Effect of Information System in Enhancing Management Decision Making - Assignment Example

Running head: DSS The effect of information system in enhancing management decision making in your chosen organization Executive summary Information system has infused intelligence into the Sydney X Hotel and enhanced their decision making process. The labour cost control system enhances the staff management, allocation and their movement. The information system has provided Sydney X Hotel with facilities to plan various staff movement analytics so that effective allocation can help them to cut on costs and provide an efficient service to the customers. As customer satisfaction is their primary goal which ensures developing swift communication with the customers for long term growth. The primary objective of this coursework is to explain the strategy which would be modelled for the Sydney X Hotel in managing their labour cost which proportionately takes a huge setback in the determination of profits and customer satisfaction. Table of Contents Executive summary 2 Table of Contents 3 Introduction 5 Procedure / Research 6 Business Need: 6 Functionality: 6 Expected Value: 6 Tangible: 6 Intangible: 6 Special Issues or Constraints: 7 Technical feasibility 7 Economic feasibility 8 Organisational feasibility 9 Process-oriented 9 Information-oriented 10 System Use Case Document (Booch, 2003): 11 Design 14 Data collection 14 Data validation methods 14 Design issues 14 Findings / Analysis 15 Risk management 15 Meeting objectives 16 Conclusions and recommendations 17 References/Bibliography 18 Introduction The paper is involved in discussing the information system to be built for Sydney X Hotel which would manage labour costs, labour allocation for various services of the hotel. The first section is staged at gathering requirements and modelling the system in accordance to it. The design issues are handled in this stage which allows deeper penetration into the system for understanding the business process flows (Boehm, 2001). The second section ensures an analysis of the lightweight system developed before converting it into a client server system running in their intranet. The next section ensures recommendations pertaining to the system and the possible inclusions which would have contributed towards the cost control of the entire enterprise. Procedure / Research Business Need: The labour cost control is used to control the situation of overstaffing of breakfast service, and thus can reduce the unnecessary labour expenses of the fine dining restaurant to the accepted budget range, with better using of resources for providing high-quality customer services with efficiency (James, 2003). Functionality: The functionality of the system should have is listed below: Identify the staff mix of morning shift in required number according to the occupancy of the day Defining hourly pay of staff and supervisors Budgeting the staff cost of breakfast service weekly Expected Value: We expect the project can decrease the labour cost of the fine dining restaurant which is led by the overstaffing of breakfast service, due to the ineffective way of rostering. On the other hand, improve customer satisfaction for reducing the complaints about the service inefficiency. Tangible: Reduce the annual total labour cost by 5% Reduce the yearly customer complaints calls by 10% Intangible: Improve staff efficiency Improve customer satisfaction Special Issues or Constraints: F&B manager mandates deadline for 31st May next year The system needed to be in place for the next financial year Technical feasibility Although some risks are presented, the Labour Cost Control System is considered to be technical feasible. The System's risk based on familiarity with application is medium: Microsoft Office such as Words and spreadsheets are commonly used in each department; and management staff had all trained to ensure their competency level of skills and knowledge IT department also has rich experience and knowledge in the utilisation of Microsoft Office and other relevant softwares However, many choices of supporting and development tools and products are placed in the market The System's risk based on familiarity with the technology is low: Training of computer application is continuously offered to management Management in the restaurant and other departments as well as IT are all achieved certain level of skills and knowledge in computing usage and softwares A consultant will be employed for supporting the DSS development The relevant risk of project size is considered to be low: The project team will be small in size with 5 members Business users are necessary to get involve According to the small size and low complexity of the project, the system should be highly possible to be finished within the time frame The compatibility with the rostering existing system should be good: The existing rostering and labour cost systems are also spreadsheet -based, like the existed one Economic feasibility A simple cost-benefit analysis for 3 years is shown as the follow to present the new DSS has a good chance for value adding to the business in future: The total projected cost of the project for 3 years is $22,920. The total projected benefits for 3 years: the yearly 5% decrease ( about 230,978*0.05 = $11,548.90 a year) in labour cost for 3 years is $34,703.32 $100,000 is currently spent on phone charges and operation every year for handling customer complaints; so reducing 10% complaints annually can be benefit in $30,000 for 3 years Return on Investment (ROI) will be 182.30% NPV is $34,844 Intangible costs and benefits: Increase customer satisfaction and therefore decrease the guest complaints by call by 10% Improvement of staff efficiency in breakfast service Organisational feasibility From the organisational point of view, the project is considered to be low risk and expected to have high investment return (ROI - 182.30%). The project's objective focuses on reducing the labour expenses of the restaurant through breakfast service. The reduction of total restaurant labour cost matches the goal of senior managers in decreasing expenses and the organisational target of repeating business can also be achieved by the improvement of staff efficiency and customer satisfaction (Kenneth, 2003). Novy Lorry, the project sponsor, will be well supported by the rest of the team members or other management if necessary. And the strong project team will be responsible for the education and training of other restaurant staff. Process-oriented The system must allow the management input the data (daily occupancy) and accept it. The system must allow predicting the number of morning staff according to the input data from management and the background information from specific data field of the new DSS (Hoffer, 2002) The system must able to perform solver technique for users testing the DSS and thus to project the staff wages based on the information of staff hourly wage rate contained in the system and other relevant payroll information from the restaurant payroll system Information-oriented The input occupancy has to be retained. The DSS have to include the information about the required number of assigned staff and basic wage rate of supervisor at different occupancy level (Dennis, 2001). The DSS system must retain the hourly wage rate of wait staff. The system has to contain the budgeted total labour cost of the restaurant loaded from the restaurant payroll system. System Use Case Document (Booch, 2003): Figure 1: Use Case Desc 1. Context Level Diagram External entity - Manager/supervisors Process - Manager/supervisors weekly forecast breakfast staff number and budget wage costs Data flows - Daily occupancy, required number of staff, total forecasted labour cost of restaurant, breakfast labour forecast, staff wages Figure 2: DFD Context 2. 