- Be able to add/delete members, videos and staff
The Current System
Before a customer becomes a member of Hollywood Nights, they have to show proof of ID that they are 18 years of age or above. When the customer has made his or her decision on the film in which they would like to rent, they bring it to the cashier; they then give the cashier their membership card that consists of three-digit number. The information of all the customers has been recorded in a logbook. Here all the relevant information of the customers have been written down, membership number, name, address, telephone number and the date in which the membership card was issued. The cashier takes down the number of the membership card, the name of the film, the date in which the film was rented on, for how long the video will be rented for and the postcode. He writes this information down in another logbook. Payment is made and the customer leaves the store with the video.
Once the film has been brought back the next day, the person is crossed off the logbook. If the person fails to return a video for greater than the specified days they will be contacted and charged by referring to the logbooks to find the customers details.
To reserve a vireo over the phone which is on loan, a member asks the cashier and leaves their membership number. The employee finds a relevant video in the loans file and adds the membership number in the loans logbook on the video card. The employee also makes a note of the member who has the video on loan and completes a return request card addressed to that member. The address is taken from the stores copy of the club membership book. When the video is returned the employee puts the video under and completes the Reservation Ready card addressed to the member who requested the reservation, again taking the address from the membership book. The member requiring the video can then pick the video up from the store and have it issued in the usual manner.
Problems With The Current System/ Proposed Solution
Now as you can see the current system is highly inefficient and much manual work is done by the staff, this in turn creates mistakes being made, customers having to wait; this is unacceptable for a modern day video store. The system of writing down the information of customers is quite stressful as if there are many customers in the store a queue may build up causing stress for the employee as well as the customers; this is when error inputting is highly likely. If the shop is quite busy some customers may not feel inclined to give away their personal details in front of other customers. At the end of the day the employees have to check the logbook to see whether what videos were due back that day and which are due back the next day. The video cases of those that are due back the next day are put in their top draw ready for the next day. Those that have not been returned that day are placed in the bottom draw and at the end of the week the customers are contacted.
The new computerised solution that I wish to introduce to this video store will save more time than using a manual system and will prevent any unnecessary stress for both customers and the employees.
Customer’s personal information will be stored in a database. When a customer rents out a video there is no need to give out personal details each time. All that will need to be done is to scan the customers membership barcode and their details should appear on the screen as their information has already been entered into a database. The only question that may need to be asked would be ‘How long would you like to rent out the video for?’ The employee will enter the number given, the film in which is being rented out and they will have to input the number on the video case into the computer. Each casing for the videos will have then own designated number. This will help the employee by speeding up the time in which the customer is taking off the computer for returning the videos. All that will need to be done is to enter the number of the video case into the computer and the customer will be taken off the ‘to be returned’ list.
This system will help keep records of the stock of the videos, which ones have been rented out the most, and who still needs to return a video. Customer’s information is now even easer to access, all that needs to be done is to input the customer’s surname, and the relevant information appears on screen. This is much faster compared to the standard way of searching through the book.
The logbook of the loans looks like this:
It is quite evident that writing down data from customers for each loan will take some time and the possibility of human error is increased.
I have also noticed that the business relies on many logbooks. Finding customer’s details is very lengthy. I believe computerising the system will be beneficial, as it will cut down the time of the searches and inputting data from each loan.
There are a total of three logbooks. One to store the customer’s details, one to store information on the loans and the other to store all the relevant information of the newly received videos. I have also noticed that searching for on more than one criteria e.g. the number of the video and the membership number in the logbook can take considerable time, as they have to manually go through the entire list until they reach the desired membership number.
The logbook in which the customers details is store, looks like this:
The logbook for the newly received videos looks like this:
What I propose to do with the system is to make three databases that will aid the user in recording information for loans, newly received resources and details of customers. All that will need to be done to find information such as address or telephone number is to input the customer’s name or membership number and all their details should appear on screen. When a resource is overdue it should appear on screen so there will be no need to search the logbooks as before. The database for newly received videos/ resource will have all the relevant information of the resource such as the rating and category, so if any time a customer asks about a certain resource, the information is easily available from the database. To loan a video all that will be needed is the number of the resource and the membership number. This is a change from the writing down the details of the customer for each loan.
Hardware/Software Requirements
Hollywood Nights doesn’t presently have a computer, and are in need of purchasing one. I have come up with minimum and recommended systems that can both be used for the desired computerisation of the system; however, there will be a difference in speed, performance and price. The minimum specification will be slower in running programs than the recommended system, though it will cost less. It also means that if new software is released, the computers specification may be too low to be compatible.
The solution will be installed on a computer on which is a Windows 95 system and the workstation which consists of a 200 MHz MMX processor coupled to 32 Mb RAM and 4 Mb graphics cards. Gary has no problem with the amount of storage available. Access will be able to perform efficiently with the amount of RAM available. The graphics card will allow complex screens to be refreshed at fairly fast rates.
The Development will be performed mostly at school, on the school network which has a minimum specification of machines with 32 Mb RAM and 200Mhz Processors, This is nearly the same as Gary Lane’s shop computer so I will be able to see how fast or slow it will work.
Software
Video World’s Applications Suite is the Microsoft Office 97 Professional, which includes Word 97, Excel 97, Access 97 and PowerPoint 97.
The development will be performed at school using Access 97 as part of the total Office 97 Professional suite. As Video world uses Microsoft Office 97 there shall be no difficulties in exporting files. Also I have Microsoft Office 97 so I will be able to do perform some of the tasks at home.