The main problem to Portatools is all the system is a manual system and many orders are miss placed and over booked, I intend to over come this problem is by designing a computerised booking system.
Investigation
The Current System
As Portatools was a company that started up over 10 years ago computers back then was not in demand, people questioned there ability and condemn them as a waste of useful time, now that technology is at its peak and nearly everything that we do is computerised Portatools want to change its current system.
The system that is running at the moment is the same system running 10 years ago a paper based manual system. Although the company has purchased 4 band new computers for the office and 3 new computers for the hire shop they have not yet set up a system to over come the problems of the current system.
Problems With The Current System
Over the years Portatools has been recognised by the general public and by contractors but as the sudden rush of customers along the years bookings are missed placed and over booked. Apart from that it doesn’t look professional with invoice written up by hand and the security of this method can be over turned with changed invoices.
Requirements Of The New System
General Objectives
As with all projects there are certain objectives I expect my system to be able to meet.
- Easy to learn the use of the different applications.
- Have easy to use help menus if the user gets into a problem.
- Improve the way things are done in Portatools.
Specific Objectives – Quantitative
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The accuracy should be improved dramatically as the computer will be responsible for carrying out all calculations. This is a top priority as early mistakes can lead to others due to one calculation relying on the result of another.
- Much time will be saved as the computer will automatically set up the layout and the user will only have to input the required data.
- With the use of features in Ms-Excel reports/graphics could be extracted from completed accounts, showing the financial state of a company. This is not a requirement but is useful, for writing reports on the company.
- It should not take longer then 30 seconds to load the database.
- It should not take longer then 20 seconds to produce a Mail Merge.
- It should not take longer then 40 seconds to produce product stock levels.
Specific Objectives – Qualitive
- Easy to locate products from the database.
- Easy to locate What ‘IF’ statements.
- Easy to produce mail merge documents.
- The system will provide a better way of storing accounts; this will help make bookings easier as well as searching through the database for adjustments or mistakes.
Constraints
Hardware
My proposed system, will require both the developer and the user to have the following pieces of software:-
- MS Excel 2000
- Windows95/98/2000/ME/NT/XP
The system itself will be developed in MS Access. Access will also be required to run and use the system. The developer/user must have running a version of Microsoft Windows 95 or later. Unfortunately Microsoft dominates the software market and MS-Access will not run on other OS such as Linux, Unix, and Solaris etc. However in this case the system the user will be using a MS Windows environment.
The hardware requirements must meet those set by Ms-Access and Windows 95+
∙ IBM compatible PC
∙ Pentium 100, K6-2 100 or above
∙ 32Mb of RAM
∙ 1GB Hard Drive space
∙ Printer
The above requirements or those required by both Excel and Windows 95 or above. The printer is required in case a hard copy of the programs output is required.
