Web Development in Optimizing the Work of the Directory Enquiry, Essay Example

Abstract

This report presents a technical solution that can give the company Pharmacy new perspectives of development and a new lucrative market partially connected with e-commerce. Specifically, the solution will address the work of the directory enquiry and help reduce the overload and make the work more effective and promotional. We suggest launching Pharmacy business website which would allow clients to find necessary medications in the nearest drugstores and order them online. The website will also provide essential pharmaceutical news for the doctors and offer healthcare-related articles and forums. Technically, the solution is based on web development. It is advised that we the company turns to the services of a webmaster studio for designing the website which is described in detail both in terms of functions and technical basis.

Purpose of the Report

The purpose of this report is to suggest a technology-related solution that would facilitate the work of the directory enquiry service of the pharmaceutical company Pharmacy – a municipal drugstore network. The solution should reduce the overload on the directory enquiry staff as well as help customers easily and quickly find the necessary medications in the neighboring drugstores, give extra advertisement to the company and increase its popularity with city dwellers. We believe that developing a specialized website is a key to success in the area. In this report, we provide an overview of the benefits, possible problems and market trends associated with the use of website.

Background of the Company

The company Pharmacy has been in successful operation for the last four decades. We began with two comparatively small drugstores in the city centre and have today 17 drugstores in all the areas of the city including the suburbs. While 14 drugstores offer a general range of medications, 3 drugstores feature specialized assortment: a phyto drugstore offers low side-effect risk herbal medications which are popular in both conventional and alternative therapies, a prenatal and baby care drugstore has the whole range of remedies necessary for would-be and young mothers, and a specialized drugstore operates in the building of neurological clinic and offers mainly neurological medications for the patients of the clinic. Overall, Pharmacy works with approximately 20 thousand items.

In 1990, Pharmacy introduced a directory enquiry – a service which helped people find necessary medication in the drugstore of most convenient location. The directory enquiry works from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and is free to call. It is operated by two pharmacists and one physician answering calls. It soon became clear that the scope of services provided by the directory enquiry could not be limited to finding an item in the database and telling a client in which drugstore he / she should go. Not always having the time and opportunity to turn to their physicians, more and more people started calling the directory enquiry for medical consultation. Naturally, the directory enquiry personnel is by no means entitled to prescribe remedies, but the specialists working there can advise clients on simple immediate solutions and, if a case sounds serious, strongly recommend seeing a doctor and taking a responsible approach to one’s health. In addition, the directory enquiry often has to consult clients on reasonably priced variants of treatment offering standard analogies to the prescribed medications in case a client hardly can afford them. Doctors make an extensive use of the service getting updates on the availability of medications in the city and pharmaceutical innovations presented in the drugstores. Doing the job at the directory enquiry demands the highest professionalism and efficiency and can only be performed by specially trained medical specialists.

Discussion of Current Business Issues

The developing network of drugstores and the high quality of service offered by the directory enquiry enhanced its popularity so much that the personnel began to find it increasingly hard to cope with the overload. Their work is really stressful as it requires constant talking over the telephone with clients who often appear nervous either because of their physical state or because of their anxiety about the disease of a close person. In short, high professional requirements, stress and overload have made the job extremely demanding, which resulted in a considerable staff turnover. In this sphere, the turnover is especially dramatic since training a new employee can last for a few months. It is essential that part of the work of the directory enquiry be automated and the overload be reduced.

Research Findings

A website that would take on some of the functions of the directory enquiry (but not completely replace it) seems to us the most obvious and effective solution. The website has a number of advantages which account for its efficacy compared to other information sources. Apart from giving general information about the company, a specialized well-designed business website offers new perspectives of business development such as attracting customers, partners, and investors, establishing a successful image of the company, extending the market etc. It goes without saying that the website should be well-organized, respectable and easy to navigate because it would present our company just like any drugstore worker.

