The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), spread ...



The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), spread out over 419 acres in the heart of the nation's second-largest city, boasts nearly 35,000 undergraduate and graduate students who attend more than 2,000 courses a year in the university’s 81 academic departments. Many campus services—including the student paper, special events, restaurants and stores—are provided by Associated Students UCLA (ASUCLA), an independent, not-for-profit entity. ASUCLA must be self-supporting, making enough money from its retail operations to fund its student-related activities. Recently, with development assistance from AMULET Consulting, ASUCLA mounted an aggressive Web-based expansion of its retail stores, building an ambitious series of electronic commerce sites based entirely on Microsoft® digital nervous system technology.

At the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), a mixture of essential student services-from campus restaurants and book stores to the Student Union and the Daily Bruin newspaper—, are operated by Associated Students UCLA (ASUCLA). ASUCLA is an independent, not-for-profit entity that exists solely to serve the needs of UCLA students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends. It is a huge operation. The UCLA Store alone has the highest sales volume of any college store in the United States, generating $50 million to $60 million annually.

As part of its grant of authority from the university, ASUCLA must support itself from revenues generated in its retail operations, food services, and other business enterprises. Faced with some tough economic conditions in the mid-1990s, ASUCLA looked for creative ways to boost revenues.

“The campus is a fixed market that’s hard to expand,” explains Steve San Marchi, chief information officer for ASUCLA. “Brick and mortar are expensive. We saw the Web as a way to serve both our campus and alumni communities that would get us out into the world inexpensively. And considering that UCLA was the site of the first Internet connection, added to the high percentage of Web literacy on college campuses, we felt as if our constituency really demanded that we establish a strong Web presence.”

ASUCLA created the UCLAStore Web site (uclastore.ucla.edu), where users can purchase items ranging from a UCLA sweatshirt to textbooks. ASUCLA first automated BearWear (a themed clothing store), followed by textbooks (including textbook requisitioning) and an extremely ambitious online general-interest book store called the BookZone, on which it worked with Dan Gutierrez, president of AMULET Consulting. Soon, the UCLA Graduation Store and Computer Store will be automated on the Web, too. For all these projects, ASUCLA is betting the UCLAStore Web site on Microsoft® Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition 3.0, and other Microsoft BackOffice® family products.

Putting Faith in Microsoft BackOffice

ASUCLA needed to streamline its earlier mixture of UNIX and Microsoft Windows NT® Server operating system platforms to a single platform for its Web site. It decided to focus on the Microsoft BackOffice family of products, including Microsoft Windows NT Server with Internet Information Server (IIS), Microsoft SQL Server™, and Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition 3.0. “Looking at our crystal ball, we thought that Windows NT Server would be more pervasive in the future, it was certainly easier to use, and that Microsoft would likely expand its platform at a much more rapid rate than UNIX would,” says San Marchi. “We felt there was a better match for us with the Microsoft environment and that it would serve us better in the future.”

The BearWear portion of the UCLA Web site, which markets clothing and other items with the UCLA or Bruin emblems, was a “pretty straightforward” site to develop. The textbook site presented a few more challenges because it is built with various algorithms to ensure that the supply of textbooks is appropriate to meet the first-day enrollment of each class. BookZone, however, was a different story. “ASUCLA’s goal was to offer all books in print on its BookZone site,” says AMULET’s Gutierrez. “From a development standpoint, the most crucial criteria for the BookZone site was the HTML form that lets users search by title, author, publisher, subject, and so on—and to deliver a multisecond response time based on any query to the site. Some people questioned whether Microsoft SQL Server was up to the task.”

Designing the BookZone Site

ASUCLA’s in-house team of HTML developers designed the front end for the BookZone site. This team also did the script programming for Microsoft Site Server Commerce Edition, which was the basis of all the electronic commerce sites. It was up to Gutierrez to handle the back-end portion, specifically the large database of two million books in print, with the added requirement of very fast response times.

