Senior Care Company - Essay Example

System Analysis and Design Preliminary finding report Introduction a. Backgroundof the project leading to this report Senior Care Company requires an enterprise information system that wills completely outomate its business operation. The company has been experincing several difficulties with the existing system. The existing system is comprised of a computerised system for some of operations for operation such as processing of the prescription orders. Handling of orders, inventory and billing management procedures are is partially paper-based. SC uses a combination of Excel spreadsheets, an Access database and outdated custom-delivered billing software running on personal computers. Due to the dificulties that the company has experienced, the manager has decided to hire a team that will implement an enterprise information system that will improve the comapanys revenue by autotamtic all the business processes.The new system primarily targets the processing of prescriptions since the process is still paperwork. b. Purpose of the report This report gives details of the analysis and preliminary findings of the existing system. It covers the analysis of different business operations which requires automation. All the activities and task mentioned in the case study are captured in the report. These include prescription processing and generation of reports. The details of how the daily processing of the order is given. c. Structure of the report The report tries to identify and analyze the business problems that SC Company faces. Fundamental causes of these business problems are deliberated on. The report also gives a blueprint of each and every aspect of the business that requires to be automated. The analysis of whether the problems identified in the system can be solved throught the implementation of new information system (Yang 2010). The report will also gives details of the intial finding and recommend other relevant sources where the information about the system can be found. The preliminary finding covers all the sections that need to be automated. The finding involves analyzing how the current business processes are carried out. 2. Preliminary findings After conducting a critical analysis of the Senior Care existing system, i realized several problems that need to be addressed. The problems identified in the system is listed below The company has issues with customer-delivery billing system. The system has become cumbersome to manage because the work load is becoming too much and complex. The medicare and nursing home reimbursement procedures and care providers contracts. The people who used the system have been forced to pay for the cost incurred due to inefficient system. There is also an issue with the billing software. The company which used to carry out routine maintenance has closed the business and hence the maintenance is done by the company’s employees, who lack adequate software development and maintenance skills. The process of order processing is very slow it is done manually. This process is very lengthy and consumes a lot of time. In addition, paper is vulnerable to destruction for example by water or fire. In addition, there is no link between the various stages of the order processing.This means that disparities in terms of accuracy can accrue and the owner or the administration may not be able to realize. In regard to the method of creating documents, the use of word and spreadsheet is not reliable since anybody can access it. In addition files that are saved in form of these two can be edited (Patel 2012). More so documents stored in the computer without any back-up. This is very risk because in case the personal computer crushes, all the documents are lost. The current system also does not have a computerized package use in generating various reports needed in the company. For instance nursing home or care provider and the report lists for each order, each resident who received prescriptions in that month. They also lack a computerized system for capturing the order information. 3. Plan for gathering further information Further information about the compsny’s system can be obtained from conducting interviews and administering questionaaires to the users of the system in the company. The respondents who are interviewed include both the managers and the junior employees sho interact with the system regualrly (Garg 2010). The questionares are open ended format so that the respondents can give detailed answers. In addition, the analyst can visit other similar companies which have been using the same system or read literature on how such systems can be improved. Functional Requirements Report Executive summary This report gives a detailed explanation of the functional required identified for SC company information system. The report start with an executive summary where detaels about the report, the problem definition, the statement of the proposed system, the expected business benefits that the business will get from the system and the recommendation are given. Introduction SC Company has been experiencing difficulties with the current system when it comes to acomplishing business processes. The system that is used is made up of an old version billing system and a manaul processing of prescription orders. The difficulties experenced by the company has necessitated for a integrated information system that will automate all the operations in the company. This report gives details of the function requirement of the new system. The functional