The website should have a user-friendly interface and feature the following services for the users:

• Information on each Pharmacy drugstore – its location, specialization (if any), and working hours.
• Search system. On entering the name of a medication and (optionally) the street / area of the city in which a customer finds it convenient to buy it, the search system should offer the address of the nearest Pharmacy drugstore. This service is expected to help reduce the overload of “simple cases” which do not require special consultation. The associated technical challenge is creating a working network including all the drugstores that would allow to register sold out and newly supplied items and enable constant updating of the database.
• Unless an article can be easily purchased from one of the drugstores, customers should be provided with an opportunity to order it online. After the article is made available in a drugstore, the customer should be informed about it either via telephone or via e-mail.
• The website can offer a growing collection of medical articles targeted at increasing health awareness of laypeople. Articles like that enjoy unflagging interest of the readers and enhance the popularity of the site.
• A number of health-related forums on which people would be able to share their experience and receive the consultation of a pharmacist or physician on medications are expected to attract even more customers. High professionalism of moderators and medical consultants is a must.
• This part is to be mainly concerned with pharmaceutical innovations presented in Pharmacy drugstores. It should be designed so that it would be informative and helpful for both patients and doctors.

What are the technical requirements for the proposed website?

Since the website should provide constantly updated information (the updates being the availability of particular articles in the network of drugstores), it should work directly with the administrative database allowing complete accounting. It should also register clients’ orders and convey them immediately to the operational body as well as maintain the search system, i.e. it should be interactive. It means that the website is to be dynamic, i.e. able to change and customize content automatically. The website will be based on server-side scripting. The supplied page source will be changeable between pages, which will enable to adjust the sequence of web pages or web content provided for the browser. The server receives the client’s request, processes the server-side script (for example, PHP based on the query string, cookies, HTTP POST data, etc.) and responses to it. Overall, the website may be created on one of the languages such as PHP, ASP, Perl, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, JSP and others which usually use the Common Gateway Interface.

The client will be able to view and navigate the site in the most popular browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. The client’s order will be transmitted to the database in the form of SQL query. The database may be organized on the basis of MySQL, SQL Lite, MS SQL etc. It sends data back to the server. The mechanism is represented on the attached scheme.

Such successfully operating business website would spare the directory enquiry staff the job of correlating orders and database updates.

Recommendations for the Executive Management Team

Summarizing the results of our findings, we suggest an overview of benefits and challenges associated with the introduction of a business website into the routine work of our company.

The scope of functions of the business website is presented in the table:

We can hardly expect the business website to completely replace the directory enquiry for a number of reasons. First of all, there is a significant category of clients who do not have constant access to computer and do not use the Internet. This category includes, for example, senior citizens who are less fluent in operating a computer than their younger counterparts. Moreover, many value the benefit of immediate consultation over the phone provided by our directory benefit and would not welcome the idea of leaving a post on a forum and waiting for an answer for hours or even days when it comes to illness or emergency. We receive great feedback from our clients who find the directory enquiry staff very helpful and sympathetic and cannot lose their trust. The role of the website, consequently, should be viewed as that of reducing the overload on the directory enquiry and attracting more customers via the Internet.

At first, the creating the website can hardly mean downsizing the company staff. We will require the services of webmaster studio and maintenance afterwards. Creating website content may appear even more demanding and require the work of a number of pharmacists and doctors of Pharmacy.

With proper promotion of the website such as search engine optimization, adding the link to the regional website portal etc., the whole project is expected to begin to pay off after several weeks after launching the website through increased sales. Time may pass before city dwellers who are used to our directory enquiry will discover the benefits of the website; moreover, as we have already mentioned, many may not finally opt for it remaining loyal to the directory enquiry. Still, launching the business website can open absolutely new perspectives for the company and allow it to work on a completely new level.

References

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Samtani, G., Sadhwani, D. (2002). B2Bi and Web Services. Retrieved June 5, 2009, from http://www.webservicesarchitect.com/content/articles/samtani02.asp

Samtani, G., Sadhwani, D. (2002). Web Services and Application Frameworks. Retrieved June 5, 2009, from http://www.webservicesarchitect.com/content/articles/samtani04.asp

W3C Working Group Note (2004). Web Services Architecture. Retrieved June 5, 2009, from http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-arch/