After doing some preliminary specs, Gutierrez set out to design the BookZone database structures that would support everything that ASUCLA had in mind. Using Microsoft Access as the modeling tool to build the databases, he “played with the model for a couple of weeks until everybody was able to sign off on it,” he says. Gutierrez then used the Microsoft Access Upsizing Wizard to convert the database from Access format to Microsoft SQL Server tables, preserving all the data types, lengths, indexes, and relationships.

“The multisecond response time was a mission-critical requirement for the BookZone site,” says Gutierrez. “If we couldn't achieve this goal, people using the site would view it as a joke. With a budget far below that of the big commercial book sites, such as or , we were able to deliver comparable response times, using off-the-shelf Microsoft software. I thought that was a great achievement.”

To populate the SQL Server database from a number of data sources, such as from various publishers and book fulfillment houses, AMULET wrote the software in the Microsoft Visual Basic® development system. “The Visual Basic software inputs from a number of very diverse sources on a nightly batch update, then pulls in all the updated book information, including new books and books that go out of print, and updates SQL Server dynamically,” says Gutierrez. “This way, the BookZone site keeps up with what the publishers are doing, which is important.”

ASUCLA’s Hardware Environment

The ability to use hardware that delivers power affordably, and that is easy to scale, was a big reason that ASUCLA chose to build its technology around Microsoft BackOffice software. “We’re concerned about 7x24 operation, so we have some pretty high-scale hardware equipment plus many layers of backup,” says San Marchi. ASUCLA’s IIS Web server is a Hewlett-Packard dual Pentium Pro 200 with a single processor on it, along with 128 MB of RAM, and 4 GB of hard disk storage. The SQL Server database runs on a HP Pentium Pro quad with two Pentium Pro 200 processors, 512 MB of RAM, and 17 GB of hard disk storage. The development servers act as back-up production machines, configured so they can physically perform production work in an emergency. They are smaller machines running Pentium 166 processors, but with the large database hooked to them so they can function as back-ups. ASUCLA even has back-up development workstations, which lack the high-end capabilities of the other systems, but which would enable developers to do their work if their machines were commandeered for production for any length of time.

“We believe we can scale these machines to 2 GB RAM and, with our current configuration, go up to 54 GB of disk space, which we believe is more than we’ll need,” says San Marchi.

BearWear Already Certified as Successful

Even during the relatively short duration of its operation, the UCLAStore Web site has been a big success for ASUCLA. . San Marchi states that “BearWear is a profitable Web site in pure dollar terms, and has been profitable for a number of months.” ASUCLA sees the BearWear Web site as a way to “…reach beyond the UCLA campus to serve our alumni and friends throughout the world,” says San Marchi. “Our theory is we’re reaching out to people we weren’t able to reach before.” In addition, ASUCLA expects that over time, the BearWear Web site will reduce mail order costs by reducing or eliminating catalog costs.”

The BearWear Web site also enables ASUCLA to respond much more quickly to marketing challenges, such as preparing for bowl games at the end of football seasons—traditionally a big sales opportunity for the emblematic products offered through BearWear. Last year UCLA was in the Cotton Bowl, but the Cotton Bowl teams were selected so late that it left very little lead-time for marketing. “We didn’t have time to do any mailings, but with the Web site, we included a whole Cotton Bowl section and were able to take advantage of that very limited window to generate some decent revenues,” San Marchi says.

Textbook Site Simplifies Life for Faculty, Students

ASUCLA’s textbook site has two faces: one that lets faculty and class coordinators requisition textbooks and the other that lets students buy textbooks. The text requisition application was automated in January 1998.

Functioning like a shopping basket, the textbook site lets faculty build electronic requisitions by selecting books based on historical information (for example, what textbooks were used in the past for a given course), by searching for specific or new books, or even by typing in hard-to-find or small-run textbooks. Electronic textbook requisitions offer tremendous advantages over the previous, “archaic manual methods,” says San Marchi. “You can’t write down a wrong book title, ISBN, author, and so on, because all that information is in front of you. As you build the requisition, it automatically integrates with other functions, such as putting copies of books on reserve in the library, finding course readers, assembling related supplies, and ordering a desk copy for the books that faculty use in their classes.”

