Online flower ordering system - Essay Example

? Online Flower Ordering System Table of Contents Company Vision and Mission 3 2.Organization Background 3 3.Department and Structure 4 4.SWOT Analysis 5 5.Organizational Need of the Proposed System 5 6.Strategic Plan 6 7.Marketing Plan 6 8.Aims and Objectives of the New System 7 9.Narrative Description of the System 8 10.Project Management 9 A.Gant Chart 9 B.PERT Chart 9 11.Project Title and Executive Summary 10 12.System Analysis 11 A.Context Diagram 11 B.Use Cases 12 C.ERD 15 D.Domain Model 16 1. Company Vision and Mission Our vision is to become the leading florist in the locality. We seek to be the most sought after company amongst the local people for delivering flowers reliably. We value the satisfaction of our customers and aim at being part of their memorable moments in life. Our mission is to be a company whose delivery services the local people can reach and use easily and be satisfied with. We seek to provide a good quality, easily accessible, highly reliable, fresh flowers delivery solution to the local people. 2. Organization Background Our company has successfully been providing flower delivery services to the local area people. The people can place orders in two ways. They can choose to come directly to the shop, check the rates, personally select the flowers and make the payment in advance, provide the recipient’s address, set delivery date and time and thus place a delivery order. They can also choose the flowers and place a delivery order over the phone. The payment can be made through a credit card or by hand. In case of credit card the required details are provided to the sales representative along with the recipient’s address. In case of opting to pay by hand by a customer on phone, the representative of the shop notes down the address of the customer, and then collects the payment from the customer from his doorstep. Since, use of Internet has increased enormously in the area; therefore, it was thought of to make the delivery service of the company accessible over the Internet as well. Currently there is no other company that offers such an online facility, so our company would be the pioneer in introducing the idea in the area. This would contribute in not only increasing the number of satisfied customers but also raise the company’s revenue. Additionally, in case of any renowned event approaching and some special flowers have been arranged for the event, advertisements can be spread easily over the Internet through the customer’s email addresses. The complete setup for delivering flowers is already in place. So incorporating an online sales end would not affect the overall system structure and process. 3. Department and Structure The company runs a completely working flower delivery system. The overall organization comprises of four departments; Figure 1 Organization Structure Sales: Handles the placement of orders and receipt of payments. Production: Handles for arranging the required flowers. In case, some particular flowers are not in stock, the department can also purchase the requested flowers. Finance: Handles the purchase and investment on flowers, the revenue acquired per day, the fuel consumption and employees pays. Delivery: Handles the delivery of flowers to relevant recipients. It deals with the personnel, their conveyance and routes issues. Every department has a manager who handles the overall working of the related department. The online system shall be introduced as part of the existing sales department. The online system would serve as an additional means of gathering customers through online placement of orders. 4. SWOT Analysis Strengths: Well defined divisions of the departmental activities. Easy incorporation to the existing setup of the organization. Weaknesses: Training of the sales staff would be required to use the web interface. Hardware and software would be required to run the website and access it. Investment would be required for website development and hosting. Opportunities: Absence of a similar online flower delivery service in the locality, so no competition. The widespread use of Internet in the area. Threats: Unmanageable number of delivery requests. Unmet orders due to technical problems (weather conditions, unavailability of flower stock) related to delivery. Customers playing pranks on staff by providing invalid personal details in the orders placed. 5. Organizational Need of the Proposed System A constant need of the company is to increase its sales and to be available to the customers round the clock. Currently, the sales department ceases to work once the office hours are over. This means that orders can be placed only during the hours when the sales department staff is on seat or the shop is open. Thus the revenue is gained only when the sales department is working. Therefore in the existing setup, the unavailability of the sales staff affects the revenues of the system. 6. Strategic Plan Through the Internet, an online order placement terminal can be introduced. Orders can be placed online through this terminal. As the process of ordering becomes independent of the sales staff, the facility of placing orders is constantly available to the customers. The sales staff can later review and forward the orders to the production and delivery staff. Therefore, in view to the revenues, the proposed system would contribute in giving a boost to the overall sales of the company. 