Systems Analysis and Design - Assignment Example

Assignment 4 Answer to Question Organization feasibility assessment requires a consideration of the relationships among various entities. The relationship determines the flow of information and tasks which in turn determine the decision making patterns. In Pier Systems Inc., the marketing manager proposes an integrated system that would effectively manage the customer’s contact. The second fundamental function of the system is to rate the daily performance of each sales person by reporting the number of customers served by a particular employee. The system should use certain productivity parameters such as the turn-around time for each customer, the number of orders processed per sales person and the amount of revenue generated based on each contact. Being a new system, the marketing manager has to engage a specialist who can design an entity relation structure to implement the productivity rating functions. The design should take care of the flow of data and the processes involved. The specialist has to identify the components of the data flow of the organization before designing a data flow diagram. The entities include processes, external entities, data flow and the data store. The processes in this case are the orders, each of which has an order number, the order description, date, sales person and the amount involved. Data flow here is the link between order process and reporting of the daily sales (Shelly & Rosenblatt 200). Data store includes the information about the sales staff, for example name, Identification number, staff reference number and the department name. External processes relates to the integration between Pier Systems Inc. and the manufacturing and production system. The reporting of the processed information will combine data from multiple entities, for example a combination between sales person’s details and the products. Answer to Question 2 Harry and Bill would like to make a system that allows clients to browse online and view their products together with information about the locations of their distribution stores. The clients should then be able to make orders online and even make payments using credit cards. As Harry works on the feasibility issues of the system, it is vital for him to identify the entities that would form the data flow structures. This will enable him to link the processes to design a relationship diagram that will link all entities and processes together. From the onset of the design process, it’s simple to know how the system will function, and the possible data output to expect. The processes in this system will include product search, location search, order request, order payments and order reporting. The data in this system will majorly consist of product data and location data. The data store will be a database of products and the chain stores, which of course in a relational database have data relations. The link or integration between the processes comes in the area of payment, where the system integrates data from the products and links with the payment module. A proper functioning system has to integrate all processes in a way that there is consistency in data access, processing and reporting. While Harry is assessing the feasibility of the system, he needs to consider performance aspects such as the ease of accessibility of the information during the browsing process. Each data entity has unique identification schemes such as the use of foreign keys and the primary keys. Answer to Question 3 This is a case experiment of cloning of a single organization into two organizations A and B. The two organizations have common features apart from the fact that A has more intangible elements X than B. The observer will of course, identify distinct observations between organizations A and B. An example of observations that can represent X in the two organizations is the qualitative features such as the customer service delivery quality. It therefore implies that organization A has more attributes of customer service quality than A. Customer service quality is desirable, but there are different levels of satisfaction depending on how customer needs are satisfied. There are ratings to measure satisfaction index such as “very satisfied”, “satisfied”, “Not satisfied”, and “very unsatisfied”. In organization A, all customers are either very satisfied or satisfied. On the other hand, in organization B, the customers are either unsatisfied or very unsatisfied. Because of more X in A than in B, there is a possibility that customers in A will come back for more services than in organization B. The quality of services in organization A implies that there are enough employees in A than in B. It also implies that organization B has more mistakes than organization a, for example, employees of organization B are extremely very slow. Another possibility is that employees of organization B are not as receptive as those of organization A. Their attitude is perhaps an effect of imbalance of work load. The third possibility is that employees do not possess adequate knowledge about the company products; hence they are not able to satisfy all customers complain. This may lead the employees of organization b to present false information to clients. Answer to Question 4 The present Amazon is an online marketing web site that mainly deals with the sales of books. The company management decides to diversify its sales to include customized merchandise, including automobile. In assessing the feasibility of this system, and with the diversification agenda, the management needs first to do an analysis of cost and benefits. This involves the calculation between the operational cost and the revenues that the venture is capable of generating. If the cost is more than the possible revenue, then the system fails the feasibility test. This may be possible considering that operational cost for automobile enterprise is so high. Secondly, the management has to conduct a risk analysis. There has to be a proper definition of risk in the understanding of amazon.com. Amazon has to understand risk as any possibility of incurring a loss due to inadequate planning and budgeting, or from external unavoidable factors. This idea is highly risky because it shifts from reliance on low cost venture in books sale to high cost venture of automobile products. The risk analysis should be combined with the cost and benefit analysis to make an informed decision before the new product approval. This project was based on poor decision making. The management ought to have considered a less costly venture than automobile idea. Perhaps the best option for diversification would have been house hold items such as utensils and clothing’s. The idea has a lot of threats from competitors who are already well established in automobile enterprises, and who are already doing online sales of heavy machinery products. Of course the idea of online sales is logical, but the product may have to be changed. Works Cited Shelly, Gary, & Rosenblatt Harry. Systems Analysis and Design. London: Cengage Learning, 2011. Print. Read More