How to Implement User Support Materials for a Business - Assignment Example

Implementation plan and user support material Table of Contents Introduction 3 Scope and Objectives 4 2.Systems objective model 5 3.Data Flow Diagram (DFD) 7 4.Process and design specification 7 5.Process and physical objectives model 9 6.System implementation and installation options 9 7.User documentation 12 8.Project constraints and risk factors 13 9.Support and maintenance plans 16 10. DFD for every department 18 11.Conclusion 18 References 19 Introduction A recent service request has been initiated by the managing director, Clive Moor Lascelles Fine Foods (LFFL). In the description of request it states LFFL’s interest in developing a comprehensive, state of the art system that tracks customer purchase behavior via a Frequent Shopper Program which will serve to award high value incentives to our customers through a partnership with a loyalty points program. The individual customer’s frequent transaction behavior will help LFFL enhance its processes and offerings in order to best satisfy their valued customers expectations. The overall objective of this project request is to create an information system which tracks individual customer purchases. As our loyal LFFL customers make purchases with store cards, the transactions are tracked on our system and loyalty points are awarded and accumulate over a period of time. At such time as deemed necessary by our customers, they may then redeem their loyalty points for specialty items such as gift items, specialty foods, and other products or services as made available through partnerships with external companies. As referenced in LFFL’s Sales and Marketing overview for 2007, it states that LFFL Fine Foods has experienced significant growth and is now focused on expanding its services, improving the efficiency of its operations and increasing the consumer purchase cycle as a means to increasing the loyalty and profitability of its customer base. 1. Scope and Objectives Lascelles’s operational feasibility consists of asking ourselves if it would make sense to commence with a frequent shopper incentive program for our customers. Such a program could serve Lascelles well by the increased sales and revenue that would be experienced through such an undertaking. All three locations efforts combined could work in unison operationally to put Lascelles on the path of expanded growth and notoriety that has yet to be experienced. This is envisioned through a bar-coded or magnetic type card that stores customers purchase transactions into a unified database at each store. The customers in addition would have online access to our stores through their personal pin number. At the online login prompt, they would be asked for their user name and pin. This system would then provide each person who accesses it a detailed description of their account. With our Frequent Shopper software application integrated into Lascelles’s current POS system, we can collect performance measurements and perform trends analysis which can also be used as a metric tool. We wrap up the project summary discussion with the economic feasibility of implementing a frequent shopper initiative. With our current customer base, a plan to expand services, and an aggressive approach for a customer appreciation award system, it is expected for Lascelles to realize a twofold increase in sales and revenue along with a positive long term economic impact. 2. Systems objective model The systems objective model is to analyze the customers’ data and preferences so that they can be catered well. The inputs would be in the form of preference and amount one shop at the store. The processing is over the system of points which is determined by the amount one spends and accordingly the loyalty points earned. The offers which are applicable to the valued customers and the process of management of customers are also the essential processes which need to be managed. The outputs are most likely the increased customer satisfaction, reduction of costs, reduced wastages on resources and others. Figure 1: System Objective Model 3. Data Flow Diagram (DFD) Figure 2: Data Flow Diagram (DFD) 4. Process and design specification The design process would entail to the software, hardware and network resources which make up the system. The software which would be incorporated is the frequent shopper program at the POS and would be replicated across locations so that the information remains consistent. The software would gather the information about the customers and process their purchases to determine the loyalty points which they earn and is redeemable for promotion offers. The alternative could be a CRM system which would assume greater responsibilities in customer nurturing and management. The CRM would also process the customer preferences, create and design strategies for marketing the goods. The hardware and networking essentials can incorporate retail management systems that would provide an efficient way to provide real time replication of the frequent shopper program software so that every location stay synchronized with updated data. It desires to lay routers with T1 cables to replace 56Kbps cables. Another option would have been to connect with VPN wireless systems so that the cost of cabling would be reduced and all the physical dangers pertaining to the cabling are reduced to minimum (Cisco, 2001). Security mechanisms would be provided accordingly so that information would be safe and can be updated with proper mechanism to handle business data efficiently. 5. Process and physical objectives model The process objectives model can be implemented by the various SDLC process models in place. The spiral and the incremental model combined together would serve the greater part of modeling the system with complete requirements. The planning and requirements gathering phase would be to determine the exact requirements so that the analysis and the succeeding stages would be quite distinct in nature. The processes would be quite repeatable in nature so as to envelope every aspect of the system and requirements. 6. System implementation and installation options Cut over strategy defines the strategies and decision for the system installation. Once a system has been developed and tested, it must be installed and placed into operation. Installing a system and making it operational is complex as there are many conflict constraints. Some of important issues when planning installation are to be considered like cost, customer relations, employee relations, logistical complexity, and overall exposure to risk (Silvia, 2000). Some of the most important issues to be considered when planning installation include incurring costs of operation both systems in parallel, detecting and correct the errors in the new system, potentially disrupting the company and its IS operation and training personnel and familiarizing customers with new products. Different approaches to installation represent different trade-offs. The most commonly used installation approaches are: 1. Direct installation: in a direct installation the new system is installed and quickly made operational and any overlapping system are then turned off. This is also called as immediate cut over. The primary advantage of direct installation is it simplicity; the primary disadvantage of this is its risk. Because legacy systems are not operated in parallel, there is no backup in the event that the new system fails. This installation is typically used under the new system is not replacing a legacy system or downtime of days or weeks can be tolerated. 