Reference no: EM132892595 , Length: word count:2200
HI5030 Business Systems Analysis and Design - Holmes Institute
Students will be able to:
a. Analyze and reflect on the alternative methodologies used in developing business information systems
b. Critically analyze requirements modelling and different modelling techniques for developing business information systems,
c. Develop requirements and specifications and provide conceptual and practical arguments to defend the solutions based on the core principles of information system analysis and design,
d. Develop prototypes of information systems demonstrating initiative and problem- solving judgement aligned to client needs and best practices,
e. Communicate the requirements for the business functionality of an information system in terms of data required, data storage and processing to technical and non- technical stakeholders.
Case Study
The Company
Ceylon Textile Suppliers (CTS), an Australian owned organization based in Melbourne which supplies clothing-related products to Australian and New Zealand retail outlets on a sale or return basis. It has an annual turnover of around $ 60M and plans to expand this. The current business processes for operations have limited and ad-hoc IT systems to support them. Business processes are mainly manual, and the inter-departmental communication of information is mostly paper-based. There are a number of issues with operations recognised by the staff running these processes, which interfere with the smooth running of their departments.
Ceylon Textile Suppliers: new IT-based strategy
CTS's Board of Directors has declared a strategy to expand the business's operations to embrace the latest developments in information technologies, specifically web-based technologies and the opportunities it presents. This is likely to include a web interface and web presence beyond the purely brochure-style one in place. The strategy requires sales and stock operations should be automated, integrated support to achieve efficiency gains and the ability to inter-operate with any internet technologies and opportunities it presents to CTS's new strategy. The Board of Directors wants a phased implementation to realise benefits quickly and to minimise the risk of interruption to its core operations.
Holmes consultants
CTC's Board of Directors have contacted the Holmes Institute to help them to achieve their new strategic directions and requested a proposal to conduct a comprehensive review of its processes to identify areas for improvement and to implement their IT-based strategy. They also asked Holmes to propose a suitable internet-based automated solution to facilitate its new strategic initiative as the second stage of the project.
Project requirement
As a first step of the proposal, the Holmes consultants have prepared an initial review report that includes current processes related to sales orders, stock control and advertising campaign. Your task is to provide a system vison and requirement models for each subsystem and other necessary information to represent the current level scope, as indicated by the consultant's report. The requirement models and other necessary information should consist of:
For the whole system:
1. One system vison document
For each Subsystem:
2. Two activity diagrams to represent business processes
3. Event table with six events with use cases
4. Two user stories and acceptance criteria
5. A levelled set of dataflow diagrams (i.e. Context Diagram, Diagram 0, and one level 1 diagram)
6. A data dictionary describing all the attributes in your data model reflected in level 0 dataflow diagram.
7. Three use case diagrams
8. Two use case descriptions
For the whole system:
9. Selection of a solution for the system
Assignment instructions
This assignment requires you to design requirement specification models for the following organisation and finally recommend an appropriate solution such as an ERP system that consists of a number of subsystems such as sales, purchases, marketing etc. Remember, a subsystem is a system that is part of a larger system. For example, a sales management system might be one subsystem of a customer relationship management (CRM) system. Another CRM subsystem might enable customers to view past and current orders, track order fulfilment and shipping, and modify their account information. A third CRM subsystem might maintain the product catalogue database and provide Web-based access to product specifications and manuals. A fourth CRM subsystem might provide technical support via telephone and a Web site with detailed tracking of customer support requests and related reporting to improve call centre management and product quality.
The Subsystems are as follow and the information are provided under Process descriptions and consist of:
1. Sales orders
2. Dispatching of goods
3. Stock controls
4. Goods receipts
5. Marketing and advertising campaign
Holmes consultant preliminary report For Ceylon Textile Suppliers (Extracts only)
Summary
This consultant report provides initial findings of:
• A high-level view of the current processes (as-is)
• A high-level view of the important data used in the current manual system
These findings will use to improve the efficiency of operational processes and provide it with an IT support needed. At the end of this initial study, it is expected that a full study will be carried out to streamline the existing processes.
Stakeholders
The following stakeholders have been identified as the direct or related interest of the proposed project. We believe that these stakeholders can strongly influence and make a decision about business requirements.
• The Chief Financial Officer (CFO): Barak Obama
• The Sales and Marketing Director: George Bush (keen to see improvement in the efficiency of the sales operation but he is also interested in how the work might inform aspects of what the new website (out of scope) may and must cater. George also acts as a Project Sponsor
• Human Resource Manager: John Howard
• Operations Staff Representative: Andrew Barr
• The Stock Manager: Julia Gillard, will be Ambassador User Representative (primary representative for helping with the analysis or arranging access to operational staff)
Organization chart
Please refer to Appendix A
Scope of the project
In scope
• Purchasing
• Stock Control
• Sales
• Dispatch
• Goods In
• Customer sales data for marketing campaigns
Out of scope
• Accounts processes
• Marketing department (except as above)
• Human resource department
• Travelling salesforce
Process descriptions
1. Sales orders
The sales team raises sales orders as a result of receiving customers' purchase orders (by post twice per day), orders passed in by the travelling sales team and sales calls received or made throughout the day. As and when they are received they are recorded on the sales team's master sales spreadsheet (MSSP), which is used to print out the multi-part sales order.