0-Level Diagram External Entity - Manager/supervisors Process - Input daily occupancy; draw information from payroll system; forecast staff number and wages Data flow - - Daily occupancy, required number of staff, total forecasted labour cost of restaurant, breakfast labour forecast, staff wages Data storage - Budget record, occupancy record, labour expense record Figure 3: DFD Level 0 (Pressman, 2005) Design Data collection The input of daily occupancy of the week is collected by manager or supervisor from the Front Desk or from the F&B Manager. On the other hand, the information of total budgeted labour cost of the restaurant (breakfast, lunch and dinner) is automatically drawn from the restaurant payroll system for the further calculation of the estimated breakfast labour cost. Data validation methods To ensure the data input is correct, we set up format check to limit the type of data entered of the field. In our DSS, the input daily occupancy is only is accepted if it is in whole or decimal number. If user enters the wrong data, such as time or data, then error message will come out to give warming (Navathe, 2004). Design issues To allow new user being easy and familiar to use the new DSS, user instruction and description will be included on the input & output and calculation sheets for the user following to input data and do testing, as well as being aware how does the process flow. Furthermore, description will also be shown under data tables in red colour to tell the user what are they about and thus user will understand the relationship of the information and help assisting their usage. On the other hand, data will be backgrounded in different colour according to their nature. For instance, blue for input data; yellow for output area; pink is the information area to describe the current situation of the restaurant; green is the cells which their values will change in the solver; light yellow and purple are cells for constraints; and orange is the target cell of the solver. Hyperlink is set inside the system. There are hyperlinks for instructions to link between its relevant data tables or areas, by clicking the linked naming cells. It is also convenient to go back to the related steps or previous page by the Back Hyperlink, clicking "Go Back" or "Go back to 'Calculation'", too. Furthermore, comment boxes are set for some cells to remain the user, i.e. input the occupancy in decimal or integer number; inform that warning will be given out if the value of the breakfast labour budget is too high or OK; and how to enter the target value in the cell for solver (Barry, 2000). Findings / Analysis Risk management Some potential risks associated to the new system must always be addressed. The following are the possible risks that can potentially impact the new system (Rajaraman, 2002). Manual errors or users do not fully understand the system Errors from the computing system Accidental data lose Increase expenses of restaurant due to high maintenance cost The system may not achieve the ideal performance of controlling labour expenses The potential ways to deal with the risks: Provide proper training for the new system Taking maintenance and performance assessment of the system in regular basis Proper backup system Security i.e. protection from virus and worm and preventing the access of users by using passwords Close contact with the development team Meeting objectives The objective of this project is to reduce the annual labour cost of the restaurant by using the new DSS to adjust the number of staff for breakfast to the required level. Compare to the current existed system which is mainly based on the manager's decision, the new system can be more effectively control the staff number as it automatically depends on the daily occupancy, then defines the number of required staff wages based on it and includes the consideration of the limited budget (Silvia, 2000). The function of the system and the capability of meeting business needs are ensured by careful planning, analysis, design and implementation. Also, there will be proper staff training, regular maintenance and support to allow continuously maintaining the efficiency of the DSS in meeting the objective (Sommerville, 2005). Additionally, the labour expenses of the restaurant will be monitored consecutively in order to assure the system can finally bring the annual budget to target. Conclusions and recommendations The DSS system developed is a high end system for the hotel and serves the purpose of optimisation of labour allocation. The system takes a great initiative to cut costs occurring due to labour and optimises for management. However labour is not the only factor that is to be controlled and managed. Other factors like stock control, supplier behaviour, managing the supply chain, implementation of CRM forms to a large extent thought process from the enterprise point of view (Weick, 2005). Future work would be in the form of an ERP system for the hotel which would integrate all the departments and effectively reduce the effort, time and money involved. References/Bibliography Barry Mawer (2000). Systems Maintenance, vol 32, pp 12. Booch, Grady (2003). Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications, pp 23-26, 2nd Edition, Addison-Wesley Professional. Boehm, B. (2001), "A Spiral Model of Software Development and Enhancement," IEEE Computer 21, 5, 61-72. Dennis, A & Wixom, B.H & Roth, R.M (2006). System Analysis Design, pp 37-42, Wiley, 3rd edn, USA. Hoffer, A, Jeffrey (2002). Modern Systems Analysis and Design, pp 81-95. Pearson Education. James, A. O'Brien (2003). Management Information System, pp 32-36, 6th ed Tata Mc Graw Hill. Kenneth, C. Laudon and Jane P. Laudon (2003). Management Information System, pp 53526, 6th ed New York: Tata Mc Graw Hill. Korth, F. Henry (2005). Database Management systems, pp 204-225.Tata McGraw-Hill. Navathe, Elmasri (2004). Fundamentals of Database systems, pp 49-70.Singapore: Pearson Education. Pressman, Roger (2005). Software Engineering, pp 47-56, 3rd Edition. Rajaraman (2002). Analysis, Design of Information system, pp 90-96, Pearson Education. Silvia, T Acu (2000). A Process model applicable to Software engineering and knowledge Engineering, pp 112-126. Sommerville, Ian (2005). Software Engineering, pp 89-96, Pearson Education. Weick, K. (2001) Sense making in Organizations. Read More