Trudy’s Trendy Threads (TTT) is a regional wholesaler of women’s casual attire. The company is located in Jacksonville, Florida, and it sells to retail stores in resort communities in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. TTT employs six salespeople, with each one having responsibility for collecting sales orders from one of the following territories: Southern Florida, Florida Gulf Coast, Eastern Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.

Each sale representative mails seasonal catalogs to the customers in his or her territory. Online catalogs are also provided via the company’s website. Sales orders are obtained directly by the sales representatives via e-mail. On a daily basis, the sales representatives submit orders to the corporate office via the Internet; a Web browser client is used to enter the e-mail orders into a dedicated Web server. The sales representatives maintain files consisting of each customer’s e-mail orders, accompanied by a printout of the sales orders entered in the computer. All deliveries are sent via common carrier from the Jacksonville headquarters to each of the customer locations.

Recently, TTT has experienced delivery problems. Namely, a few retail stores located on the eastern Georgia seaboard have claimed that they never received their deliveries. Helen Bain, TTT’s controller, has been investigating these problems along with Aaron Shulz, the Georgia sales representative. Through her review of the shipping records, Helen discovered that each of the problem scenarios involved shipment to a warehouse rather than to the customer’s retail store. Interestingly, the sales order files maintained by Aaron indicate that shipment should have been set up for delivery to the respective retail store locations.

Upon further investigation, Helen reviewed the company’s access log and verified that Aaron’s and the other sales representatives’ authorized passwords were the only ones used to access the company’s Web server.

Required:

a. Speculate as to potential causes of this problem.

b. What additional information would be needed to determine the actual cause of this problem?

c. What controls could be implemented to avoid repeated instances of this problem?