He solved his textbook problem when he was at the University of Oklahoma by assembling and publishing a customized book of several authors' writings on the subject. He is expanding the course into a complete semester and offering it to Krannert School undergraduates. Students will also get an introduction to the economics, marketing and logistics of online commerce. The students locate clients on their own. Students will not automatically decide to take their clients' businesses online.
Economic feasibility is a major factor throughout the students' consulting exercises.
That is often the case, according to Mejias. If a new e-commerce system is needed, the student teams' real work begins. They'll also design a new working Web page for the business. Design considerations may include a backup and firewall for the whole system they design, something that Mejias says many businesses overlook, leaving themselves vulnerable to loss of irreplaceable data. At the end of the semester, the student teams will present their analyses and Web-data infrastructure design to the class, often with the business clients present.