2. Parallel installation: In this the new system is implemented and run in parallel with the new one but not completely implemented at a stance. The old system is kept in place and slowly replaced. The cost factors are high but efficiency is derived from it. 3. Phased installation: The system is installed and get into operation in a series of steps and phases. Each phase is well observed before and after implementation (Hoffer, 2002). The new system is not operating completely at this time but is replacing the old system in phases. It is time consuming but very effective in the long run. Our installation strategy for the Lascelles Fine foods system would be the phased approach. It marks the continuity of the present business and also taking into account the changes the new system is about to begin. The business requires to flow and cannot be halted for installation of the system; therefore phased installation is the most suitable. Figure 3: Work Schedule 7. User documentation The user documentation for the airline reservation system is provided and includes all the functionalities of the system and the system behavior to inputs and outputs. It will also include user help documents for correctly implementing a business purpose and for smooth functioning of the system. It acts as a backup document for any sort of help required for getting a job done. It can be further divide into the following: Technical understanding document: It mentions all the various technicalities which are involved in the final working and the implementation of the system. It lays down the major bird’s eye view of the technological and machine view of the system to make it stand in her legs and work successfully. Business understanding document: It details out the business processes and the business functions which are required to be present for making the right decisions for the business to flow smooth. 8. Project constraints and risk factors The following are the various project and risks associated with the development and implementation of the project. a. Feasibility factors Often calculating the feasibility factors would make the information system project quite difficult to take up and proceed with the development stage. The calculation of ROI, NPV, profitability factor, payback period and many others would make thee entire project quite trembling in the initiation phases. b. Systems requirements factors The business requirements may not be captured distinctly resulting in failure of identifying the business workflow cycle and data flow model. If the requirements gathering stage is not taken care well then the entire development is a complete failure. This stage marks the very identification of the business scenario and the processes which needs to be modeled into an information system. If there are loopholes in this stage it would result in getting the job done really worse. c. Systems Analysis factors The system analysis factors are the human and technical factors which must be checked periodically for their compliance level with regard to quality factors. The lack of human technical and domain expertise would make the analysis of the business case quite imperfect in nature and there would be not much correlation among the contiguous stages in the project. Technical factors would make the design process quite difficult to meet the required stages for representing the major inputs, outputs, processes, milestones and deliverables. Lack of domain expertise would make the information system design deficient of identifying the business side of the system project and its correct representation of the ideas and concepts would fail to mature at the technical front. d. Implementation failure factors Lack of implementation strategies would make the failure of information system quite certain in nature. Every business requires a different approach to be exercised and identifying them appropriately would make the implementation quite relevant. 9. Support and maintenance plans The review and maintenance schedule must include the following: Preventative maintenance – Maintenance schedules are a necessity for keeping the resources of a system in good health. The hardware, network equipments, communication programs and software must be periodically checked whether it is up and running (Mawer, 2000). It is likely to include the following: hardware maintenance for checking the regular running equipments(electrical fans, filters, batteries, etc) periodic replacement of hardware resources to keep it according to changing atmosphere (e.g. developmental plan revisions) system software also requires timely maintenance (fixing bugs, developing newer versions, revisions, etc) reports must be seriously checked for their correlation with system requirements (creating error logs, testing strategies, performance measures, etc) Maintenance and updation of system documentation for future reference and updations. Remedial maintenance – It is performed to bring the system to running condition after correcting the hardware or software fault (Mawer, 2000). The remedial service is likely to include: Create a Help Desk concept which will log and action any reports from the customer in the event of a fault. On-site or remote login concept of issue resolution. Engaging a third party service to resolve and manage the resolution. Updating documentation every time an event has taken place. In this case both the technical and non-technical staff must be made aware of the support strategies so that their response time is optimized for better handling the issues of the customer timely and professionally. 10. DFD for every department 11. Conclusion References Barry Mawer (2000). Systems Maintenance. Casey, Dermot. Understanding the Situation of Information Systems Development Failure: A role for Pragmatism, 2005. Cisco Systems (2001). High-Speed Infrastructure Integrated VPN, ww.cisco.com/application/pdf/en/us/guest/products/ps1835/c1037/ccmigration_09186a00800a4b52.pdf Forouzan, A. Behrouz (2003). TCP/IP Protocol Suite, second edition. Tata McGraw Hill. Hoffer A, Jeffrey (2002). Modern Systems Analysis and Design.Pearson Education. Heeks, Richard. Failure, Success and Improvisation of Information Systems Projects in Developing Countries, Jan 2002. Silvia, T Acu (2000). A Process model applicable to Software engineering and knowledge Engineering. Read More