Case Study

Case Study : 'Sydney Gifts'

'Sydney Gifts' run a store selling good quality antiques and have been in operation for twenty years. They currently maintain details of every piece they sell in a manual system.

'Sydney Gifts' has always been run by the same owner/ manager Mr Smith. Mr Smith's son has just joined the business and thinks that using a computerised system would make managing their orders, stock levels and records management easier. Currently they divide their stock into three categories furniture, china art and paintings.

For furniture they store the following details current owner, approximate age, type, style, construction material, finish, condition, notes and price. For paintings they store current owner, approximate age, style, condition, notes, price, artist and medium. For china they store current owner, approximate age, style, condition, notes, manufacturer and construction material. The managers also want to be able to run sales reports at the end of every month.

'Sydney Gifts' also sell antiques on behalf of some of their existing customers so that they may sell the same item more than once. When this happens, they go back to the original record of that piece and record the details of the new sale price, owner etc. This is done so they can maintain the provenance of the item. It is very important to both Mr Smith's that this system is very accurate and quick to use.

They would also like a better way of maintaining customer details so that a customer could tell Sydney Gifts that they are looking for a particular item. That item could be placed on a "wish list" and the customer notified when the item is located. As well as the standard attributes for an item the wish list will store the date the customer registered the item on their wish list and the top price they are willing to pay. 'Sydney Gifts' have many customers so that sometimes more than one customer may register that they are looking for a particular item. When at least two customers are looking for the same item it has been decided to offer the item to the customer who registered the item on their wish list first.

Tasks

Write answers on the following questions

1. What types of system requirements will you focus on for Sydney Gifts System? Explain each one in detail.

2. What fact-finding methods could you use to collect information from employees at Sydney Gifts? Suggest at least three methods and explain the pros and cons of each.