Installation of LIS at AL Ahmad Trading Company - Research Paper Example

A Report on Installation of LIS at AL Ahmad Trading Company Introduction Al Ahmad Trading Company, a growing company in Ajman. The trading company is growing tremendously and has three branches in United Arab Emirates. The company has had success in the distribution sector because of their reality and quality productions they supply and sell to the customers. They have a range of 50 products which include kitchen knives, spoons, forks, trays, pots, pans and similar products. The products are sold in bulk at a cheaper price to the customer. The strategy has enabled Al Ahmad Trading Company to attract customers far and wide. The growth of sales and revenue is experienced annually because of their efficiency and reality of their supply to consumers Case Study Introduction Al AHMAD Trading Company deals in the distribution sector. A firm that has grown tremendously thus expanding to UAE with three branch. The complexity of the company makes it necessary to install an application system which will help the purchasing and sales manager to track their product, know customer preference and help them to determine market trends in the future. Project Title Installation of Logistics Information System at Al Ahmad trading company Business Background Al Ahmad trading company is a distribution company that deals with wide range of home utensils like knives, spoons and other utensils used in a home kitchen. It is located in Ajman with three other branches in UAE. It started as a small and medium enterprise in the 1970s and over the years, it has expanded its operations. The company serves the UAE and surround countries market targeting home users since their product are used in the kitchen. Purpose of the Project The installation of logistics information system should enable users from sales and purchasing departments to browse online product catalogue, selling prices and the cost of the products. Duration of the Project Parts Phase Duration(number of days) Part 1 Project proposal 7 days Part 2 Project planning 14 days Part 3 Analysis phase 21 days Part 4 Design phase 10 days Part 4 Implementation plan 11 days Project Team Members Responsibilities Name Role Responsibility Time Way of communications PLANNING PHASE Introduction Al ahamd trading company is a distribution company that needs to have online product catalogue which would be beneficial to the stakeholders in the business. The company has three different branches apart from its headquarters in Ajman. The branches are managed from the headquarters this making the branches a sub division of the company. Stakeholders Owners and investors Government Employees Customers Suppliers Community Trade union Goals and objectives To maximize shareholder’s wealth in the company To use the latest and the best technology application in order to increase efficiency in the business operation Ensures that the customers are satisfied and their need are met and complains attended to. The Problem/Opportunity The use of word and excel application are crude and outdated ways of recording and analyzing data from sales and purchase data. Using SWOT analysis, it is easy to point out that the usage of word and excel applications is weakness because they are ineffectiveness and slows down the operation of business. The strength lies in the market served because they have a bigger market share. If the company can use the proposed system, they will attract more customers thus enhancing their market share. However, the system causes a threat if it breaks down when employees are dependent on it. It will slow the operations down. The Proposed Solution The proposed solution should enable the business to be efficient in terms o supplies and purchases. LIS will help in monitoring inventory and ensures continued supply of products to the clients. The sharing of product catalogue, selling price and cost price will be easier with the proposed system. Scope and Constraints The proposed system will help and make easy the way of doing business by enabling the purchasing department to make orders and sales depart to enter orders on behalf of the customer. It will be installed in all the branches of the company so that they can communicate easily through the system on when to make purchases and sales. It will also enable the company to transfer products from one branch where they demand is low to another branch where the demand is high The proposed system will have basic features of a Logistics Information system and tailor made features for the company. These features will enable the managers to report on product that are in demand, products that are sold as well as the customers that generate high business. Constraint description Internal/ External Mandatory /Optional Present/ Future Limited Time span External mandatory Present Insufficient capital Internal mandatory Future Unqualified personnel Internal optional Future Resources like computers Internal mandatory Present Insufficient support from staff Internal mandatory Present Fact – Finding Techniques In order to establish the system need of the business, the team will have to use questionnaires to collect data as well as interviews. The two fact-finding techniques are chosen because they are fast, easy and cover a wide area. Interviews will offer personal appeal and contact that would make the interviewee to give all possible facts. Questionnaires would give people time to think of the problem and give the details of the problem. The process of finding the facts will be less complicated and a casual in its approach in order to make the employees easy to get information from them. Interviews would be contacted in the cafe or any restaurant. The environment should be casual to give the interviewee time to answer the questions correctly. The questionnaires will be given to the employees and given duration of one week before they return it. System Requirements Checklist The new system will have the following requirements to meet the need of the users. Meet server requirements to ensure it is combatable the current system. Meet clients and web server requirements Meets user application requirements Both the install PC clients and the target host should have ftp enabled Cost estimates The project will be expensive despite the fact that the company owns its own hardware and software. The need to employ programmers will be expensive since they charge their services per hours. In addition to the hardware, the company will be server switches and hardware at the cost of $ 1000. The cost of software would be $ 600 to cover the expensive of buying programming software for hosting and complying the new program. The project will have 4 programmers would cost $ 50 each per hour. The programmers will work for twelve hours a day for two weeks bring the total cost to be $ 4800. Benefits The system would reduce the cost of doing business by 50% because of automation of operation. The keep on inventory from the system would help the company to avoid wastages in event when products are delivered and they are still other stock. It will enable the business to sock products that have high turnover to increase the revenue of the business. With the system in place, the financial benefits will be enormous because the system will reduce the cost of doing business while increasing revenue. Other intangible benefits could be: the system will enable employees to save all data in a central place which can be accessed by employees in various departments. It will reduce delay in purchasing and providing information to customers. Provide managers with informative reports to make better decision Improve productivity of employees by helping them keep track of products and customer data in an efficient manner Feasibility Feasibility study is an evaluation and analysis of the potential of the proposed project. The study is based on extensive investigation and research to support the process of decision making. A well designed study should provide a historical background of the project, description of the project or service and legal requirements. The study will look at three types of feasibility study: economic