7. Marketing Plan As an online order placement system requires a compulsory email requirement from the customer, the company gains a long term access to customers. The company would have the emails of the customers that used the system in the past to place a delivery order. Any new flower package relevant to an approaching event can be propagated through emails. The news of any approaching event or relevant flower package can instantly be uploaded to the website. A website can be reached through a wider range of people. Thus by incorporating the proposed system, the process of gathering customers and advertising becomes more effective. 8. Aims and Objectives of the New System The aim of the project is to create an online flower ordering system that enables the customers to order flowers online for different occasions to be delivered to different people. The customers would be able to have an experience similar to how they come to the shop and place the order. Following are a few objectives the system would target to achieve. Website shows the available flowers which can be selected by a customer. Website shows a listing of any approaching events under which the flowers are categorized. A user friendly interface for the sales staff to review and approve the ‘pending’ orders placed by the customers. Availability of the feature to set any news or alert message on the website by the sales staff. A sales person can update the status of order. A sales person can send advertisement emails to customers. A user friendly for the customers where they can enter their personal contact details (address, phone number, email), they can provide details of the recipients (address). Customers can set a personalized message to attach with the flowers Customers must be able to set the date and time of the delivery. Customers must be able to view the status of their order i.e. whether it is ‘in progress’ or ‘completed’ or ‘pending’ Customers should be able to customize the bouquet. Customers should be able to place order on basis of selected bouquets from the product catalog offered on the website. A flower cart should be visible to the customer, which shows the price on basis of the selections made. Customer can add or delete a selection from the cart. Customers must be able to select any of the payment methods i.e. credit card or by hand. Sending order confirmation email to the customer. The success of the proposed system shall be based on the extent to which the above objectives are met with. 9. Narrative Description of the System The proposed system would have two terminals; one for the customer while the other for any sales person. A customer can access the online ordering interface through the web url. A new customer registers on the site by providing personal details i.e. Name, email, phone, address. Once a customer is registered into the system, he/she can place an order. He/she either sets his/her preference of flowers or select from the available choices. Once the flowers options are set, the customer provides the recipient’s name and address and types an optional customized message to be delivered along with the flowers. The customer then sets the data and time of the delivery. Once the customer is satisfied with the settings, he/she confirms the order details. The order gets placed. The customer can view the status of the orders he/she placed. The order is ‘pending’ when it is not yet approved by the staff, ‘in progress’ when the order is approved by the system, ‘declined’ when the order is not approved by the system. This could happen in case of unavailability of the requested flower type or due to technical problems i.e. unfavorable weather conditions. The status of the order is shown as ‘completed’ when the flowers are delivered to the recipient. The login information for customers is maintained into the database, so the existing customers do not require registration to the website. Sales persons do not require registration. They are already allocated accounts to log into the system. A sales representative when logs into the system, he/she can view any orders that are placed by customers. The new orders are placed under the ‘pending’ tag. Once the sales staff approves the order after confirming the order with the customer on phone and checking with the production and delivery staff, the order status is set to ‘in progress’. A sales member can change the status of the order to ‘in progress’, ‘declined’ or ‘completed’. In case of declining an order, the sales staff also adds the reason for declination for the customer to see. In case of ‘completed’ order, the date and time of delivery is added with the status. 