Name: John Smith
ICT Sample Work: The Welcome Centre
ANALYSIS
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT THE BUSINESS
CLM (Christian Life Ministries) is a church based in Coventry City Centre. Being a registered charity, they wanted to look at ways in which they could raise money to help finance its various activities, many of which benefit the local and international community. In 2000, “The Welcome Centre” was launched, in which a team of people started using the building venue to provide a catering and hospitality service to paying customers, who were looking for somewhere where they could hold conferences and events, hire equipment and to have food served.
The customers who pay to use the services of the Welcome Centre are either commercial customers, such as Coventry City Council, local schools or colleges, or other charity-based organisations. Charities would be able to use the facilities at a discounted rate compared to commercial customers. Customers hire the services of The Welcome Centre for many different types of events, from large conferences to training days and small meetings.
The Welcome Centre has up to 4 rooms that can be hired (Grace Room, Grace Room 1, The Elegance Suite, The Serenity Suite), and each room has a capacity between 20 and 250 people. As well as hiring a room, customers have the option of hiring additional equipment, such as a data projector, video projector, OHP, PA equipment and Flip Charts. The price for hiring equipment is on a ½ day basis. An event may want a variety of catering options too. The Welcome Centre can provide beverages (e.g. tea, coffee, cold drinks), as well as various food options (Finger Buffet, Finger Buffet with Dessert, Hot Buffet with Dessert).
Since opening, the success of the organisation has grown rapidly. This is due to the friendliness of the staff, as well as the level of service offered. As a result, the team has grown from 2 to 7 people. They are looking to expand, and with a future building project underway too, they hope to be able to offer even larger facilities for up to 650 people, as well as to grow their existing customer base.
PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
As the business is growing, the staff are getting increasingly busier. One of the key problems is that a manual booking system is used. A customer will call or email with a request for a conference. The staff will write down some basic details about the event such as the contact’s name, event name and date and time of the conference. They will also ask the customer for the number of delegates, and therefore determine the number and size of rooms required. Catering requirements for food and beverages, as well as the hire of equipment will also be recorded. This information will all be recorded in a central paper-based diary, which can often become messy as customers sometimes phone to cancel or amend their booking, meaning that the handwriting can become unreadable. This could then lead to mistakes being made such as double-bookings, or not getting everyone’s requirements correct for a conference.
Chris Ruck, one of the team, will sometimes word process the quotation onto a basic blank template produced in Word Processing software (MS Word). After creating the quotation, he will then save it onto his computer. He will sometimes do the same for invoices. The problem with this is that the same information is being entered up to three times; once in the diary, secondly on the quotation, and thirdly onto an invoice. Duplicating the information sometimes leads to small typing mistakes appearing on the documents. Also, it wastes Chris’ valuable time that could be used for other tasks, such as preparing rooms for conferences.
Invoicing is a very important task for The Welcome Centre, as it is the way it requests payment from a customer once a conference has taken place. Tony will often to have to create 20 to 30 invoices at a time. Unfortunately, Tony Williams has very limited experience with computers. If Chris is not available and invoices have to be sent out, Tony will have to write out an invoice by hand into a blank template. This is very time consuming for him, and as the General Manager, he has many more important jobs that he could be doing. Also, handwritten invoices do not look very professional, and so these really should be created and printed from a computer to give a better corporate image. Tony sometimes has to handwrite quotations too for the same reasons.
Scope
The scope for this task is to find a way of entering booking details for conferences, and to create a quotation for that conference. Creating invoices will not be included in this task. Also, to simplify the task, we will focus on commercial customers only and not charity customers, as the prices are all different.
DETAILS OF CLIENT, USER(S) AND AUDIENCE (IF APPLICABLE)
IDENTIFICATION OF THE CLIENT
The client for this project is Tony Williams, who is the General Manager of the Welcome Centre. Tony’s role includes creating the rota of when his team are working, taking booking details from customers for future conferences and negotiating prices if applicable. Tony is also involved in creating quotations for a conference booking to inform the customer how much it will cost. He may also create invoices for a conference that has taken place to request payment. He will also need to keep track of payments for conferences by customers, and chase any outstanding payments. He is also very hands-on in his role, and he will support his staff with serving and room set-up when required. The solution for this task will need to meet Tony’s requirements.
IDENTIFICATION OF THE USER(S)
The users of this solution will be the Tony Williams (the client), as well as Anita Fox and Chris Ruck. Anita and Chris are also responsible for entering details of customer bookings into the diary, and producing quotations and invoices for them. Therefore, they will actively use the solution by changing the customer and booking inputs and sending the quotation that is produced (output) to the customer. Anita also takes care of the accounts and organises the monthly payroll for the employees.
