The purposes of HOPE
HOPE is both a business goal and an acronym for Help for the One Person Enterprise.
The
goal of HOPE is to allow an entrepreneur to effectively operate a
business and to concentrate his or her time, and the time of the
business’ staff, on sales generation and customers.
In addition, HOPE provides management, both on-site and remote, the information needed to properly run the business. The
information HOPE provides is both more timely and more accurate than
casual observation or staff prepared reports. Further, HOPE allows
multiple simultaneous use of identical information.
HOPE is an extremely sophisticated set of computer programs, but their use is surprisingly easy. This outcome is because function is in large measure “automatic.” Rather
than trying to communicate all sorts of information to the users, and
forcing them to become “data entry” clerks, most of the hundreds of
programs involved communicate their information to each other. The entrepreneur and staff get only the targeted and tailored output needed for them to drive the business.
Main HOPE Features are as follows:
Ease of use, correctness, upgradeability, and accessibility.
HOPE Software is fully functional and integrated.
HOPE Software describes and reflects physical operations.
HOPE Software describes and reflects schedules.
HOPE Software provides accounting information.
HOPE Software describes results of activities.
HOPE Software provides interfaces to world.
HOPE
will work with multiple points of sale in one establishment (sometimes
called multiple registers), and consolidate these results prior to
consolidating the establishment's total results with other
establishments in a hierarchical chain.
To do so, HOPE runs programs on independent computers which are connected together by networks. Each computer works with its own database during its workday. After
the workday's end (or at a designated time on third shift for
twenty-four hour work stations, or Internet sites), the computers’
totals and database states are melded. The resulting summary database is placed in its updated form on each workstation in the network, as desired.
The
data to direct how these cross updates are performed is contained in
may be updated in the licensee maintenance program routines (such as
SETCLOK.EXE).
HOPE Internet Support
HOPE includes a full working Internet “store-front” to extend merchant sales. The results can be seamlessly combined with other sales efforts and results, as well as being examined separately. The
secret of allowing this is to have the HOPE “data base” of products or
services for sale, or any portion of it, exported and expanded using
Internet HTML notation to create a series of interactive Web pages to
allow shopping on line for customers.
The body of store Web pages can be “customized” to display any way desired. Each item for sale will be assigned an input type = text field. The
text input field records the quantity of the item that ordered. The
item is associated by its name with all of the specific item information
so that each client will be able to identify it in his or her “shopping
cart.” Each item may have user-configured options along with the basic
item information. Accordingly the shopper is presented with a variety of colors or sizes from which to choose. As indicated, web pages are created automatically, using the HTML format.
The
licensee can add extra custom fields by changing HTML to reflect new
fields. Note the potential to use options. The first part in this
process is to make sure that options are associated with items for sale.
Each item for sale may have several options associated with it. It is essential that they each get their own number. A standard page footer must appear on every HTML page. The
first two hidden input tags are specially tagged so that the scripts
will be able to identify them and substitute the tags for their actual
values depending on the client.
HOPE Statistics and Characteristics
HOPE Software - Over one million lines of code.
HOPE Software - Seven years in the writing; over ten years of field experience, testing and improvement.
HOPE is the only Enterprise Resource Management software actually written by a CEO.
HOPE Software is truly multi-functional and cross-functional. There are no “silos.”
The
design of HOPE Software is exceptionally modular, so that it can be
adapted to various businesses largely without code modification or
changes. For example, virtually all menu choices are external to the
code in text-based configuration files.
The
system can run on virtually any version of the Microsoft Windows
Operating System, on Linux, or on DOS. While modern computers can
improve its function, it will run on virtually any Intel or AMD based
computer of any vintage.
Summary
HOPE Software is perhaps the most revolutionary set of programs of the decade. A true “killer application.”