Group Assignment: Post # 2

A

B

C

As the Grid shows, report A can help the company to find out the average price which people are easily to accept.

Also, we can see the price trend is moving downward. This may due to vigorous competition in the internet industry.

Report B shows the growth rate in different products in different country. The marketing department can base on this report to do different marketing strategic.

In report C, the company will know the most popular product in different country. This is the easiest way for buyer to merchandise the product in the next year.

Answer 3.
A growing business of a company brings lots of effects with it and huge amount of data that needs to be stored and tracked is one of them. So, in order to deal with this data, new and sophisticated methods of data processing are required and OLAP or as others say, "On Line Analytical Processing", is one of them.

OLAP stands for “On Line Analytical Processing is a class of software technology that allows managers, executives and analysts to gain insight into information that has been transmuted from raw data through different ways. For example, trend analysis, planning, simulating, and budgeting. What makes OLAP stand out is its ability to perform multi-dimensional calculations, thus allowing wide variety of reports.

As we all know, the number of marketing reports increase as the size of the business grows and this is where multi-dimensional calculations helps. OLAP services online demo is a configured database which exerts a multi-dimensional model. This model can intricate analytical queries with a rapid execution time. The main component of OLAP is the OLAP server which is a high capacity, multi-user manipulation engine designed to operate multi-dimensional data and it sits between a client and database management systems or DBMS. An OLAP server is designed to support fast extemporized information in any alignment and also designed for rapid calculations.
Following are some of the benefits of OLAP -

1. The main benefit of the OLAP is its steadiness in calculations. OLAP can handle large quantity and fast speed data transmission through its own server and supportive software.

2.Another benefit of OLAP is its consistency of calculations. Reports are always presented in a coherent prensentation through the OLAP server or software. All data and graphs can be easily followed through by company's executives adn analysts. This is especially helpful when comparing information from previous reports to information contained in new ones and projected future ones. "What if" scenarios are some of the most popular uses of OLAP software and are made eminently more possible by multidimensional processing.

3. Another benefit of multidimensional data presentation is that it allows a manager to pull down data from an OLAP database in broad or specific terms. In other words, reporting can be as simple as comparing a few lines of data in one column of a spreadsheet or as complex as viewing all aspects of a mountain of data. Also, multidimensional presentation can create an understanding of relationships not previously realized. All of this, of course, can be done in the blink of an eye. (Reference from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-olap.htm, http://www.tech-faq.com/olap.shtml)

Group Assignment: Post # 1

(1) Blog : http://blog.mingpao.com/cfm/index.cfm

This is a blog of Ming Po, reader can share their topics, comments and experience regarding to any hot article in the blogs. It's more convenience and efficient mehtod for company to build up the communication channel with the public. Also Ming Po can capture different class of people through online market in order to increase their sale volume.

(2) Interactive Advertisment : http://travel.hk.msn.com/

The colume of Msn travel is a place that introducing the update travelling news to people.
we can find that it provide a platform to some airline, hotel, or travel agent such as dragon airline to introduce their package through this interactive advertisment.

(3) Search Engine :http://search.sina.com.hk/


Sina is a popular search engine in mainland china and Hong Kong. Through this engine,
company can put ads on it and receive a share of the revenue generated by each qualified click on the ads. According to the above pic, company such as some wedding photographer (Simon the Photo) and restaurant (彩福 ) most likely do that. Once customers type the keywords of "wedding", their ads will be showed at the top or at the left hand side of the first page.
This easy attracts people attention to click their link for further informations. As a result there is a respectable feeback return because of it's world wide network.

(4) Online partnerships or affiliate marketing: http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/index.htm

Affliate marketing is a business relationship or an affiliation with a merchant or other service provider who allows you to link to that business. When a visitor clicks on the link usually containing your personal code/id from your site or advert and subsequently makes a purchase from the merchant, you receive a commission based on the amount of the sale. Openrice wedsite is a good example. It's provide a platform for restaurant to introduce their shop or promotion. Also, when people join the memebership of openrice, they can enjoy the discount and
Cupon. It would be a good marketing strategy for both of them and company can see the results by taking ads in openrice.
(Ref from http://hk.knowledge.yahoo.com/question/?qid=7007050704983)

(5) RRS: http://news.yahoo.com/rss

Web publishers use RSS to easily create and distribute news feeds that include links, headlines, and summaries. The Christian Science Monitor, CNN, and CNET News are among the many sites that now deliver updated online content via RSS. Yahoo! News is offering many feeds in the RSS format. The feeds are free of charge to use for individuals and non-profit organizations for non-commercial use.

(6) Social Network: http://www.facebook.com/

Facebook is a social networking website launched on February 4, 2004.The free-access website is privately owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. Also Facebook included Flickr which asks photo submitters to organize images using tags (a form of metadata), which allow searchers to find images related to particular topics, such as place names or subject matter. Nowadays, many companies started to develope a new media channel by posting ads in facebook. KLM Airline is one of the example, their flights routing are expanded all over the world, through posting ads in facebook, they can serve and capture different country, different culture people in order to reduce the advertising cost.

(7) Gadget: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/sidebar-gadgets.aspx

Gadgets are easy-to-use mini programs that give you information at a glance and provide easy access to frequently used tools. Windows Sidebar helps you to organize your gadgets such as clock , weather, calculator, calender, dictionary...it's more convenient and user friendly.