requirements identified are meant to solve all the problems that the company has been facing with the use of the old system (Garg 2010). The report follows the standardized format of system analysis and design. Problem definition, proposed solution and business benefits of new system The SC Company want our firm to implement an enteprise information system that will solve the problems faced by the company and improve its efficiency and output (Dixit 2007). The company needs an enteprise information system that will automate all the Customer Support and Purchasing systems activities. Business benefit of the project Ability of the system to provide integrated functionality that is able to combine the major components of purchasing, customer support and the entire administration process with lots of efficiency, reliability accuracy and effectiveness. This will in turn increase the company’s profit. In general, though the current system has been working without any limitation, the expansion of the business will bring about a large number of problems that need to be addressed by implementing a new system that in addition to solving the named problem, SC company will be able to have requied monthly reports that will analyze data for accurate decision making and at the same time provides a basis of evaluating the trends in the business and hence provide a basis being ahead of the competing firms. Scope of new system The system will only cover activities and process in the customer support and the Purchasing systems. The other department such as billing and employee management modules will be integrated later. The data flow diageram below shows the system scope and boundary, and how it will be linked with other subsystems such as finance (Dennis and Wixom 2008). System scope and boundary Data flow Major use case Use case name Description Actors Fill prescription The nursing home or a care provider needs fills prescriptions for its residents Care provider Or nursing Record informartion The clerk record information about the order and prescriptions clerks Create case Case manifests are created for each location that has placed an order. Pharmacist Case assign The case manifest is assigned for supervision pharmacist assistants/ pharmacist Reports The system generates the montly reports needed by the pharmacist system Use case daigram for major use cases Entity relationship daigram Attribute Name Description Attribute Type Data Type Clerk number The number of the clerk entering the order details i number Clerk name Name of the clerk creating orsder details text varchar Time created The time when the data is created in the system timestamp timestamp Nursing home ID The identifiction of the nursing home personel whosubmitted the order i number Nursing home name Name of the nursing home varchar text Address The physical address of the nursing home. varchar text Drunk number Identifiction number of the drug ordered varchar text quantity Quantity of the drug ordered i number Customer ID The identification number of the customer making the order i number Name Name of the customer making the order varchar text Address The address of the person delivering the drugs varchar text Number The registration number of the vehicle used in delivery i number Nursing home or care provide Report Date 04/10/12 Time 5-9pm Store department phamacist sign Nursing care ID Attendance (Y/N) (1,2,3,4,5) Drung ordered Time Series (Y/N) NC001 Y - - NC002 Y - - - NC003 Y - - Y NC004 N - - - Monthly presciption order report Year 2010 Month October     Type of prescription Revenue Payment Quantity(packets) amoxyl $3,000 $800 14 flagyl $2,800 $600 16 penicillin $3,500 $1,000 9 piriton $1,600 $800 11 Anti malaria $4,300 $1,100 20 Conclusion and Recommendations Conducting torough analysis of the existing system is a very important step in system analysis ansd design. The step enables the system analysis team to identify all the problems in the exising system so that these problems can be solved in the new system. Some system developers ignore this proces and may end up developing a system which does not meet the requirements of the customer (Chiang and Hardgrave 2009). During the process of requirment specification, it is very ccrucial to use data modelling tools such as UML. The use case diagram and the entity relationship diagram in the system enabled me to internalize and fully understand the concept of requirment specification. I recommend that SC Company should upgrade their system in future to an enterpise resource process system. This type customer relationship system enables the company to integrate and cetralize the management of all the business processes in the company. The company can buy the software from the leading CRM vendors in the town to reduce the cost of development. References Chiang, Roger, and Bill Hardgrave. Systems analysis and design: Techniques, methodologies, approaches, and architectures. M.E. Sharpe, 2009. Dennis, Alan, and Barbara Haley Wixom. Systems analysis and design. John Wiley & Sons, 2008. Dixit, B. Structured system analysis and design. Firewall Media, 2007. Edwards, Perry. Systems analysis & design. Mitchell McGraw-Hill, 2012. Garg, Vinod Kumar. Workbook on systems analysis and design. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd, 2010. Patel, Nandish V. Critical systems analysis and design: A personal framework approach. Routledge, 2012. Rosenblatt, Harry J. Systems analysis and design. Cengage Learning, 2011. Yang, amuel. OFDMA system analysis and design. Artech House, 2010. Read More