Reflective Writing of FSM4503 (6)

[Homework]

Today Dr Fareed is not with us but he has given a SCL homework for us to do it in the lab class. We are required to compare the website of Intekma Resort ( www.intekmaresort.com.my ) with the website of L' apprenti UPM. After that, suggest on what and how L' apprenti brand can learn or follow from Intekma Resort to promote the products. We have to write a maximum of 2 pages report based on the instruction above and send it to Dr Fareed. 

So, my group mate and I started to discuss this SCL at about 2.10pm. First of all, we had evaluated the website of Intekma Resort on their design, layout, arrangement and so on. We found out the strengths of the website which can be learned, followed or brought in by L' apprenti UPM on their website. Beside that, we also evaluated L' apprenti website and found out that there are a lot of improvement have to be done by them to promote their products and brand effectively. For example, we had suggested that L' apprenti UPM can learn and follow the website of Intekma Resort which is using e-commerce on their website to bring convenience to their customers. With the cooperation and ideas of every group member, we managed to finish the report in a short time. 

Through today's SCL, I realized that the website of a company have to be attractive to attract the potential customers as it acts as a marketing and advertising tool. Other than design of the website, the information provided have to be accurate and updated so that it will not give bad impression to the visitors who visit to the website. The website or Facebook page of a company have to be actively updated everyday to stay connected with their customers like what have done by Intekma Resort. In conclusion, for all these to be done, an IT expertise have to be hired to the company so that their website can be managed and controlled effectively. 

* A photo that shows the unattractive photos on the website on L' apprenti UPM and also the error description or labeling on the photo (the red velvet cake has been labeled wrongly with the name of "Tiramisu Cake"). 

Written by Khoi Zi Shen (172194)

Year 2, Sem 2, Bac. of Sc (Food Service Management).

Reflective Writing of FSM4503 (5)

[Homework]

It’s time to have a reflective writing about our lab class on every Thursday. Sorry Dr Fareed that I was late for submitting this fifth reflective writing.

First of all, our class started with the discussion of our GOMC project. We were required to prepare a pre-campaign draft report before the class started. So that Dr could check for the progressions of every group on GOMC project. After Dr had listed the important dates for submission of reports, he started to check everyone’s draft report one by one and help out everyone in their reports.

For our group, we met the difficulty on listing the keywords, text for Ad groups and budgeting for the three weeks. We had brought this problem to Dr and thanks to him, we managed to figure out what we are going to prepare in our reports. After the discussion, we managed to update and do correction on our GOMC pre-campaign report. Hope that we can produce a better pre-campaign report! May God bless us :D

After the GOMC discussion, Dr Fareed proceeded the class with creating database by using Microsoft Access. This was my first time using Microsoft Access since I was born! So, this was a quite new experience for me. According to Dr Fareed, Microsoft Access is a useful tool for storing large amount of data and simplifying the audit work. It can be used in the food industry as well such as creating a database of customer lists of the restaurants. Anyway, I am still not familiar with this Microsoft Access as we just learned a little about it in the class.

Written by Khoi Zi Shen (172194)

Year 2, Sem 2, Bac. Of Sc (Food Service Management).

Reflective Writing of FSM4503 (4)

[Homework]   

 A day before Good Friday! However, everyday are good days! ^^

           After a long time, finally we met Dr Fareed in person again in food cyber for our lab because we failed to use our “high-tech” product to webcam with Dr in the cloud last few times. I think it might be due to the connection problem of internet in our food cyber. Anyway, Dr Fareed, I prefer to have a traditional class method which we can have a face to face class to avoid all those connection problems! ^^ 

         So, today as usual, we started the class with the discussions about GOMC which is our on-going project. Every groups have their own websites to corporate with and I think they have already registered for the websites, so do we. For the next step, Dr Fareed has explained it today in the class. He gave us some examples to fill in the form on the GOMC websites by using his mom’s kindergarten website.

Besides, we were asked to find out the weaknesses and strengths of our client’s website regarding on their appearance, content, functionality and website usability. I had went through the website of our client which is the 18°C Café with my group-mates today and we had discussed about the strengths and weaknesses of it. Moreover, we have to start to think about the keywords that are suitable for the website as well, so that when the people search for some keywords that are related to our client’s café, their website can be shown up on the top of the search engine. Oh ya! We have to set the areas of our target customers as well! For example, as our client's cafe is located around Pontian, Johor only, so our target area can put for the areas around Pontian or other areas of Johor. 

Our client's website:

In addition, Dr Fareed has taught some theory in front of the class today. It was about the website evolution by Hansan & Kalyavanan in 2008 and Online Presence. One of the elements of online presence is the interactive marketing. After the interactive marketing, there are online transaction such as e-commerce and pay-pal, then followed by the loyalty building feature. According to Dr, the social medias that we use every day are actually on the concept of loyalty building feature as we need to log in to our own account then only can access to the social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on. In the conclusion, based on the opinion of Dr Fareed, the online presence nowadays is experiencing the leap frogging effect because without the process of interactive marketing and online transaction, loyalty building feature is directly applied to everyone especially when we are registering for a new account in the social media. Therefore, we need to be extra careful when we are using the social media because we never know that there might have someone out there want to steal our information that we shared on social media to do something unlawful or beyond our imagination.

