Design of a Sales Support System

The Solution and Design team of Atos Origin TLJM, a company that develops CRM applications, would like to add an Internet-based sales support system for self-service to their software suite. This system should extend their existing ordering application with support for a short sales process suitable for ecommerce websites. This thesis describes the research that has been done in order to explore the possibilities of such a sales support system. The system has to support a range of devices, including PC, TV, mobile phone and PDA. The amount of personal data used has to be adjustable: the customer determines which personal data is used for the advice. The objective of the research in this thesis is to make a design and a prototype which can help Atos Origin TUM by building the system. The research and the design focus primary on the system's back-end, containing the business logic and the coupling with the front-end, which is responsible displaying the content on the user's device. The specific problem presented by Atos Origin TUM has been split up in two parts: the business aspects and the technical aspects. Both parts are studied in a context broader than just the sales support system, which has led to general solutions. The research concerning the business aspects has resulted in a short length sales process, which we call the Micro Funnel, suitable for e-commerce websites on various devices. The technical aspect of the research shows that the so called Message-based Model-View-Controller architecture is very suitable for systems that serve multiple devices over the Internet infrastructure. The solutions have partly been applied to the specific problem of the sales support system. For practical reasons part of the general solutions, have been replaced by our own design.