[2010!09!10] introduction and nature of the problem

8/8/2019 [2010!09!10] Introduction and Nature of the Problem

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2010

by

Bakhtawer Sultan

8/14/2010

Book Talk


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Introduction andnatureofthe

problem

I chose to computerize my fathers company, Book Talk for my computing project.

Book Talk is a book seller, whose trade consists in sellingbooks, by retail where books are imported from

various countries and either as publisher which involves the production of the books from the authors

manuscript. Publishing remains the core business of the company. It deals both as a retailer and a

producer. Book Talk commenced its journey in 1993, my father Mr. Rana Sultan Mehmood being its sole

proprietor. Till date Book Talk is a sole trader ship business, i.e. Mr. Mehmood is the only one who owns

controls and finances Book Talk although he has employeda number of managers and staff members

but control remains in his hands .in the organizational chart Mr. Rana Sultan Mehmood is at the top and

right after his place in the organizational chart is Mr. Rana Dawood Sultan, the production manager who

supervises the production and Mr. Khizer Sultan the marketing manager who supervises all the staff at

Book Talk and Mr.Alvi Malik responsible for the Accounts department. Book Talk only deals with

permanent clients. Its permanent clients are the universities which purchase books in bulk. There are

three departments in Book Talk namely marketing department, production department and Accounts

department.

Marketing department deals with selling and purchasing of bookswhereas production department deals

with the publishing of books and Accountsdepartment deals with the staffs payroll and the finance

management of Book Talk. I have decided to computerize the Marketing department of Book Talk.

Production and Accounts department are both semi computerized whereas marketing department is still

controlled manually.

With the passage of time and increase in literacy rate of Pakistan, demand for books has also grown,

giving Book Talk a good opportunity to grow its business activity.Being controlled manually

Book Talk is losing this opportunity. As clients buy books in a bulk, it is very difficult for the staff to write

down various details about books in registers and at the same time go through dozens of registers to find

out whether a certain book is available or not. It slows down the business activity drastically, thus

potential customers are no more willing to waste so much time on just placing orders. In addition to this

it takes a great deal of time to retrieve data and make updates about the stock level. Facing a sudden

drop in demand for Book talks products in the market and my fathers serious concern for it encouraged

me to computerize Book Talk for my computing project.

The type of data produce d is mostly alphanumeric which covers important detai ls such as ISBN number

of books, book name, authors details and publishers details .Other types include numeric data to store

book ID, publisher ID , author ID etc. Data types such as currency and date/time to store price of books

and store dates respectively. Data is mainly originated from receipts generated to customers and from


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Orga izati al Chart

Pla ofI v stigation

I have dec

dedt

use allthree methodsforinvestigating the business activityatBookTalk.

Interview

FirstofallI will plan an interview with Mr. Rana Sultan Mehmood.Interviewing the CEO would help me

tofindtheexactpossible problemsfaced byBookTalkas he is the one who has directcontactwith the

problems andcan provide me with the mostaccurate and unbiased details.

Direct Observation

Mr. Rana S

tanMe ! mood (CEO)

Mr.DawoodS"

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(Prod$

ction Manager)

Prod%

ction Staff

Mr. Rana KhizerS

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(Acco% nts Manager)

Marketing Staff

Comment [MNM1]: Giveeach

thesetheir separate headings:

Interviews

Direct Observations

Doc'

ment Analysis


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I cannot cover all the details of the problems faced, in just one interview. If I interview the staff members

they may provide biased information as they may only be concerned about their own advantage. In order

to overcome this problem I have decided to observe the work directly as it would help me to verify data

collected through interview and also allow me to discuss real, indisputable actions as they occur.

Docume(

t A( )

lysis

I will also analyze various documents such as invoices and the database of books as I need to find out the

exact data and the manner in which it is stored, sorted and retrieved.

Inter iewwiththe EO


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Date _________________________________________________

Name __________________________________________________

Desi0

nation_________________________________________________

Q. Whatis yourrole atBookTalk?

I am the CEO of this company. I own this company and everything remains in my control. I am an

autocratic type of leader and like to keep the control of the business in my hand.