Lastly, our GOMC is going on so far so good. We have to prepare a pre-campaign report as soon as possible to submit it before the deadline. As I know, the pre-campaign report is crucial as it carries 30% of the marks of GOMC. All the best to everyone and my group-mates as well! Let’s do it together!!! J

“FUTURE is not for you to FIND it, but is for you to CREATE it.”

Written by Khoi Zi Shen (172194)

Year 2, Sem 2, Bac. of Sc (Food Service Management)

Reflective Writing of FSM4503 (3)

[Homework]

In the class today, we were required to update about our progression on GOMC project. Some of the groups have already found a foodservice company to corporate with but my group have not found one yet. We had sent a message to the Facebook of myBurgerLab, but we have not got any reply yet. It is kind of sad. Anyway, we still have to move forward. Therefore, I have tried to search for some other special cafes or restaurants who owned their own websites. For example, The Big Mouth which is selling burgers too. I hope that we can contact with a foodservice company as soon as possible so that we can start our project soon! Moreover, we had registered our group as a team to participate in GOMC project with the group name - Flowers & Grass. LOL! It is because we have 4 ladies as the flowers and a gentleman as the grass in our group! Let us try our best in completing this GOMC!

After we had registered our group, Dr Fareed, our lecturer proceeded the class by giving us a task to complete which is the Menu Cost Calculator using Excel. We were required to choose a food that we prefer and calculate the food cost by the Menu Cost Calculator. So, I chose Glutinous Rice Balls (Tang Yuan) as my food. The food ingredients were listed and calculated by unit used on the calculator. The steps in preparing the Glutinous Rice Ball was written in the calculator as well. Finally, the cost of the Glutinous Rice Balls was calculated. 

Thanks Dr Fareed for preparing this Excel sheet to simplify us in calculating the menu cost. It might be useful in the restaurant during menu planning.

Written by,

Khoi Zi Shen (172194)

Year 2, Sem 2, Bac. of Sc (Food Service Management)

Reflective Writing of FSM4503 (2)

[Homework]

It's the 2nd week of FSM4503 lab, and this is another reflective writing report for our lecturer, Dr Fareed. In today's class, Dr Fareed explained something about our GOMC project to us to help us in this project. So, we are required to sit into groups and find out 3 potential establishments that we can corporate with to work out our GOMC. By the way, the 3 establishments should have these characteristics :

1) Food services ( I think it is because we are the Food Service Management students. LOL)

2) SME (Small & Medium Establishment)

3) Must have website. 

Therefore, with these 3 characteristics, my group members and I had finalized out the 3 establishments that we would like to corporate with. 

1) myBurger Lab

2) Just Heavenly

3) Kaffa Espresso Bar

We have to start approaching them between this two weeks and get agreement from them to participate in our GOMC project for 3 weeks! I hope that they are willing to help us in this GOMC project as they no need to pay anything for it. On the other hand, if we do a good work on our GOMC project, it may help them to boost the number of visitors of their website too! It does not bring anything negative to them, right? :D Hope that we can convince the boss successfully :p

After this GOMC project discussions, we learnt about the Basic Excel Use. We were given some tasks to do on the Microsoft Excel. For example, we made some charts by using the data that was given by Dr Fareed. And this is the results of today's class :

The basic knowledge on using Microsoft Excel is a useful knowledge for us as IT is everywhere in our life nowadays. We may use this skills in our working area in the future. From the example given by Dr Fareed, we can use this in our food service as well in calculating the profit and loss of the business. 

Lastly, all the best to everyone in the GOMC project!!! YEAH! 

Written by,

Khoi Zi Shen (172194)

Year 2, Sem 2, Bac. of Sc (Food Service Management)

Reflective Writing of FSM4503 (1)

[Homework]

It was my first day attending FSM4503 class in Food Cyber 1 of our faculty. For the first day, we were given a group project from Dr Fareed. It is the Google Online Marketing Competition (GOMC) project! After I read through the introduction of GOMC, I got to know that it is an international competition for the students worldwide to start using the internet to do online marketing campaigns by using Google AdWords and Google+. One of the price of winning this GOMC is trips to Google offices!! This is such a great price for me!! Visiting Google offices is a dream for me after I watched the movie - The Internship. From the movie, it shows how special and awesome is the Google company is, and it attracts me to work in Google company! So, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED (Although I know the possibility to win in GOMC is so small. Anyway, Let's have a try and get an awesome experience from it! Who knows how will the results come out? :p )

After knowing what are we going to do, we were given a link to learn about the basics of the Google AdWords. From the six videos, I learned how does the Google AdWords work on our website. It is an advertising tool which helps to boost the numbers of visitors to the websites. In another say, our website or product or service can be found easily by the new customers from all over the world. By using AdWords, we have to choose the right keywords for our website that provides certain products and services and write an eye-catching advertisement, so that the customers can discover or notice the website easily in the Google Search engine. Moreover, the landing pages of the website have to be determined wisely as well so that the customers will continue to stay on our website and choose to buy our products and services. Budget should be made so that we can spend wisely on the money to advertise our website by using Google AdWords. 

Lastly, it is a very good opportunity for me to learn online marketing by using Google Adwords and join GOMC for new experience! I hope that after this project, I can use this knowledge continually in the future.

Written by,

Khoi Zi Shen (172194)

Year 2, Sem 2, Bac. of Sc (Food Service Management)