Marcia'sis a locally owned business, it currently has four branches. At the head oce they develop and maintain a sophisticated stock management system, specically tailored for small retail businesses (this system is called PerfectStock). The branches (with support from Head Oce) market, implement and support PerfectStock for clients in their local area.

Surprisingly the business, even though it produces and supports IT systems, uses almost completely manual processing (supplemented by a series of EXCEL spreadsheets) to support it's internal administrative systems. Marcia accepts that these systems are antiquated, and inecient.

Basic details of the existing system

The oce assistant takes phone calls from customers requesting support. The assistant lls out a spreadsheet based form called a "Support Sheet" for each call.

The elds completed at this time include the customer name, telephone number, address and support contract number (this information is extracted from another spreadsheet - The Customer Master le).

A brief description of the support being requested and urgency of the request is then also added.

The request is then categorised as "Hardware", "Networking", "Software" or "Stock system" (where the stock system is the system Marcia's developed and sells.

The support sheet is then saved and printed (with most of the elds on it still blank) and the printed copy placed in a tray labelled "outstanding jobs".

When they nish their existing job, support sta pick up one or more support sheets from the "outstanding jobs" tray. They must ensure that they only pick requests that they feel condent to handle (for example not all sta can handle networking requests). The support sta member then contacts the customer and arranges a convenient time to do the work.

Each branch has supplies of replacement parts for the equipment they service. Details of this stock are maintained on the PerfectStock system. The tracking of stock useage, re- ordering and so on is handled very eciently and accurately. If the support person thinks they are likely to need a replacement part for a job they check that part out from PerfectStock and take it with them to the customer. (If the part does not get used it will be checked back in to PerfectStock when the support person returns.

As the job is completed the support sta person records (on the support sheet) details of the hours spent on the tasks (categorised into areas such as travel, training, troubleshooting, repair and so on). Details of parts used are also entered onto the support sheet. When the job is complete the support sheet is placed in a tray labelled "awaiting invoicing". Marica refers to the complete process described above as "Call Management"

The next process is described by Marcia as "Accounts Receivable". The oce assistant takes the completed support sheets from the "awaiting invoicing" le at the end of every month and creates invoices for each customer (by manually entering the details into an EXCEL template). To create the invoice the assistant also has to;

Calculate the cost of the hours spent on the job (hourly costs vary for dierent types of customers as well as for dierent types of work - details of costs are stored in a Spreadsheet called "Price Book".

Add the costs of any parts used (determined by accessing PerfectStock).

Completed invoices are printed and sent to the client (the original spreadsheet is of course retained on the computer).

After payment for an invoice is received the original invoice spreadsheet is retrieved,

marked as paid and emailed to head oce.

A receipt for the payment is also created and emailed to the customer. The invoice spreadsheet is then renamed by adding the prex "paid-yy-mm-dd-" added to its name. Head oce is also emailed details of all payments received at the end of each week.

Reminder notices are sent for any invoices not paid within 14 days after sent date.

The Stock Management process is (as previously described) implemented using into any new system you might suggest. This subsystem records details of all stock items, including the supplier(s) of the item, price, delivery time, re-order points and so on. It automatically generates orders to suppliers as needed and, when stock is received, it calculates the payments to be sent to the supplier - this information is automatically updated to the head oce computer.

The work of the Sales Manager is not considered to be within the scope of this project.

Each week, during her visit to the branch, Marcia reviews the hours worked by all sta at the Branch with the Sales Manager. She nds the unavailability of accurate and up to date information from the present systems an extremely frustrating barrier seriously compromising their capability to complete this important task.

Each day, the oce assistant banks the day's takings and gives the bank receipts to Marcia when she makes her weekly visit. Marcia takes these back to Head Oce and gives them to her accountant who reconciles bank transactions against invoices paid and stock used.

Apart from the instances mentioned above the operation of the Head Oce is not to be considered as a part of this exercise.

What Marcia would like

Marcia hopes to achieve the following:

-A modern computer based "Call Management" system identied and installed within the branches. This system should include entry of support requests, allocation of sta to requests eciently and eectively, tracking of work allocated to sta.

-Management of all invoicing from a computer based "Accounts Receivable" module (also to be identied and implemented as a part of the project.

-Improved accuracy in recording of stock usage and at least 50% productivity gains in all other administrative tasks.

-Identication and implementation of a single Financial and Payroll System to be run for all of the branches from Head Oce would be highly regarded if feasible.

The computerised systems implemented must be well interfaced to each other so that data sharing occurs seamlessly wherever necessary.

The ability to order combined stock for multiple branches would be valuable. The functionality is already available in PerfectStock but not yet implemented because the data on stock usage recorded in the present manual systems is both out of date and inaccurate.

Finally consolidated reporting on all activities at the branches to head oce is an essential requirement of the planned expansions are to be successful.

Some other smaller things that would be nice:

-Ability to quickly determine if a required part is in stock at any branch.

-Ability to generate invoices automatically entirely from data held within the system.

-Tracking customer requests and monitoring the level of service they are receiving.

Require:

a. Draw the data flow diagram of the Current Business System

b. Draw the data flow diagram of the New Business System

c. Draw the E-R diagram of the system entities for new payroll and revenue system