feasibility, technical feasibility and schedule feasibility. Economic feasibility will be conducted to assess and determine the positive economic benefits to the company. The study should include quantification and identification of all the benefits expected from the project. The assessment typically involves cost\benefits analysis. The project will help the firm to do more business with little cost. It will be enabled by placing orders for customers on their behalf’s while also ordering the product for the company. In this case, the project will enhance more revenue collection while minimizing cost of doing business. Technical feasibility is an assessment that is focusing on gaining an understanding of the present technical resources of the organization. It will also assess their applicability to the expected needs of the proposed system. It is an evaluation of the hardware and the software and how it meets the need of the proposed system. It will help the planners to determine the hardware and software needed to complement the ones that are available. Schedule feasibility ensures that the project is not too long to be completed before it is useful. It means that it will estimate how long the system will take to develop, and if it can be completed in a given time period using mrthods like payback period. It measures how reasonable the project should take. It also set mandatory timeline to the developers of the system in order to plan their activities. Project Team Members Responsibilities Name Role Responsibility Time Way of communications ANALYSIS PHASE Functional Decomposition Diagram (FDD) Context Diagram Project Team Members Responsibilities This should include: team member name, team member responsibilities and the ways of communications. Name Role Responsibility Time Way of communications DESIGN PHASE Data-Entry Screen Design Include at least 8 different form controls that might be used on the data-entry screens you plan to design. See example form controls explained on page 348 in your textbook. Explain why you chose each control as in the following table: Control Data-Entry Screen Used Reason for Use Project Team Members Responsibilities This should include: team member name, team member responsibilities and the ways of communications. Name Role Responsibility Time Way of communications IMPLEMENTATION PLAN Testing It is the most important part of implementation because; it will help the developers to identify any key weakness and possible improvements in the future. Testing would help both Documentation It helpsto describe an information system and helps the users, managers, and IT staff who must interact with it. Accurate documentation can reduce system downtime, cut costs, and speed up maintenance tasks. My project will use three types of documentation, which include program, system, operation and user documentations. Program documentation helps to describe the inputs, outputs, and processing logic for all program modules. The program documentation process starts in the systems analysis phase and continues during systems implementation. Systems analysts prepare overall documentation, such as process descriptions and report layouts, early in the SDLC. It used to guide programmers who want to construct modules which have both internal and external comments. It will help in the tracking of defects, code replacement and code changes. System documentation describes the system’s functions and how they are implemented. It also includes data dictionary entries, data flow diagrams, object models, screen layouts, source documents, and the systems request that initiated the project. System documentation is necessary reference material for the programmers and analysts who must support and maintain the system. Most of the system documentation is prepared during the systems analysis and systems design phases. During the systems implementation phase, an analyst must review prior documentation to verify that it is complete, accurate, and up to date. Operation documentation is important when environment involves a minicomputer, a mainframe, or centralized servers; there must preparation documentation for the IT group that supports centralized operations. A mainframe installation might require the scheduling of batch jobs and the distribution of printed reports. In this type of environment, the IT operations staffs serves as the first point of contact when users experience problems with the system. Operations documentation contains all the information needed for processing and distributing online and printed output. User documentation consists of instructions and information to users who will interact with the system and includes user manuals, Help screens, and tutorials. Programmers will create program documentation and system documentation. To produce effective and clear user documentation — and hence have a successful project —you need someone with expert skills in this area doing the development, just as you need someone with expert skills developing the software. Training The project will have three main groups for training is users, managers, and IT staff. A manager does not need to understand every submenu or feature, but he or she does need a system overview to ensure that users are being trained properly and are using the system correctly. Similarly, users need to know how to perform their day-to-day job functions, but do not need to know how the company allocates system operational charges among user departments. IT staff people probably need the most information. To support the new system, they must have a clear understanding of how the system functions, how it supports business requirements, and the skills that users need to operate the system and perform their tasks. System Changeover It is the process of putting the new information system online and retiring the old system. Changeover can be rapid or slow, depending on the method used. The proposed project will use pilot system change involves implementing the complete new system at a selected location of the company. A new sales reporting system, for instance, might be implemented in only one branch office. the branch uses the new system first is called the pilot site. During pilot operation, the old system continues to operate for the entire organization, including the pilot site. After the system proves successful at the pilot site, it is implemented in the rest of the organization, usually using the direct cutover method. Therefore, pilot operation is a combination of parallel operation and direct cutover methods. Restricting the implementation to a pilot site reduces the risk of system failure, compared with a direct cutover method. Operating both systems for only the pilot site is less expensive than a parallel operation for the entire company. In addition, if you later use a parallel approach to complete the implementation, the changeover period can be much shorter if the system proves successful at the pilot site. Post-Implementation Evaluation It helps in the assessment of the overall quality of the information system. The evaluation verifies that the new system meets specified requirements, complies with user objectives, and produces the anticipated benefits. In addition, by providing feedback to the development team, the evaluation also helps improve IT development practices for future projects. The fact finding techniques will be used to gauge the performance of the new system. These techniques will help in the correct analysis of the system to help in determining the performance of the new system. They include: interview members of management and key users, observe users and computer operations personnel actually working with the new information system, read all documentation and training materials and examination of all source documents, output reports, and screen displays Project Team Members Responsibilities Name Role Responsibility Time Way of communications References Shelly, R. (2012). Systems Analysis and Design 9TH ED Leaver, S. (2009). Tools for IT planning. Forresster Research Purchasing information system .Retrieved from https://help.sap.com/saphelp_45b/helpdata/en/a5/1e2925548311d182cc0000e829fbfe/content.htm Read More