Sport Wares Sdn Bhd is a distributor of sport equipment for various sport stores in center region. The company uses limited computer technology to process business transactions and record accounting data. The data is distributed and not shared through out the company. This has cause data redundancy and associated problems of data accuracy. These problems have been exacerbated by the companys recent expansion on the southern and north regions. The company decided to have a fully computerized information system to support the business transactions. The company sales order process begins when a sales representative takes an order from the customer over the phone or fax and prepares the customer order. The sales clerk uses PC to input the customer order into the order file. The sales clerk prints three copies of the sales order and forward the order to the warehouse where good are retrieved from inventory and shipped to the customer. One copy of the sales order is filed in open customer order file for use in answering customer inquires. The last copy of the sales order is sent to the billing department for preparation of sales invoice. Once warehouse received a sales order, a warehouse worker retrieves the goods and accesses the PC to update the inventory and general ledger using inventory management application program. Another worker packs the goods and prepares two copies of the bill of lading as well as a packing slip. The packing slip is attached to the shipping container and two copies of the bill of lading are sent to the shipping company along with the goods. The worker also prepares a shipping notice that is sent to the billing department along with the bill of lading and sales order. After receiving the sales order from the sales department, the billing department clerk files it in a temporary file until the shipping notice, bill of lading and sales order have arrived from the warehouse. Once all the documents have arrived, the clerk reviews these documents along with the sales order from temporary file and prepares two copies of invoice using the billing PC, which automatically records the sale in the sales journal and update the account receivable subsidiary ledger and general ledger. One copy of the invoice is mailed to the customer and another is forwarded to the sales department, which closes the open customer file. After closing the open customer file, all document in the file are sent to the billing department. These documents are then filed in the accounts receivable pending file along with other documents received by billing department to await customer payment.

Required:

a. As part of your system analysis, prepare a data flow diagram for the current sales order system. (15 marks)

b. Discuss the advantages of reengineering sales-order processing with real-time technology. (15 marks)