[418] in magellan
Online Credit Card Processing Project Report, 3/15/2000
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lorraine J. Rappaport)
Wed Mar 15 18:39:08 2000
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Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 18:38:41 -0500
To: magellan@mit.edu
From: "Lorraine J. Rappaport" <ljr@MIT.EDU>
Project Name: Online Credit Card Processing
Project Leader: Lorraine Rappaport
Report Date: 3/15/2000
URL: http://web.mit.edu/is/discovery/ccard
Accomplishments past period:
I. Deliverable 1: credit card processing software
- Had another preferred vendor crumble on us. (This is the second time
this has happened to us, and both times when we were near closing the deal.
In the first case, the vendor imposed terms that we felt were not in MIT's
best interests. In the second case, the vendor failed to deliver the
product in the timeframe they had originally promised.) We have a backup
plan, which we are now pursuing with gusto.
II. Deliverable 2: catalog development tool
- Investigated several vendors' offerings
- Held a focus group meeting with merchants interested in a catalog
development tool (separate from the payment engine that does credit card
verification and settlements) Collected their requirements and got
feedback on a couple products.
Goals for the coming period:
I. Deliverable I
- Verify fit of new-first-choice credit card processing software vendor and
determine whether they will in fact be our recommended product.
II. Deliverable 2
- Match merchant requirements and wish lists with product capabilities and
identify the vendor frontrunners. Solicit merchants' help to help narrow
down the list.
- Based on how the product recommendations sort out, we may need to verify
again that Deliverable 2 continues to integrate well with Deliverable 1 and
that our original design still works.
-Obtain any missing information, terms, etc. from vendors and others in
hopes of making a product recommendation(s) within the next 2-3 weeks.
Issues:
- Nothing new
Key learnings:
- Stanford was right: this is a huge undertaking (and they only tackled
the credit card processing piece!)
- The focus group was a good move. We learned some new things and
clarified some points we had heard previously. It was useful to have the
merchants in the same room; the interaction was very positive. I think the
participants also enjoyed hearing what the other groups had to say.
Team dynamics:
- Having no choice but to disqualify another credit card processing
software vendor at the 11th hour was a blow to morale. Yet again, we
thought we were sooooo close. We'll persevere, though.
Additional comments:
- None
