Question

Levi Landon owns a small lawn care business with three employees. He owns the lawn mowers, rakes, and weed whackers that are housed in a storage area at the back of his home. He currently keeps his records in a spiral-bound book. He has a page for his list of customers, and their information including when he first started to do their garden, and the size of their lawns. He has another section to keep track of payments. Levi usually requires payment on completion of the service, but this rarely happens and he has lost track of who owes him and how much.

Levi realizes that he is not as efficient as he could be in his record keeping and asks you to help him to track customer service dates, payments and lawn care revenue. He may want to get a loan to purchase some more equipment. He provides you with his book of customers, and payments and prices of the various lawn sizes.

To help Levi with the reporting requirements, you need to work with Customer, Payment, and Prices tables that are available in a database. You should also prepare several queries, as well as some reports to share with him. To help him with his loan information, you may need to perform some calculations in a spreadsheet to better advise him.

Levi is pleased with the progress his business is making, the reports you produced and the help you provided regarding his loan information. His bankers have great prospects for Levi. They are encouraging Levi to examine the Caribbean Landscape Ltd in the Bahamas (http://www.caribbeanlandscape.net/), with a view of expanding his business to provide similar services.

Levi imagines that since he is seriously contemplating expanding his business, he will need representation at the basic functional areas of a business and also at the various levels of management.

Congratulations, you have been promoted! You are now a manager in one of the departments of MGMT Lawn & Garden Services and you get to choose your department. You must now participate in a series of discussions to assess the business, technology and other issues at hand.

Management Reporting

You need to analyse the above business processes and discuss the way forward for Levi; what type of information system would be better suited in this new environment; the type of business relationship he should encourage and factors he should consider when expanding his business in the region.

Management Level: Operational

Functional Area: Sales Department

Discuss the type of information system that would be better suited in this new environment

1(a) Show how the sales department can be computerized since Levi currently uses a manual system.

1(b) From the perspective of your department and management level, discuss the effect of the PESTLE Analysis.

• Suggest ONE factor from three of the six external influences (PESTLE) that may be upsetting the business process(es) you have chosen and ONE factor from three of the six external influences (PESTLE) that may interrupt customers' experiences.