Q. Whattypeofdecisionsdo youtake, andhowisitthatyoukeep controlofthebusinessin

yourownhand?

Decisions like buying new books, which books to buy and from which publishers, are kept in my hand. I

decide the price to be charged, the percentage of discount to be given and when an order should be

delivered.

Q. How are youinformed,when a bookreachesitsreorderle 1 el?

As the data base is controlled manually managing stocks is a very difficult task for us. We have no

specific and automatic method of doing that due to which we are losing on potential customers as we

are mostly out of stock. What we usua lly do is that at the end of each month staff members go through

the store room (where books are kept) and check for books which need to be reordered.

Q. Whatisthemaximumnumberofa bookthatyouhavesold?

It depends whether the book is local or it had been imported. Books published in Pakistan are usually

inexpensive and are sold in a larger quantity up to 600 books. On the other hand books which had been

imported are very expensive and the maximum number of an imported book that I have sold is not more

than 75.

Q. Do youoffer any kindofdiscountsto yourclients?

Yes, to all of them.

Q. Doesthediscountratedifferfordifferentclients?

All our clients are permanent and have been our potential customers since I dont know how many years.

All of them are offered the same amount of discount i.e., 3% on each book.

Q. Whatisthemajor problemfaced atBookTalk,whichisnotlettin2

thebusinessto grow?

There is not a single problem which is causing a hurdle in Book Talks growth. There are so many of them.

I find stock control as one of the major problemsfaced by the business.

Q. Why isstockcontrolthemajor problemfor you?

As I mentioned earlier that we have no specific method to find out which books have reached their

reorder level and need to be reordered. At the end of each month workers go to the store room and

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collect the copies of each book. We are then able to find out which books have reached their reorder

level. As there are thousands of books in the stock it takes a great deal of time for the workers to go

through all the books. As we only check for books at the end of each month there are timeswhen we

cant provide our clients with all the books they ordered for, as we are mostly out of stock. As a result we

lose our potential clients to our competitors who use fully computerized systems and are well aware of

their stocks. Clients are the key to success of business and if we keep losing them to our competitors we

are doing no good.

Q. Whatisitthatyouwouldliketoseein yournewcomputerizedsystemfor BookTalk?

Iwould wish to see a fast searching and sorting of data. I would like to see results of books bycertain

author, publisher, type and language .One of my major wish is to be notified if a certain book reaches its

reorder level. I would want the receipts to be generated quickly unlike my current system which takes a

great deal of time to write down a receipt.

DirectObservationOn August, 19, 2010 I spent six hours at Book Talk observing how each and everything was carried out.

I was able to gather a reasonable amount of information regarding how an order was placed. The client

placed the order via telephone. I could easily see how difficult was It for the staff members to write the

names of 27 books along with the names of their authors and edition. After all the details were written

down two of the staff members went through dozens of registersto see whether the books were in the

stock or not. This process took more than an hour. After checking for the books, a call was made to the

client to inform them whether all the books were available and the prices of each book. After this the

client then confirmed the order.

Documentanalysis

Registers

They contain the entire database of books and the clients. I was able to find out what details regarding

books and clients would need to be stored in a computerized database. There were three types of

Comment [ 9@

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registers. One contained all the information regarding books, it included details like ISBN number, book

name, authors and publisher of books, their prices, edition, cover type, language and the book year.

Other register contained details about authors and publisher. Various details regarding publishers such

as the publisher name, country, address, telephone and email address were recorded there. The third

type of register had valuable information regarding Book Talks permanent clients. It had the names of

the clients, their telephone, address, shipping address and history of previous transactions. Data in each

of the registers is sorted in alphabetic order.

Invoice

I studies thoroughly the invoice generated to the clients. One of the most important outcomes was that

then clients demanded all the details of the books to be showed on the receipts. It had the book name, its

author, publisher, edition, book year, language and its price.

