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Case Study: Acme Trading Place.Background:
Acme Trading Place (ATP) is a business that is two years old and has brokers that buy and sell collectables such as stamps, coins and jewellery. They do this trading through portals such as Ebay and Greys Online and part of the brokers job is to choose the best portal for an item, the listing price and reserve in negotiation with the customer and the length of time the item would be listed for.They list the items for sale under their own name and they earn income by taking 20% of the sales price as a commission. Before an item is put up for sale the item is brought in by the customer and then ATP will post to the purchaser.
Currently they have five brokers who each store their own record of sales in their own way. Some brokers use spreadsheets, some a database and others pen and paper records. Each broker considers different data to be worth saving. The brokers have seen this data as an important asset which belongs to them and gives them a competitive advantage. They are paid a base salary, plus 5% of the sales price of the item.
ATP has been growing strongly and they are planning to hire five new full-time brokers. They are also investigating using part-time brokers who will work from home who will be supervised by a full-time broker and known as associate brokers.
ATP has become concerned that they are not gaining a benefit from the data generated from each sale and are beginning to recognize that the ability to aggregate and analyse all the item data would add value. The existing brokers are concerned about this idea as they see how they use their data as driving the commission they earn.
ATP gets its business in one of several ways: Customers respond to advertisements placed by ATP in specialist magazines and websites orcustomers contact ATP because of recommendations from past customers. ATP wants this information stored as part of the customer detail. More than one customer may own an item for instance an expensive coin may be owned by two or more people.
When customers initially make contact with ATP, they are asked to complete a questionnaire detailing their name, address, email and phone contact details. They also need to state their bank account details so that ATP can deposit the proceeds from the account. This account information will change from time to time.
Once the items have been deposited at ATP, they are photographed, logged and placed in ATP’s secure storage. The storage area is looked after by two staff and once an item is sold and paid for they pack and send the item. It is very important that the items are tracked accurately once they have been received and that the photographs and customer details are clearly associated with the item. Currently, a broker comes out to the counter to receive the item and negotiate with the seller about the selling price. This means that a broker is interrupted many times a day to go to the counter and receive items. Multiple items from one customer may be included in one listing.
Once an item is sold an email report is sent to the seller with details of the sale price. Once the item is paid for another email is sent to the seller to inform them. The buyer pays the purchase price for the item into a trust account run by ATP. Three working days after the item was paid for by the buyer, proceeds of the sale are paid to the seller. The trust account must be able to be balanced at any time. ATP want to retain for each sale, the broker, customer, item number, sale amount and purchaser details.