S/EI/16. Dissertation. EXPLORING M-COMMERCE ON THE .NET FRAMEWORK

This project investigates M-Commerce in light of the .NET Framework. The early chapters include substantial research into Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and in particular, Sales Force Automation. The report uncovers a common problem affecting this field which is that sales representatives, while on the road, are isolated from back-end systems. This means that they must collect orders on paper and then input the sales data into the company database back at the office. The result of the project is the development of a Mobile Application, running on a PDA device, which allows field salespeople to access back-end company data Ëwhile on the road. It also enables him/her to make sales, collect CRM information, and transfer this data to the office (SQL Server database) within seconds. The report contains a detailed walkthrough of the design and development stages of the software. At the end, thorough system and usability tests are conducted and final conclusions are drawn. An extensive discussion of the .NET framework together with the .NET Compact Framework is also included.