Slug Solar offers residential solar panel installation and home battery installation services. Sales agents from slug solar visit the homes of potential clients, take roof measurements, take panorama pictures from the rooftop to document any obstructions between the roof and the sun at different times of day. After a visit, the agent does a cost$-$benefit analysis of several options of solar arrays and$/$or battery combinations that would fit on the roof. The calculations are done by hand and are quite complicated as they involve, for example, the geometry of the site, the historic weather patterns at the customer's zip code, the location of the customer's breaker box in relation to the roof, local building regulations about how much of the roof needs to be left uncovered for the use of emergency responders in the event of a fire, the details of the electricity pricing plans available to the customer from their local utility. In addition, the analysis depends on the prices and selection of available panels and batteries, and this is constantly changing, so the sales agent often has to make phone calls to the distributor for the latest information. Thus it takes a sales agent most of a day to generate a quote for several different systems options the customer can choose to buy, and analysis of how much each system would affect their electricity costs over the life of the system. Only about $1$ in $4$ potential customers that receive such an analysis purchase a system from Slug Solar.

a$)$ Assess the business impact of the situation. $($e$.$g$.$ How does it affect costs, create lost revenue opportunities, etc.$)$

b$)$ Describe how the process could be improved with information technology.

c$)$ Identify some decisions that would have to be made to implement a solution.