The multi-part sales order comprises:
• The sales order (filed on raising in the customer master file, together with the customer's purchase order if one was received)
• A dispatch note (batched and passed to the stock room four times a day for picking and packing)
• A delivery note (accompanies the dispatch note and is attached to the parcel, which is then passed to the courier for delivery to the customer)
Priority is given to back-orders (as noted on the dispatch notes received from the stock room), and these are reviewed against the recent deliveries part of the stock levels report from the stock control manager (see below).
At the start of the day, the stock room pass on the previous day's returns notes and one of the sales team update the master sales MSSP with the information before filing them in the customer master file. The stock room also passes on a list of products that are dangerously low on stock and those that have been delivered into stock the previous day. For sales orders that couldn't be filled entirely, the dispatch notes for them are passed back, too, so the sales team can inform the customer and give priority to filling them when new stock arrives.
Again at the start of the day, the Accounting Department send through a list of customers nearing their credit limit. Sales staffs check this as they are raising orders to make sure that each customer stays within their limit.
At the end of the day, the sales team leader prepares a sales and returns report that is passed to the accounts department. It contains details of the sales orders for that day and the details of yesterday's returns, by customer. It includes the order / returns value, taking into account any returns not fit for stock.
Every month, or sooner if requested, the sales team leader prepares a customer sales report from the master sales MSSP for the marketing department. The sales report includes:
• A summary of the best and poorest moving stock
• On a customer by customer basis, the value of and the products purchased.
Marketing Department keeps sales operations updated with planned campaigns including any product pricing changes, offers and special discounts.
On a monthly basis, or sometimes more frequently, the sales team leader sends emails to all customers with a friendly note and details of any offers etc. A primary purpose is to shift slow-moving or discontinued stock. Every new customer is credit checked by the accounts department before being allowed to place an order. If their application included an order, the order is put on hold until accounts have completed the checking. Once complete, accounts pass on the customer's details and credit limit to sales operations (accounts will have created a new file in the customer master file), together with the order if included with their application. Major exception - if declined, sales make the call to the customer to explain.
2. Dispatching of goods
The two-part dispatch and delivery note forms that are received from the Sales Team drive the dispatch process. A Goods Out member of staff collects stock from the shelves for a customer's parcel and ticks off the items on the dispatch note as s/he goes.
When the parcel is complete, the delivery note is attached. Completed parcels are put in the goods out area for collection by the courier, who calls to collect four times a day.
The dispatch note is used to update the stock master file with the new stock levels; the number filled on each order line is subtracted from the present stock level to give the new. The dispatch note is then put on a stick pin. Once or twice a day, they are handed over to stock control.
3. Stock controls
This area is responsible for maintaining stock at their pre-determined levels. It must take into account targets for marketing campaigns, including any new and discontinued products (notified by the marketing department).
The stock manager is the one who primarily does this, although some cover is provided by other members of the stock team (i.e. Goods In and Out staff).
The stock manager examines stock levels on the stock master file for those that are below or near their minimum stockholding level. For those that are, she raises a purchase order, perhaps phoning the preferred supplier first on important orders, to confirm the order can be met. If not, he will raise the order with one of the alternatives.
She updates the stock master file record with the purchase order number to show that it is in order. If a supplier subsequently puts an ordered product on back order, then the expected delivery date is filled in.
During the day the stock manager uses this information of, Goods In pass over delivery notes from suppliers and returns notes from customers-to update stock holding levels on the stock master file. For each filled order line, the purchase order number against the product on the master file is cleared.
The stock manager is given every dispatch note once the order has been filled. If any stock level anomalies arise, these can be checked. Otherwise, they are filed in the customer master file. The only exception to this is if an order line couldn't be filled.
These dispatch notes are passed back to sales operations so the customer can be notified. At the start of the day, old returns notes are passed back to sales operations, together with a report showing items dangerously low on stock.
4. Goods receipts
Returns from customers and purchases from suppliers are received first thing in the morning and then, intermittently, throughout the day.
Goods In checks the items into stock and updates the stock levels on the stock master file. The returns and the delivery notes are passed to the stock control manager two or three times a day. If returned items are not fit for stock, this is marked on the returns note.
5. Marketing and advertising campaign
The marketing department carries out marketing campaigns on a monthly, seasonal or ad- hoc basis. Campaigns are to:
1. Introduce and push new product ranges
2. Shift product about to be withdrawn
3. Target specific customers with offers and discounts
4. Move poorly performing product
They use the sales reports provided by sales operations to target the customers for 2 and 3, above. 1 and 4 tend to go to the whole customer base.
Marketing keeps a mailing list database in Excel of all customers and manually select those that are to be included in a mail campaign (they use MS Word for this).
Mails by marketing presently are all paper-based as some or all of brochures, vouchers and product catalogues accompany the mails.
From time to time, they trawl through the entire customer master file to bring their MSSP up to date.
When a campaign is planned and during its execution marketing keep the stock manager updated with targets and expected sales volumes (so that demand can be met from stock).
When a new product range is planned, marketing investigates suppliers, negotiate purchase prices and write marketing copy (including product name and description). They then pass these to the stock manager so that they can be entered on the stock master file.
Attachment:- Business Systems Analysis and Design.rar