Descriptionoftheexisting systemBooks are importedfrom various countries. They are delivered to Pakistan by ship and then transferred

to vans which deliver the order to Book Talk. After unloading the books, marketing staffwrites the

information ofeach book in the books register. At this stage data regarding book name, book id, book

ISBN, author name, publisher name, cover type , language, edition , price , quantity and book year are

noteddown. Mr. Rana Sultan himselfsupervises the whole activity. He then orders the marketing

department to arrange the books in the stock room. Different shelves and cabinets are allocatedfor

books starting with different alphabets. Clients place orders via telephone or through a face toface

meeting with Mr. Rana Sultan Mehmood. This decision is totally up to the client. While placing an order

the marketing stafffirst checks for clients details in the clients register.It has information regarding

universitys name, their address, telephone number and email address. The information is then readout

to client for verification. After this the employee copies down clients information in transaction, giving

the transaction a new id, and the specific date on which the order is placed. The client then places the

order. They tell the name ofthe books and sometimes specify details such as book year, edition, authors

or publishers. After taking the order, the marketingdepartment checks for all the books that the client

has askedfor in the stock room. They then call back the client andinform them about books which are

available at Book Talk and the ones which are not. Client will finalize the order ifthey think that the

books offered by Book Talk meet what they have demandedfor. A few members ofthe marketing staff

issues a receipt for the transaction, the book names and a few other details are already written at the

time when order is beingplaced rest ofthe information is taken from books register as the clients want

all the information regarding books on the receipt. The other members ofmarketing staffthen pack the

books in cartons.Ifthe clients are formdifferent cities their order is delivered to them via railway or if

Comment [ CD

C6]: OK. Mentio

attachment number ofthe docume

that you are talking about.

Comment [C

D

C7]: What abou

reports? How many reports are

needed? Whomakes them and wh

is includedin each report?


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they are in the same city books are deliveredon vans. Payments are made afterwards. Client issues a

cheque for payment, they owe to Book Talk. The Accounts manager Mr. Rana Khizer Sultan will then

deal with managingprofits. The data in Accounts department is managedin a computerized system. A

certain amount ofprofits is taken for the CEO Mr. Rana Sultan Mehmood while the rest is invested back

into the business to be usedin Production department for publishing books, paying the employees and

for coveringother costs such as utility bills.Reports for various data are generated at the endofeach

month.Its up to Mr. Rana Sultan todecide what kindofreport he wants. He usually orders for the

reports ofclients who bought books from themduring that specific monthit includes details such as the

name ofthe university.Other searching criteria is the report ofbooks which were soldin thatmonth, it

includes all the information ofthe bookssold, its name, type, language, price and quantity sold.

Transactionsmade is another report generated at the endofeach month ,it has data regarding each

transaction made ,name ofthe client, name ofall the books bought, quantity ofeach book sold, price of

,subtotal and the grand total. He is alsointerestedin knowingabout the books that have reached their

reorder level at the endofeach month.He orders the marketing staffdirectly for generating reports. All

ofthe staffworks together to collect all this information from the registers so that reports can be

generated as quickly as possible.

ritical Evaluationofthe Existing

system

Advantages of the current system

y The current system at Book Talk does not require any technical understanding, as it only requires data tobe recordedin registers. As a result ofthis it is easier to employee work force at low costs.

y There is low set up cost, the shelves and cabinets altogether cost less than implementing a newcomputerized system.

y There are also noindirect costs for Book Talk topay because there are no computers to consumeelectricity.

y The manual systemis not bound by electricity issues. Work can still be done ifthere is no electricity .thecomputerized system could have been a problem as there are serious electricity issues in Pakistan.

Comment [E

F

E8]: Use bullet

points for these.


