Back Office Processes

Examples of a back office processes are stock control and record keeping.

Back office processes are necessary because without them there wouldn’t be any system and the company would lose customers. They help the business to run efficiently. All of the processes are there to help the customer and make sure their goods are there on time and to help the company keep track of their customers.

Processes involved in stock control:
· Make sure that the items are in stock and available and you don’t sell the same item twice.
· This is a real time process – once an item is bought it is immediately taken off the list by a stock control system.
· At the centre of a stock control system would be a database because they can have all the items listed and all the fields related to that item – all relevant information about an item can be stored on a database such as how many are in stock.

Active Server Pages à the web page can access a database – it logs onto the database via the Internet. E.g. Amazon – when you go onto the site you are actually opening the page from a database. ASP code is run every time you click the ‘search’ button on a web page. The customer clicks on a search, the code sends and the answer is sent back as a web page.

On a web page the customer can usually see their virtual shopping basket and also the total price is given. You can add things to or take things out of the shopping trolley. Web sites such as Amazon store the information about your shopping basket over weeks or months.

· Items are added
· Prices are totalled
· Stock is reserved so that it is not sold twice
· Items can be removed
· Delivery costs may be added

HTTP Authentication and Cookie identification:

HTTP is like login and password – checks who you are
Cookie identification checks things like when you were last on, stored on your computers hard drive – a way of allowing you to go to a web site and it remembers you – e.g. change the colour scheme one time you go on it and then when you go back again it remembers.

Cookies don’t allow you to buy an item because just because it is the same computer as you used before doesn’t mean that you are using it – could be another person on the computer or could be public computer.

You can block cookies but this can cause problems because sometimes websites need cookies to work properly.

Advantagese of cookies:
Done without the user knowing - automatic way of tracking who they are and what they are doing and they don't have to be logged on for them to work.