Reply to the following questions based on the case study.

Pauline has decided to implement a Point-of-Sale (POS) System to manage daily sales and inventory. You are reporting to Pauline, explain to them:

What is a POS System? A system has 5 main components, what are these components in relation to a POS system?

Who are the primary stakeholders in the project?

What steps would you take to evaluate this as a system change requests?

How would you undertake a preliminary investigation for this project?

The memo must be submitted in Word or PDF format. No other formats will be marked.

CASE STUDY:

Part 1:

Welcome to Mario's Place Coffee! Mario Martinetti was born in a small southern Italian town and immigrated to Vancouver in 1977. He left his hometown looking to build something of value. He loved telling stories, and had a loud and infectious laugh that always brought people together, you could often find him at the center of a party, people crowding around wanting to connect. After his arrival, he combined two of his passions, and Mario started a catering company serving espresso drinks at weddings. He prided himself on the quality of the coffee he made. He would not serve a drink unless it was just right. This made him very popular for weddings and other events, well this and the wonderous stories he'd share when making the drinks. After a few years he saw an opportunity to open a store front downtown. The place was small, only 9m2 , but was located on a busy street, near many office buildings. With lots of foot traffic, he thought he would do well. Mario's Place Coffee opened in 1984. The location offered a serving window on the street, and a few small tables inside. This was extremely popular in the summer months; people didn't have to go inside the cramped cafe. He worked in that location for 10 years, opening at 6, working until 6PM, 6 days a week. It was tiring, but he loved it. By the mid 1990s, Mario's Place was incredibly popular and doing very well. He decided to expand and found two more locations to open. Both new locations were like his first, small, but well located on busy streets. He hired and trained Baristas to work the stores. He had them make espresso drinks over and over, ensuring that they made the drinks properly - they couldn't make drinks for customers until he had personally approved the coffee they made. The new Baristas didn't like managing cash and making drinks, so he hired people to manage order taking and keeping supplies (coffee, milk, sugar, etc.) well stocked. All three locations continued to do very well. Regular customers came by the store every morning to get their coffee, many knowing staff by name. Staff noticed that some people would walk by when there were 4 or 5 people in line. Especially when it was raining. Over the next 25 years, Mario's Place became a cherished institution. Over time the locations moved and expanded a little, but the commitment to excellent coffee and telling great stories continued. Pauline Martinetti, Mario's granddaughter, ju a business degree in Spain, and has recently return home to Vancouver. Mario has been wanting to retire, and asked Pauline to take over the day-to-day operations of the business, to learn the business, and to propose a new direction for the company. Pauline saw a lot of opportunity For Mario's Place. The business was doing very well financially, but she saw a couple of problems. Some of the equipment was starting to fail. Some of the espresso machines were over 30 years old and needed a lot of servicing. The new Barista's were well trained, but did not have much experience. Many of the supply orders had not been updated in several years, and often the store would run out of milk and the cashier would have to run to the local supermarket to buy a few containers. Pauline had frequented several coffee shops while studying in Spain. The shops were hangouts for local college students, had plenty of seating, as well as community tables and big chairs for relaxing and reading. She loved the vibe of the places. As she was considering the proposal for expanding the business, she wondered about finding a large space for lease beside a local college.

Part 2:

Mario's Coffee Expands Pauline very much enjoyed working in the shops. When she was a teenager, she had worked with her Grandfather learning how to make the various coffee drinks. Most of the many cousins in the family had worked at Mario's at some point - several still worked here part-time. Mario had instilled into all of them his goal to serve only a perfect coffee (several had also picked up his love of telling good stories!). Most of her time had been spent working closely with new baristas, ensuring product quality, and with learning the other aspects of the busy cafs. There were a few problems, service was sometimes slow, and they would periodically run out of supplies, but business was still good. After a few weeks, she was feeling more confident in her role, so Pauline started focusing on growing the business. Her first business opportunity came when she had lunch with a high-school friend, Daisy Mathes. Daisy owned a catering company. Pauline, remembering her grandfather had started out providing a coffee service at weddings, saw an opportunity. After much discussion, they decided to work together. Daisy would offer a coffee service as part of an event package and Pauline would sub-contract when the service was requested. Another opportunity presented itself when her leasing agent found a perfect location for her to expand. The location was close to a local college and was large enough that she could provide a lounge space for customers. Working with her agent, she negotiated a long-term lease and started working on renovations and hiring staff.

