Background You are an IT consultant advising your client, Boffo Research, a rese

Question

Background

You are an IT consultant advising your client, Boffo Research, a research and advisory firm covering the consumer technology market sector. Boffo gathers its research data by manually collecting online reviews of consumer electronic products, scanning social media sites for consumer product reviews, publishing online surveys and recording results, performing interviews with consumer electronics vendors, and operating an in-house laboratory where consumer electronics are tested and the results recorded.

Boffo’s analysts then manually copy the results into spreadsheets; review and analyze data from these disparate sources; and prepare business intelligence reports on market trends, vendors to watch, product comparisons, and similar analyses. Boffo’s research clients include buyers for wholesale and retail establishments, and the product vendors themselves.

Boffo has a small in-house software development and testing team that maintains and enhances the accounting, order processing, and research subscription solutions they developed through the years.

Assignment

The explosive volume of new consumer electronic products, online reviews, and social media comments has overwhelmed Boffo’s manual data collection and integration approach. Boffo’s management has asked you to study how to automate collecting online data and integrating it into the structured data produced from in-house laboratory testing.

You plan to investigate commercial data virtualization solutions installed in house, open source alternatives for adoption and customization in house, and the purchase of a turnkey, custom-designed solution to be produced by offshore outsourcing vendors. Your deliverables for Boffo will include:

A solution-acquisition project plan covering the high-level activities of gathering requirements, producing a requirements specification document, and preparing and distributing a Request For Proposal (RFP) to data virtualization vendors and offshore outsourcing vendors.

A simple (3 pages maximum) Stakeholder Requirements Specification (StRS), as defined by Hoel, T., & Holtkamp, P. (2012). Requirements modelling in international information systems design - What competencies are needed and how to manage them? Proceedings Of The European Conference On Knowledge Management, 1, 466-475.

A set of data flow diagrams that describe the processes of capturing input data (including online reviews from websites, relevant tweets from Twitter, and the structured data from Boffo’s in-house laboratory), and the processes of integrating data from the input sources for use by Boffo’s research analysts.

A Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis comparing and contrasting the risks, rewards, and readiness of Boffo for each form of solution acquisition.

A three-year Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) study prepared in an Excel spreadsheet. Consider the costs of initial acquisition, implementation, testing, training, change management, maintenance, and enhancement. Include human resource expenses, and storage and server costs for development, test, and production environments for work performed in house.

Explanation / Answer

Boffo Research is an advisory research firm focusing on the consumer technology market sector. Boffo currently collects its data by manually inquiring and gathering online reviews and scanning social media sites relating to consumer electronic products, Boffo also publishes online reviews and records results, perform interviews with consumer electronics ventors, and operates an in-house laboratory for testing consumer electronics and recording the test results.

Project Overview

Boffo is developing an automated online data collecting system to gather research data of online reviews of consumer electronic products from various outlets such as social media sites, online surveys, video sources, and manufacturer product websites. Boffo has a small in-house software development and testing team that maintains and enhances the accounting, order processing, and research subscription solutions they developed through the years. The explosive volume of new consumer electronic products, online reviews, and social media comments has overwhelmed Boffo’s manual data collection and integration approach. Thus, Boffo’s management is currently seeking a system to automate collecting online data and integrating it into the structured data produced from in-house laboratory testing.

Services Required

The goal of the reviews data collection project is to obtain an accurate and complete reviews of electronic consumer products and build an automated system that can be integrated into the in-house structured database. The database shall be delivered as a relational database and shall be compatible with the current in-house software.

To that end, the Boffo seeks a contractor with established preceding experience to develop a comprehensive online review collecting solution that can be integrated into the in-house structured database. The contractor selected by Boffo shall have capable team member immediately available to initiate work on the following tasks within the required timeline.

Initial Assessment – Compile a comprehensive system assessment and database structures with the assistance of Boffo’s staff.
Desktop Applications Support – Perform elementary functions including installation of desktops, laptops, printers, and software. Diagnose and correct desktop application glitches, configure laptops and desktops for standard applications. Identify and correct hardware issues, and implement advanced troubleshooting.
Server Management Services – Manage computer network and associated hardware, software, and operating system necessary for the quality, security, performance, availability, recoverability, and reliability of the system. Monitor server performance and capacity management services. Ensure scheduled preventive maintenance for equipment is promptly performed; develop back-up plans and procedural documentation. (City Of Leavenworth, 2010)
              Integration:

The online data collecting application must use MySQL database and system software and be compatible with Windows operating systems.
A direct interface will be required between online and offline system.
Required capabilities:

User-friendly interface.
Have outstanding search tools that allow search for specific data in any primary field. Entries should be searchable by:
By product name
By manufacturer
By date released range
By website retrieved from
By product functions (e.g. cellular phone, laptops, televisions)
By price range
By popularity
Provide abilities to view, redact, print, send from and otherwise manage data that is stored in the system from an easy to use and easily understandable user interface.
Archive and retrieve data quickly even with a large amount of data in it.
Have redundancy built into the design.
Be scalable and allow for an anticipated triple data growth over the next five years.
Allow bulk import and export of data between databases.
Allow data to be exported based on search criteria.
Include robust reporting features.
Support multiple levels of security and audit trails.
Manage fully automatic archiving so that it doesn’t require action by Boffo’s staff.
Components:

Product information and specifications
Manufacturing company information
Review dates and site retrieved from
Social media comments and posts integrated
Merge in-house data from test laboratory
Downloadable product images
Project Kick Off

After contract signing, the selected development team shall work with Boffo Project Manager to plan and lead a kick off summit to discuss principal goals and objectives, project management, project communication, review data collection tasks and other concerns. Deliverables shall include, but not be limited to, draft and presentation materials and final meeting agendas and other comprehensive meeting follow-ups.

Evaluation Planning Assistance

The development team will support in designing and updating evaluation plans. Current evaluation plan is provided as reference in Table 2.

Table 2 (City Of Leavenworth, 2010)

At Boffo’s direction, the selected contractor shall work with evaluation contractors to update existing work plans, including incorporating any new approaches and schedules, and to help create new plans for features that do not yet have a documented evaluation approach. Boffo expects that all detailed evaluation plan updates and drafting will be completed within the given time of contract signing.

Deliverables shall consist of draft and final program-specific evaluation review data collection plans and budgets. During the course of the contractual agreement, the selected contractor shall remain engaged, as required by Boffo in general evaluation planning activities and in further updates to already determined evaluation plans as necessary. (Acquisition Central, 2014)

Review Data Collection Implementation

The selected contractor will perform review data collection work in four key areas in support of ongoing evaluations of Boffo’s current in-house system: (1) planning and design, (2) implementation, (3) documentation, and (4) analysis and reporting. Other activities related to review data collection may be requested by Boffo to meet the needs of program evaluation from time to time.

Deliverables include: Data coding, file layouts/formats, data files, review programming, pretest and weekly fielding status updates including disposition results by strata, and review retrieval tracking. (City Of Leavenworth, 2010)

Proposer Qualifications

Expertise and experience in collecting data from a wide variety of respondent populations must be demonstrated in the proposal. Proposals must also demonstrate overall technical expertise in review and interview guide design and development, and show an understanding of the application of review design principles related to the appropriate wording of review questions, length of reviews, review structure, etc.

The primary selected contractor of the team shall be responsible for maintaining continuous correspondence with Boffo and ensuring all deliverables applicable to the contract are provided to Boffo according to an approved time-line meeting quality standards.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse B
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.