Hodges, Ryan
 
 
U.S. Cellular Agent Sale Tracking Database

Ryan Hodges

May 2003

Advisor: Charles Massey


 

Overview: Cellular resellers called agents resell the service and phones of U.S. Cellular.  Since they are independently owned and operated they do not have access to company software to track their commissions, inventory, or recurring revenue. This project?s purpose was to create a database application that will allow agents to track their inventory and commissions independently of their parent company.  The fact that no written policies or procedures as to how phone rebates (commission) were calculated became one of apparent challenges.  Price matrices issued at non-standard 2 to 4 week intervals were the only way that agents could determine what price they should sell their equipment to customers.
 

Process: The focus of this project was developing a solution to the price matrix problem and finding the right table design to store and calculate the data appropriately.   Since these phone rebates depend on which phone is purchased, which plan the customer signs up for, and what date it is purchased. The final design relies heavily on views and a code module that assigns points to transactions based on several factors that determine the appropriate rebate.
 

Conclusion: This project shall be beta tested at one agent location and then considered for implementation across many agents through a web interface.  I enjoyed the design and problem solving portion of this project the most.  The user interface proved to be much more troublesome due to many quirks and limitations of Microsoft Access.