FARESHARE: SAAS IMPLEMENTATION AT NGO's
SAAS IMPLEMENTATION AT FARESHARE
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Introduction
The world has rapidly moved to a paperless environment with the advent of the computer and now the cyber world is taking over where individuals, groups and corporate have recognised the internet as the next big thing. The advent of Web 2.0 technologies has been instrumental in the shift away from standalone desktops and workstations to a virtual platform that exists in cyberspace. This shift has given rise to a virtual space for users to get connected, develop applications and share information.
In this report we wish to elaborate on our efforts to provide a company, namely Fareshare, with an online platform to interact with its partners and everyone associated with it. To give a brief outline, Fareshare is a non-profit organisation providing charities with quality food that would otherwise have been wasted by big retail outlets and super markets. The organisation aims to tackle two major issues namely food poverty and food waste, by spreading the slogan “no good food shall be wasted.”
Problem Identification:
Fareshare is spread across sixteen locations in the U.K. We visited the office in Birmingham, where we discussed with Mr. Clive Litchfield, the Administration Officer at Birmingham, the working of the organisation. The Birmingham Office had tied up with over fifty charities based in Birmingham and provided them with food, on demand provided they had stock. On the supply side, they tied up with Sainsbury’s, a well known mega retail store that agreed to provide free food, a week or two before the “expiry date” which would otherwise head for landfill.
Now the problem we identified here was that being a small organisation, Mr Clive was required to take inventory of the stock and personally feed it into his system every morning. Then the rest of his morning went in calling these charities and reading out the entire inventory and taking the order for every single
____________________________________________
Introduction
The world has rapidly moved to a paperless environment with the advent of the computer and now the cyber world is taking over where individuals, groups and corporate have recognised the internet as the next big thing. The advent of Web 2.0 technologies has been instrumental in the shift away from standalone desktops and workstations to a virtual platform that exists in cyberspace. This shift has given rise to a virtual space for users to get connected, develop applications and share information.
In this report we wish to elaborate on our efforts to provide a company, namely Fareshare, with an online platform to interact with its partners and everyone associated with it. To give a brief outline, Fareshare is a non-profit organisation providing charities with quality food that would otherwise have been wasted by big retail outlets and super markets. The organisation aims to tackle two major issues namely food poverty and food waste, by spreading the slogan “no good food shall be wasted.”
Problem Identification:
Fareshare is spread across sixteen locations in the U.K. We visited the office in Birmingham, where we discussed with Mr. Clive Litchfield, the Administration Officer at Birmingham, the working of the organisation. The Birmingham Office had tied up with over fifty charities based in Birmingham and provided them with food, on demand provided they had stock. On the supply side, they tied up with Sainsbury’s, a well known mega retail store that agreed to provide free food, a week or two before the “expiry date” which would otherwise head for landfill.
Now the problem we identified here was that being a small organisation, Mr Clive was required to take inventory of the stock and personally feed it into his system every morning. Then the rest of his morning went in calling these charities and reading out the entire inventory and taking the order for every single
References: Accounts APIs, AuthSub for Web Applications, http://code.google.com/apis/accounts/docs/AuthSub.html [accessed 17/04/2010] Armbrust, M et al , Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing, February 10, 2009