The company that I have chosen to do my project on is a small book distribution company called Bookshop.

AS PROJECT 2003/03

1. Introduction

1.1 Background

The company that I have chosen to do my project on is a small book distribution company called Bookshop. Bookshop is a small company based in South London and was set up in early 2002. They have a small workforce of 4 people. Each person therefore has a large and important role to the company. Each worker is always hard pushed to meet deadlines for schools and social centres demanding books. Because that are a small company they cannot afford to have large computer staff to look after al their accounts. They are limited to the time that they can spend on different tasks. Each day they deal with a round £1000 worth of orders, but this might vary to as much as £4500 or as little as £500. The director of the company has put in a large lump sum as a loan to start off the company, which she hopes will trunk into profits, which she will later recoup.

Statement of the problem

I have conducted an interview with the director of the company and we encountered the following problems.

Because the bookshop is new, there are many things that could go wrong and caused bankruptcy. There is the fact that the company has no real image and cannot conduct rely on customers. Therefore they need to profit maximise. They need all staff working to their full potential. They need no wastes of time with things that can be done automatically.

Also with the small amount of money available to them they had o make do with old computers, which ran old computer programs that are DOS based.

The problem that ABC Books as a company has is that it is limited to the workforce that it ca spend on different tasks. Therefore time is a major part of what is wrong.

If there were a way that was quicker than the current way to do it then the time taken by each person would be greatly reduced and there may be a chance that each person would have more time to do other jobs. For example two people handle all the accounts.

If there were an easier way then they might only need 1 person and therefore there would be an extra person left over to do other work.

Because of a shortage of time that they spend on the accounts, orders don’t get delivered and because it is a small business, it needs all the orders it can get and any a late order and schools will look to other suppliers. This was picked up on by Pat Horsefield (director) when a meeting was held to discuss the problems with the system.

Mrs. Horsefield feels that:

with the introduction of a computer accounts system,
a system that can process customer orders faster and more accurately,
a reduction in the amount of paper generated by the system and feels that a “centralised” system could improve communication between staff,

then the whole company will run more smoothly and then they would make more money and she would start going in to profit

As the company is new they have not got enough capital to go out and but fleets of vans and cars, they have to rely on people own cars and transport of that of a delivery company which all costs money. Because of this they need to save money on expensive large especially designed programs by large specialist company’s that produce such programs.

Investigation

2.1 The current system

The current system that the company use is a spreadsheet package that was created 17 years ago and is therefore quite basic and not easy use for all the staff that are used to more modern forms of spreadsheets. At the moment as each school places an order, it has to go through a processing system that takes a long time to fill out.

This is the route that the current data takes.

2.2 Constraints of the Current system

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2.1 The current system

This is the route that the current data takes.

2.2 Constraints of the Current system

The format of the current accounting system is in DOS and therefore has no GUI that is useable to a user for formats like EXCEL. The software and hardware are old and need to be replaced.

That main one is that it is not like the new accounts systems such as EXCEL and SAGE Line 100. There are many problems encountered when external people wish to view the accounts i.e. Auditors.

Another problem is that when outside people wish to review the accounts, they are totally unfamiliar with the system and are not able to use it correctly. This is mainly because of the layout and the basic look of the interface.

There is one major problem with the actual system and that is that it does not automatically perform calculations. Therefore all calculations need to be done using a calculator. This is time consuming. If there were a way that the users could just put in numbers and the computer could automatically calculate the totals and the answers the user would have more time to do other things.

Due to the lack of complexity of the system, errors are often made.

3. Requirements of the new system

General objectives

The general objectives that I hope to be able to achieve are:

To create an up-to-date system that can be easily used by the staff and new staff

To be based on a modern GUI that all users will understand

To make it self explanatory so that new users will be able to pick up the methods quickly.

It will need to be able to hold the company’s accounts
There will be no need for passwords to any of the data, as no strict personal data is held on the computer

Specific objectives – quantitative

Customer accounts should be found in less then 20 seconds
The user should be able to locate a page by using in the click of a button.
All users should be able to use the system to do accounts.
Customer Details should be able to be printed off at the click of a button.
There should be buttons to do all reasonable jobs (print/open/add)
All pages should have links back to all the other pages, with the click of a macro and should be clearly labelled.

4. The current systems

Hardware

The hardware that is available to the users is a small LAN of 4 computers and a server. All the computers have a barcode scanner for scanning in book barcode numbers and ISBN’s. The computers that I have available for me to use are a set of 5 networked PC’s at my house of which one has a barcode scanner. At college there is a large number of networked PC’s for pupils use. They are all networked so that the users can log on to his/her area. The hardware available to me is

All 5 of the PCs that I have available to me at my house are all the same. (see above)

Software

The software that the user has available is Microsoft Windows 95 professional edition with Office 95 and all relevant software for the barcode scanners and for the tele-book ordering. What I have available to use is Microsoft XP professional with Office 2000 which has excel, which I’m using to create the new spreadsheet program

User’s IT skills and knowledge

I feel that the users ICT knowledge and skills are limited to what they can do. They are inexperienced in computer use and therefore they have not developed, because of this there will need to be a basic and informative and self-explanatory interface. I think that the interface will need to be bold and relevant to the tasks.

The user manual will have basic information in using the system as well as a trouble shooting section.

1. Consideration of a possible solution

There are many different packages that I could use to create an accounts program there is Sage Line100, which is widely used in large company businesses. There is also Microsoft own Excel, which is widely used, in smaller businesses. I am going to use excel to create the program because it is the most commonly available and is therefore the best choice to use. I think that it is also the easiest to use out of the two because many people use the program already and have a basic knowledge of the program already and how it works. It is also a lot clearer to see than the basic graphics of Line100. there is also the case that Excel is cheaper to buy than a copy of Sage Line100. at £250, Line100 is rather too expensive for a small company. I feel that with the cheaper, only £89.99 Excel they will have a better deal on their hands.

Microsoft Excel clearly dominates the spreadsheet market. Not too long ago, Lotus 1-2-3 was considered the "standard" spreadsheet. Excel now holds that distinction, with an estimated 90% market share.

Sage Line100

Features & Benefits

I have use both packages before and I feel that with the easiness to read of Excel, they will find it a to easier to read and understand, which is current problem with the DOS version.

These are just some of the excel features.

Limitation with the new system

There will only be the basic limitations as with any new system. The staff are going to need to get use to the new system and therefore need a manual (which I will include with the new system). They will however not need advanced ICT knowledge to be able to cope with the new program. It will be self-explanatory. If they encounter any problems they can refer to the trouble shooting part of the manual, which will include basic errors that could possibly go wrong with the system.

Because it is windows based, it uses a high amount of graphics and memory, which means that the program is more likely to crash than the old DOS version. I will include instructions on what to do if this happens and how to save work so hat no data is lost if this ever happens.