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Disadvantages of the current system

y When enteringdata staffmembers accidentally switcheddetails anddata a few time since it is handwritten. There were a few cases when clients address was switches with another client and the order

was delivered to a wrong client.

y Ifthere are any changes to be made, the data will have to be entered again which is very timeconsuming.

y Since the data andpaper is storedin filing cabinets it consumes toomuch place, as the amount ofworkdone on paper increases the filing cabinets tooincreases. The amount ofdata has increased to such

extent that Book Talk will either have to hire a new storeroomor else dispose offfew ofthe previous

data. Both the options are not very feasible.

y The information ofcustomers and books details are storedin different parts ofthe site and so take along time to retrieve the data.It takes a long time tofindthe information about a relevant book or

client.In case ofa Delivery, the delivery will be held back. This results in a sharpdropin sales, unhappy

customers and a badimpression on Book Talk.

Alternative SolutionsOff the shelf software

One ofthe solutions available is toimplement an offthe shelfsoftware. We can buy software for Book

Talk which suits it the best.

Advantages

y As only one software and the hardware is required toimplement it, it would not take much oftime oreffort.

y Offthe shelfsoftware are comparatively cheaper than custom written software, as a result it will saveon costs.

y It gives an assurance ofreliability as the product has been suitably tested by various customers. Thismakes investment in the software safe.

Disadvantages

y Offthe shelfsoftware are made for a wide range ofaudience. Thus the development team has toprovide a set design; it may not cater to the exact requirements ofBook Talk.

y Offthe shelfsoftware have offthe shelfupdates.Each there is arevision in software It will be requiredtopay for update fee. There might be a possibility that a few softwares may not even have updates for

too long thus making Book Talk use obsolete software which might have a negative repercussion on the

business.

y As Book Talk is faced by serious competition by its competitors, it needs to be more effective than itscompetitors to emerge as one ofthe best organizations in the eyes ofits customers. The same system

Comment [ GH

G9]: Use bullet

points.


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can be bought by their competitors thus it is verydifficult togain any competitive advantage fromits

use.

Custom written Software

Being a computer student, I have another option that is to write software for Book Talk.

Advantages

y It will enable Book Talk to take out customized reports as per their unique business requirement.It willhelpme todevelop a software solution that will map unique business processes for Book Talk.It will

help to cater to the exact requirements ofbook Talk, making the business more efficient.

y It is easier to update the software from time to time, giving Book Talk a very up todate software.y It will be easier for marketing staffto use the system as it would not contain any unnecessary or

superfluous facilities.

y The use ofcustom written software applications can give Book Talk a s ignificant business advantageover its competitors.

y It is much more flexible than packaged software and can be modified and changedover time as therequirements and business practices for Book Talk would change, as I would always be there to update

the systemfor Book Talk.

Disadvantages

y The investment required will usually be much higher than with packaged software. This is usually thebiggest reason for not goingdown the custom route Book Talk will need to undertake a business

justification exercise and compare the costs against the expected benefits and commercial advantages.

y A large investment in time is requiredduring the development process and this type ofsoftware willtake longer to

implement.

y The marketing workforce will need to be trained. Training will add up to the costs.Semi computerized system

Another solution is todivide the systeminto twoparts i.e. computerize part ofthe database.In this case

I will computerize the storingofdata regarding books, clients, author andpublisher. The other part of

the systemi.e.issuingofthe receipts will be done manually.

Advantages

It will be much quicker than designing a new a whole new system.

Part ofdatabase can be storedon computer thus reducingpaper work greatly.

Receipts andmost ofthe data will be generatedmanually thus there will be no needfor technical skillsto use the computer.

Work efficiency will increase , as computer can work 24/7 unlike manual labour.

Comment [ IP

I Q 0]: Good, bu

where are the advantages and

disadvantages ofthis option?


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As part ofthe work ofthe manual labor will be done on computer ,it is possible tomake some

employees redundant , it will save on the costs thus increasingprofits.

Disadvantages

There will be extreme confusion as to which data is storedon what medium.

Workers will need to be trained to use the computer system

Data cannot be imported and exported between manual and computerized system.

Proposed SolutionIn my opinion, designing a new computerized systemis the best solution to this problem.