Pauline was elated that all her strategies were coming together, but at the same time was overwhelmed with the amount of work that she was doing. She needed help. She decided to hire for some key positions:

1. General Manager (Mona): responsible for overall daily operations, and the coordination of facilities and equipment, and their related suppliers. The GM will consistently travel between the different locations, ensuring that things are working well.

2. Caf Managers (Daisy, Morton): responsible for the day-to-day operation of each of the coffee shops, the Manager would work on all front-line operations, ensuring proper staffing, training, and product quality was maintained.

3. Coordinator (Isabella): the coordinator would manage catering event bookings and ensuring supplies for catering events are ready and shipped to and from events. They also manage event payments, collecting supplier invoices, and ensuring that they are distributed for authorization of payment, or sent to the accountant for payment.

4. Accountant (Yoshi): The coordinator would also collect sales receipts from each store, ensure invoices were collected, payments for bills, enter all transactions in a spreadsheet.

Part 3:

Mario's Place is Growing Mario's Place has been growing at a very fast pace over the last two years. Three new stores have opened (all near local College campuses), one closed, a new office has been set up (unintentionally), new catering services have been added, and several new staff members have joined the senior management team, including Rosalina as their Marketing Manager. Through many changes Pauline has never lost sight of the goal to serve only the best coffee, but she has had some challenges.

Currently, each store has a cash register and a credit/debit card terminal. The amount of each product purchased is entered into the cash register. The cashier is responsible to ensure that taxable transaction is entered in properly, separate keys are provided to enter each item that is taxable or non-taxable. If the transaction is a cash transaction, the cash transaction total is entered, and the cash drawer will open. If the transaction is using credit or debit, the credit transaction button is pushed, and the transaction is finalized. The cashier enters the amount of the transaction into the credit card terminal and the customer pays the transaction. This is a confusing and error-prone process. In a meeting with Yoshi, Pauline started seeing problems in their revenue collection. Yoshi told her that often he cannot read the daily cash deposits, and the bank has been sending deposit correction notices on deposits. The bank is only sending him summarized transaction reports for the credit and debit machines, so store managers have not been able to balance store sales. He is feeling a sense of growing frustration because he's being asked to confirm information which he truly can't accurately confirm. Pauline recognizes that the current system is not sufficient for the future. She has asked Yoshi to start a project to purchase a Point of Sale (POS) system that will move Mario's Coffee into the future. Yoshi knew that eventually any new system would have to integrate with an accounting system, his first priority was to ensure that he was getting accurate transaction data from each location. He was hoping that the new terminals would be accessible remotely, but felt it was more critical that the system provided complete and accurate daily transactions and summary information. It was also his hope that he would be able to confirm that each location sales and incoming cash and card transactions balanced each day. Yoshi visited each of the caf locations to meet with caf managers, each expresses similar requests of the new system. Inventory continued to be problem; they often weren't certain what products were selling. They insisted the system be able to track individual products sold and whether the transaction is cash or bank card. It was also important that the system identified which cashier was responsible for each transaction. They wanted to be able to quickly balance at the end of the day. The coordinator, Isabella, indicated it would be great if the system could manage the event transactions as well. They are almost always by credit card, but periodically, are paid for by cheque. The transactions are complicated though as there are generally 10-15 products and services that make up an event invoice. Rosalina insisted the system be able to automatically apply discounts and promotional pricing to ensure consistent product pricing and it would be nice for it to be able to allow cashiers to sign up customers into a customer loyalty program.