would be in the database.
Users
Column Name
Data Type
User ID*
nchar
First Name
varchar
Last Name
varchar
Age
varchar
Gender
varchar
Date of birth
smalldatetime
Address
varchar
Phone
varchar
varchar
passwords
varchar
Item Table
Column Name
Data type
ItemID
char
ItemType
varchar
ItemName
varchar
ItemCategory
varchar
ItemPrice
varchar
No. of items in stock
varchar
Produced date
smalldatetime
Guarantee valid date
smalldatetime
Staff Table
Column Name
DataType
StaffID
nchar
SFirst Name
varchar
SLast name
varchar
Position
varchar
Date of entry
Smalldatetime
Date retired
Smalldatetime
Date resigned
Smalldatetime
Department No
varchar
Video Conference Table
Column Name
Data Type
VID
Nchar
Name
Varchar
Number of times conf
varchar
Registered Confirm
varchar
