Fitness Center Information System - Research Paper Example

Fitness Center Information System Introduction: The basis of this system is to manage effectively the available resources involved in The Fitness Center namely the members, fitness consultants and the higher management of the company involved in strategic decisions. Purpose: The Information system deployed here will help the company and its members in identifying their individual goal and contribute to the overall objective of the company to create a competitive edge over others in the similar business. Roles of people involved: The identification of the different users of the system is as follows: Members: The current and prospective members would use the system to feed in their personal data and reason as to which they have joined the Fitness center. The members may have various objectives while joining the center. Some are for simple fitness programs while others have different objective. The system would take care of all those and keep the latest details about performance and other measures such as future interests. Fitness Consultants: They form a major part of the system and handle a lot of tasks relating to the members activities and alignment to several other programs and future interests. They interface with the management giving valuable information regarding members and their interests which needs to be taken care from time to time. The new methodologies and equipments need to be identified for the growth of their customer base so that they stay competitive in the business. Management perspective: The management of The Fitness Center needs to analyze at every moment what is to be done for furthering the interests of the members and to identify the upcoming requirements and the feedback from the members about the center and the environment. The fitness consultants also interact with the management to identify collectively the innovations which will keep the company competitive over others. Systems Investigation: It relates to the investigation of the following: The entities which are involved in the system. The various data stores which needs to be identified so that information is not lost. The various relationships between the entities which determine there interaction to obtain the final objective. The data flow in the company which would determine the beginning and the end of the entire cycle. The above information can be collected from the company members and the consultants in the form of interviews and questionnaires designed to fetch the required information so as to get the overall view of the system and the interaction of the various parts. System Analysis It outlines the various models which need to be developed to get an inner depth of the system and the interaction of its various processes. Process Modeling: Process modeling involves graphically representing the processes which capture, manipulate, store and distribute data between a system and its environment and between components within a system (Hoffer, 2002). The following is the Data flow diagram of the entire system and its relationships with other entities: Figure 1: Data flow Diagram of the entire system. The following are the information about the various symbols used in the above diagram: Oval - It is used to depict the Information system to be interfaced. Rectangle - It is used to denote the various entities involved in the entire system. Rectangles with one open side - It is used to show the place to store the information derived from the various entities and the Information system itself. Arrows - It shows the direction of the information flow. Labels - It gives a brief about the nature of the information or message passing. Conceptual data modeling : A detailed model that captures the overall structure of organizational data while being independent of any database management system or other implementation considerations (Hoffer and Navathe, 2002). Figure 2: Entity Relationship Diagram (Clearly showing communication between them) The following are the descriptions of the various symbols used: Rectangle - The entities involved. Cone - It depicts the relationships between the various entities. The symbols like M, N - It shows the degree of association between the entities. Systems Design: The system design would firstly contain the structure of the databases into tables to be implemented into a relational database. The following are the various tables which will be implemented in the relational database application: ENTITIES ATTRIBUTES MEMBERS Name, Address, Phone, Primary objective, Gender, Future aims, Identity num FITNESS CONSULTANTS ID, Gender, Contact info, specialist, suggestions HIGHER MANAGEMENT Name, contact info, future objectives, market survey REPORT reports_on_performance, innovations info Get Trained Performance status, future aims, ID, Identity num The above table showed the tables and their attributes after the E-R diagram was normalized and cardinality ratios are considered. As the relationships have cardinality ratio of M:N therefore they formed a table to be created into the database (Korth, 2002). Guidelines of Systems Review and Maintenance Schedule The review and maintenance schedule must include the following: Preventative maintenance - To undertake scheduled maintenance and review tasks to keep the hardware and/or system software in good operating condition. The preventative service is likely to include: hardware maintenance to keep electromechanical equipment correctly operating (fans, filters, back up batteries, adjustments, alignments, etc) replacement of hardware components to keep the equipment up to current specifications (eg engineering changes) updating of system software (bug fixes, new versions, etc) testing and analysis of system reports (error logs, self tests, system parameters, performance measures, etc) Maintenance of system documentation. Remedial maintenance - To correct faults and return the system to operation in the event a hardware, system software or network component of the system fails. The remedial service is likely to include: maintaining a Help Desk function that will log and action any calls from the customer in the event of a system problem investigating the problem (on site or via remote login) resolving the problem directly or managing the resolution if a third party service is required restoring and/or returning the use of the system to the customer Updating documentation with respect to the problem and its resolution. Sequence of activities: It includes the activities which must take place in sequence: Activity (Tasks) Duration (Days) Preceded By A Working out the feasibility of the system 1 _ B Collection of information from different groups and creating data flow diagrams 3 A C Internal review of information collected and its validity with the management 2 B D Identifying the relationships between the entities 3 C E Define the degree of interaction between entities 2 D F Creating E-R Model and establishing cardinality ratios with distributed feature taken into account (as the Center has 5 sub locations in the city) 2 D,E G Identifying Functional dependencies and others and then Normalization of relations 1 F H Converting the normalized relations to tables in database 2 G I Creating primary key and foreign key relationships and implementing business rules using integrity constraints 1 H J Creating interfaces and report generation techniques 3 I K Connecting the database tables with the interfaces and distributing the application to become geographical independent 3 J L Testing the system 2 K M Implementing the system across locations 2 L N Create maintenance plans and documentations 1 L,M O Final review report after installation 1 L,M,N Conclusion: The system designed will serve the following purpose: Management's perspective: Knowledge about members changing interests and feedbacks can be easily trapped from the system to cater the best and remain competitive in the business. The constant feedbacks from the fitness consultants and members will help in preparing an appropriate marketing strategy to attract customers and create a brand. Training Consultants perspective: They get to know what members desire and their performance statistics can be easily calculated from the system using periodic feedbacks. Location transparency is obtained from the Information system as it is not possible to get the focus of the management at all times. Member's perspective: They get to address their requirements timely and proper sorting query mechanism is obtained. They feel satisfied that their problems are getting addressed to the management. If they see a new product in the market and would love to have it in the center then the requisition facility can be used. They can give any sort of feedbacks to the system provided they are not satisfied with the equipments or level of service. Such requests are given higher precedence and solved within a time frame. Once the system is built successfully and tested to be fit for a hit, it is immediately launched in the market and the members and the prospective users are let known with the help of media. Newspapers: It is advertised well to reach the people. Television: Broadcasted as an advertisement during prime shows to spread awareness. The existing members are let known with hoardings in the fitness center and outside it. The new system is ready to capture the market with its great looking and friendly interfaces and greater database capabilities. Bibliography Barry Mawer. Systems Maintenance.2000. Hoffer. Modern systems analysis and design. Korth. Database Management systems. Navathe Elmasri. Fundamentals of Database systems. Read More