10. Project Management This section highlights the dependencies that exist within the various work modules which resist the parallel processing of the involved tasks thus affect the timeline. It also presents the overall timeline of the project and the milestones delivered at the end of each project phase. A. Gant Chart The Figure below shows the work plan of the project. Figure 2 Gantt Chart for the Proposed System B. PERT Chart The Figure below shows the work flow and the interdependencies of the different tasks involved during the course of the project. Figure 3 PERT Chart for the Proposed System The milestones as depicted in the Figure are: 1) Work Plan Document 2) Scope Document 3) Requirements Document 4) Design Document 5) Purchased Hardware/Software 6) Database 7) Interfaces 8) Tested Database 9) Tested Interfaces 10) Web Interface with Integrated Database 11) Tested Database Driven Interfaces 12) Online Website 13) Tested Website 11. Project Title and Executive Summary The title of the project is: “Online Flower Ordering System” A constant requirement of the company is to increase the business revenue. In the current system setup there are two areas, slight enhancement of which can affect the overall revenue of the company; increasing the number of customers and increasing the number of hours for taking orders from customers. The project proposes a strategy to enhance both these revenue earning areas. The strategy is to add an online terminal within the existing sales department. Through this web terminal, customers from anywhere within the locality of the area can place the order at any time of the day. Customers provide their personal information, recipient’s information and the date and time of the delivery. These orders are then approved by the sales staff after considering the available resources of the company. Thus the time limit of placing orders only during the availability of sales staff is overcome. Secondly, the web interface offers all the basic features that a customer uses while placing an order by being actually present in the shop. This makes the process of placing the order more interactive and lively. The customers can also login at any time and check the status of their order. As the company attains valuable email address of the customers when they register to the site while placing an order, the company can use these emails to send advertisements to targeted recipients. This presents a higher chance of increasing sales especially during the time when some flower sharing event is approaching. Therefore, by incorporating the proposed online ordering system within the existing flower delivery setup would contribute in achieving the objective of increasing the overall business revenue. 12. System Analysis This section provides a thorough analysis of the proposed system. A. Context Diagram Figure 4 reveals the context diagram of the system that is intended to be developed. Figure 4 Context Diagram of the Proposed System From the context diagram, the following information about the system can be derived. Inputs: Customer provides details (contact information and delivery preferences) to the website while placing the order Sales person changes status of the order. Sales person posts any alert/message on the website. Sales person sends advertising messages to the customers. Sales person provides reason alongside the declination of an order. Outputs: Generates views for the customer to see the status of order. Sends confirmation email of an order to the customer. Sets message for the customer to see in case of declination of order placed. Provides the time of the order delivered to the customer. Shows the sales person if there are any pending orders. Sends the details to relevant payment gateway to process the credit card payments. B. Use Cases There are two kinds of people that basically interact with the system; the sales person and the customer. The customer interacts with the system in the following way. Enter personal details. Enter recipient’s details. Log into the website. Set a personalized message with flowers. View the cart. Set the payment option. Choose flowers from list. Write preferences of flowers. Set date and time of delivery. Confirm order. The sales person interacts with the system in the following way: Approve any pending order. Update status of an order. Set a message of declination. Set alert/message on the website. Send an advertising email to the customers. From the above interaction detail, the use case formed for the proposed system comprises of two actors as shown in Figure 5. (a) Actor 1: Customer (b) Actor 2: Sales Person Figure 5 Proposed System Use Case Diagram C. ERD There are five entities that form the proposed system; flower, order, salesperson, Customer, Cart and Payment. Each of these entities has some attributes. The attributes underlined depict the primary keys of the entities. Flower: ItemCode, Kind (the type of flower), Price, Status (whether available or not) Order: Id, ItemCode, Quantity, Date, Time, Status, Message, SalesPersonId (of the person who updates the status of order and writes the message) SalesPerson: Id, Name, Phone Customer: Id, Name, Address, Phone, Email Cart: OrderId, Quantity, Price Payment: RefNo (Credit Card Number or Address of Customer), OrderId The rules the above mentioned entities follow are: There can be more than one customer that can place an order. An order can contain more than one flower types. A customer can place more than one order. A customer can have one payment method. A sales person can handle more than one order. The relation between the various entities forming the proposed system is shown in Figure 6. Figure 6 ERD of Proposed System D. Domain Model Figure 7 shows the domain model of the system. Within each entity is listed the operations that the object can perform. Figure 7 Domain Model of the Proposed System Read More