Completed electronic requisitions go to the ASUCLA’s BackOffice facility, where the order is checked, confirmed, and released into the purchase order system. “The old paper-based system was fraught with mistakes, which sometimes resulted in the wrong books being ordered,” says San Marchi. “That’s much harder to do with the electronic requisitioning. In addition, to the extent that you can be more precise in your requisitions, you’ll lower the cost of your operations. It’s too soon to quantify the benefits, but so far the textbook Web site looks very, very positive.”

As for students, they will be able to go to the Web site to see the textbooks required for each of their classes. They can either order the textbooks online (in many cases) or go to the on-campus textbook store.

BookZone Well on its Way

ASUCLA’s BookZone site enables any Web user, anywhere in the world, to order any book in print. “Yes, we’re taking on the world, but we’re trying to build an electronic book store with an academic and UCLA bent,” says San Marchi. “If someone in the Midwest wants a general-interest book, they might be able to get it cheaper and faster somewhere else. But if somebody’s looking in an academic area, or for books written by UCLA faculty, or about areas of particular UCLA expertise—things more in tune with our faculty/staff focus—we feel that BookZone has a niche advantage of better selection and faster fulfillment.”

An unexpected benefit of the BookZone Web site has been increased sales in UCLA’s physical bookstores. “BookZone has driven a lot more business to the stores,” San Marchi says. “When people check the site, they see book availability at any of our stores. People don’t necessarily want to wait for a book, and they often simply pick it up from the UCLA Store on their way home.”

Recent Developments

ASUCLA has upgraded to SQL Server 7.0 improving their response time by as much as 65%. Sales in BearWear have increased more than four fold over last year.

The full service Graduation and Computer Stores have been recently implemented. This Graduation Store is one of the few Web sites that actually manufactures a product —graduation announcements.

The Future: Integration and Propagation

“Our mission is to be a full-service electronic commerce solution provider for the academic community,” says San Marchi. ASUCLA is concentrating on further integration within the UCLA community.

“We plan to provide links for campus entities to improve the level of service to students, faculty, and staff,” says San Marchi. For example, a student can go to the UCLA school Web site, see a schedule of classes, click on the classes of interest, and immediately see the books for that class. ASUCLA is also in the process of integrating with “My UCLA,” a custom home page for every student, so students can go directly from their own page to the books they need, without any intermediary steps. Similarly, the textbook requisition process will integrate the faculty and the text book buyers to ensure that the right books, in the right quantities, are available at the right time. “It’s a synergistic view of academic solutions,” says San Marchi.

“ASUCLA has developed a suite of profile-driven applications tailored to meet academic needs—and with the idea that other schools can use these capabilities,” says San Marchi. “We are a service provider for other schools, where through school-specific profiles we can customize our electronic commerce Web sites for any school. Our model is to provide turnkey electronic commerce solutions, complete with administrative front end and a fulfillment back end. We see these services as a natural extension of our Microsoft BackOffice-driven Web site capabilities and another source of revenues over time. Currently, we are leading in conjunction with the Titan Shops of California State University Fullerton and San Francisco State University Bookstore, a California Association of College Stores initiative College Store Technology Partners to provide academic and electronic commerce services to institutions of higher education in California.”

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Solution Overview

Industry

University Services Provider

Scenario

Commerce: direct Direct mMarketing, sSelling, and sServices

Microsoft Software Products

Microsoft Access 97

Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0

Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 3.0

Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition 3.0

Microsoft SQL Server 7.0

Microsoft Access 97

Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0

Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0

Hardware

Dual Pentium Pro 200 MHz processor-based servers with

128-512 MB of RAM and

4-17 GB of hard disk storage

Microsoft Services

Microsoft Premier Support

Partner

AMULET Consulting

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For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products or services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada information Centre at (800) 563-9048. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information via the World Wide Web, go to:



http:// uclastore.ucla.edu

© 1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, BackOffice, Visual Basic, and Windows NT are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

1098

“With a budget far below that of the big commercial book sites, such as or , we were able to deliver comparable response times, using off-the-shelf Microsoft software. I thought that was a great achievement.”

Dan Gutierrez

President

AMULET Consulting

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