My father Mr. Rana Sultan Mehmood was interestedin a low-cost yet an efficient system. Being a

computer student I would not charge himfor designing a systemfor Book Talk, it will lower the

designing costs. According tome designing a computerized systemfrom scratch will make business

more efficient than implementing an offthe shelfor semi computerized system.It will cater to the exact

requirements ofBook Talk and will be designed to solve the exact problems faced by Book Talk. As this

was the major requirement ofmy client Mr. Rana, I was able to convince him easily on the proposed

solution which resultedin our agreement that a new computerized system will be designedfor Book

Talk.

Requirements Specifications

Functional RequirementsThe new systemis required to store all the data regarding books, clients, publishers, transactions,

authors and the purchases ofBook Talk.It shoulddeduce the number ofa specific book sold, from the

quantity ofthat book in stock, it needs to add up the quantity ofthe book in the stock that have been

bought.It shouldgenerate receipts; automatically calculate the subtotal, discount and the grand total.

In order to avoid errors from excess typing Mr. Rana Sultan wants the new system to have point and

click data entry for the data like date, language ofthe book, cover type and the type ofthe books. The

new system will be typedin such a manner so that the user does not have to type in the same data

again and again. Look up will be usedfor selecting books and clients from the database while issuing

receipts to speed up the data entry and to avoid the errors.Mr. Rana wants special validation checks on

data entry for receipts so that same books are not entered again and again in the same receipt. He

wants the new system toinform himofthe books which have reached their reorder level. Mr. Rana

Sultan wants the new system toprovide audio alerts toinform himofhis stock level. The new system

will also have the feature ofcalculatingdiscount, subtotal andgrand total for transactions andpurchases automatically.

Mr. Rana wants the backupofthe systemon CD-ROM. He wants the automatic backupofthe systemon

weekly basis.


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My client wants the output in formofboth the hard and the soft copy. He wants the receipts andotherreports to have the facility ofbeingoutput onboth the paper and the monitor. Rest ofthe output such

as forms, tables andother data will be showedon monitor.

My client Mr. Rana Sultan wants the new system togive a very professionallook; it should use the logo

ofBook Talk andgraphical representation ofdata tomake it easier for the user to use the program.In all

he wants the new system to be very user friendly in order to speed up the users work andincrease

business efficiency. Hence I have decided that I will use GUI basedinterface for this system.

InputRequirements

R

ategory: Books

Book ID

Book Name

Book ISBN

Cover type

Edition

Language

Category

Book year

Price

Qty

Reorder level

Author

Publisher


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S

ategory: Author

Author ID

Author Name

Customers

Customer ID

Customer Name

Customer telephone

Customer address

Customer Email

Shipping Address

Category T Publisher

Publisher ID

Publisher Name

Publisher telephone

Publisher country

Publisher Email

Publisher Address

S

ategory: Purchase

Invoice ID

Date ofsale

Publisher ID

Publisher name

Book ID

Book ISBN


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Book Name

Cover type

Language

Category

Price

Book year

Reorder level

Edition

Quantity

Quantity in Stock

Subtotal

Grand total

Category: Transactions

Invoice ID

Date ofsale

Customer ID

Customer Name

Book ID

Book Name

Price

Quantity

Subtotal

Quantity in Stock

Total

Discount


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Grand total

OutputRequirements

Category: Booksinthe Stock

Book ID

Book ISBN

Book Name

Cover type

Edition

Category

Language

Book year

Price

Quantity in Stock

Reorder level

Category: Receipt

Invoice ID

Date ofSale

Customer ID

Customer Name

Book ID

Book ISBN

Book Name

Cover type

Edition

Language


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Category

Book year

Price

Quantity

Subtotal

Discount

Category: Customers

Customer ID

Customer Name

Customer telephone

Customer address

Customer Email

Shipping address

Category: Purchases

Invoice ID

Date ofsale

Publisher ID

Publisher name

Book ID

Book ISBN

Book Name

Cover type

Language

Category

Price


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Book year

Reorder level

Edition

Quantity

Quantity in Stock

Subtotal

Grand total

[2010!09!10] introduction and nature of the problem

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