Tarsam needs to make this a very high priority to gain the trust of their customers, and the credibility to win new prospects over to purchasing from then. There are three approaches the company can take to accomplish this.
The first option is to create a self-managed Web content management system that Tarsam completely creates on their own. Defining a system administrator for it, the it aspects of the system would be managed internally. A marketing manager or supervisor would be given responsibility for keeping the content from consumer products manufacturers current. The data from manufacturers would be sent via Federal Express or comparable courier. This approach would be well-suited for the remote locations of the chain. The design and implementation of a Web content management system designed to educate and inform must be agile enough to respond to many departments' needs while having a consistent approach for integrating the latest information available (Pennington, 2007). This is a low-cost option yet extremely slow by standards of consumer electronics retailing today (Jong, Wu, Li, 2011). Tarsam also needs a Web content management system and learning system to create greater communication and collaboration across these departments. One of the best approaches to defining how these various systems will work in conjunction with each other is to define a value stream map of processes across each, highlighting the integration points and required system inputs and connection points (Goodwin, Burford, Bedard, Carrigan, Hannigan, 2006).
The second approach is to create a Web-based application in HTML that can integrate to the specific websites of consumer products manufacturers and screen scrape the specific product information of interest. Screen scraping is a common technique of Web...
This approach is also very low-cost yet also very resource-intensive to keep current and updated with the best possible information (Jong, Wu, Li, 2011).
The third proposal is to partner with Salesforce.com or comparable company to create a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based portal or platform that can support real-time updates of content from all the consumer electronics manufacturers that Tarsam sources products from. A SaaS-based web portal gives Tarsam the flexibility of defining the Web content interface, learning systems, metrics and scalability to have their knowledge management systems in every store on a 24/7 basis in addition to tailoring learning systems for their employees so they can continue learning even on their own time. The SaaS platform has emerged as the dominant platform for managing Web content management systems in retailing due to the speed of new product introductions and quickness of product updates (Lam, Lo, 2009). The limitations of this approach are the need for integration with consumer electronics manufacturers, the need for ensuring Internet access is always available, and the need for ensuring Web-based server software is updated on the hosting servers. Fortunately SaaS vendors are stepping up their efforts in this area and keeping systems updated with the latest configurations of their software.
Recommendation
Based on the diverse needs of Tarsam and the tendency of all retailers to experience a high level of worker churn, while also needing to support a rapid pace of new product introductions, it is recommended that the company choose a SaaS-based Web content management system. Tacit and implicit knowledge of employees
