Identification of Client and Users
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The client is Steven Smith, who is the manager of the company Rewind. He is responsible for the day-to-day running of the business, including stock ordering, looking over the accounts, paying the appropriate wages, and keeping the customers happy.
- There are five members of staff that work in the shop who will be the potential users of the system. Their responsibilities include stock-checking using delivery reports, phoning customers who don’t bring the film back, calculating invoices and late fees, cleaning the cabinets/floors and writing lists of any stock that becomes unavailable.
Reasons for change
- Manual calculations cause numerous mistakes.
- Operations are done manually, for example, a customer will have to manually fill out an application form before a staff member enters the information into the ledger, which results in more time being spent and more mistakes made.
- Paper-based transactions caused substantial delays.
- Customer transactions were often lost due to overload of paperwork in different departments.
- Change in data by one department won’t change automatically in another.
- Tracking rentals is difficult as there is no automatic list on who is late on bringing the film back each day.
- There is no information on all the different DVDs. One has to look on the back of each DVD to try and find the required information.
- Hard to tell what DVDs are available at the time, if a customer was to enquire about one.
Evidence of the use of relevant investigation techniques
I decided to conduct an interview with the client (manager), as questions ca go into much more detail, and can even lead onto other questions that may have been forgotten about.
I sent questionnaires to the appropriate staff members, as I didn’t want to interview each of the 5 employees, as this would be very difficult to arrange and time consuming.
Interview Questions with Steven Smith, the owner of Rewind
- How are your products coded?
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- How do you keep track of your stock?
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- Do you know what your most popular genre is?
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- How are you currently advertising your business?
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- What age group are your most popular customers?
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- How many customers do you serve a day?
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- What details do you have about customers?
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- Currently how do you file? (Information on customers and movies)
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- What happens when someone steals something and how do you keep track of something when it gets taken?
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- Where do you keep stock?
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- What is the procedure when a customer comes into your store?
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- How long do you keep customer details on file?
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- Have you much experience of using computers and what computer facilities do you have at present (if any)?
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- Do you have a membership system?
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- How do you deal with rentals?
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- Is there a limit on how many DVD’s someone can take out at any one time?
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- How long do you lend DVDs for?
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Questionnaire
Do you run promotions?
❑ Yes
❑ No
What features do you want on your website?
❑ Pictures
❑ Text
❑ Hyperlinks
Are you an experienced computer user?
❑ Yes
❑ No
Do you currently have other ways of advertising your business?
❑ Yes
❑ No
Do your workers have any special needs that the system will have to accompany for?
❑ Yes
❑ No
If yes please specify
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Is it easy to produce an enquiry form for customers?
❑ Yes
❑ No
Are there any improvements that can be made to the system to make the system easier to use?
❑ Yes
❑ No
If yes please specify
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Requirements of the client
- Must record every customer and rental.
- System must store all details of members and DVDs.
- Must be able to search for information of a DVD easily.
- Interface must be menu driven.
- Produce list of overdue DVDs and also who to telephone.
- Perform the following calculations – cost of rental, VAT, and late fees.
- User will need a system, which enables the availability of a particular DVD to be easily and quickly ascertained.
- Produce an invoice.
- When customers make enquiries about the availability of a particular DVD, the employee will need to be able to supply details such as director, description, price etc.
- Credit/debit card details stored.
