Reference no: EM133345361
Case: The Love-Pet Company is a 100-store retail chain concentrated in Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia that sells fresh pet food supplies which their products have short to medium shelf-life. Each store has a full-time manager and assistant manager who are paid a salary base. The cashiers and sales personnel are working as part time and hourly based plus a commission based on sales volume. The company employs simple cash registers which use invoices to record each transaction. These sales invoices are used irrespective of the payments type including cash, cheque, or credit cards.
On the sale floor, the salesperson manually records his/her employee number and total transaction (quantity of packages, unit prices, and description), total sale invoice, calculate the discount, if appropriate, calculates the tax, and for the small business check the credit scores. The salesperson gives the sale invoice to the cashier and store one copy to the sale book.
The cashier reviews the invoice and enter the sale. The cash register manually validate the invoice and then automatically, assigning a number to the transaction. The cashier is also responsible for getting credit approval on charge sale and approving sales paid by cheque. Then casher gives one copy of the invoice to the customer and retains the 2nd copy a store copy and the 3rd copy for a back-card (or credit card), if a deposit is needed. Returned items are handled in revere manner, which simply casher issuing a return slip.
At the end of the day, cashier sequentially orders the sales invoices and takes cash register totals for cash, bankcard, cheque sales, and cash and credit card return. These totals are reconciled by the assistant manager to the cash register tapes, the total of the consecutively numbered sales invoices, and the return slips. Assistant manager is responsible to prepare a daily reconciliation report for the store manger's review.
The manager reviews cash, cheque, and credit card sales and then prepares the daily bank deposit. The manager makes the deposit at the bank and files the validity deposit slip.
The cash register tapes, sales invoices, and return slips are forwarded daily to the central data processing department at company's headquarter in Halifax for further processing. The data processing department return a weekly sales and commission actively report to the manager for review.
Questions:
1- Read the case study carefully and explain four weaknesses in the Love-Pet company's information system.
2- Explain the reasons why this company need to install a distributed computer system, rather than a centralized system.
Your answer must not exceed more than 1000 words or two pages. You may refer to the course material for supporting evidence and use outside sources and cite them properly. Please include a mix of both primary and secondary sources.