I also found out from the questionnaire that the potential users of the system have basic computer skills. That includes skills such as data entry and some small work on spreadsheets and databases from the previous system. As the employees have experience with computers, no complete computer training will be required other than the availability of a user manual along with the system, detailing the functions and how to use it to its maximum potential.
Inputs that will need to be made for the new system will be the customer details which contain all of the information about each customer that the engineer visits. This is just the contact details of the customer. The stock items that were used to repair the product and their quantity are needed to be recorded along with the time taken to repair the product as well as the financial information of the job.
My client said that the new system will need to produce stock level reports which show the quantity of each item remaining so that orders can be processed when low levels of stock are reached for each item. Invoices will also need to be produced that contain the individual job details and also the customer’s information. Two invoice reports will need to be produced for each job, one for the customer and one for the engineer and these will need to be produced for every job, every day.
The engineers will be using the system on their laptops, which were bought less than two years ago. The laptops have Microsoft Office 2000 that contains the necessary programs that could be needed on order to create and use the system. I have found out that the specification of the system is as follows; it has a Pentium 4, 2.5GHz processor with 512mb of Ram. The amount of free hard disk space on the laptop is roughly 20 GB which will be more than enough for the system that I will be creating.
The laptop also has a CD rewriter which may be useful for backup of the system. The proposed system will be backed up once a week (as required by my client) onto a CD, making use of the CD Re-Writing capabilities of the laptop. The CD should then be stored away from the laptop, possibly in the office, in case of a fire or other damage. To coincide with the Data Protection Act, no unauthorised access to the database will be allowed and only employees currently working at Mastercare will be allowed to log onto the database. No information about staff, products or suppliers will be given out that is not already known by the staff.
My client thinks that a password system will need to be created for the database to prevent unauthorised access to the system and they also think that separate login usernames and passwords should be used for the different users.
Decomposition of Processes
Decomposition of processes is a procedure to look at the systems processes and to break them down into smaller tasks. The high level processes are identified and then they are divided into smaller sub-categories. This method is used to see just how big the system is that I am going to be using.
For my system, I will be mainly concentrating on section 3, “Manage Invoices”. I will create a system that can also check stock levels and be able to calculate when stock levels are low but mainly it will be producing customer invoices from the jobs that have been completed.
1.3.1 End User Requirements Specification
My client, Steven Taylor, is a full time employee for Mastercare which is a division of Dixons PLC. His job is to visit customers and repair their electrical products. Depending on the length of each job, he attends between 5 and 12 customers per day. There is an hourly labour cost for each job and then the cost of the stock and quantity is added on if there is any.
1.3.2 System Objectives
The old computerised system was only available in the office, so the engineers had to travel into the office to make out their reports. The company thought that it would be more efficient if the engineers had their own copy of a program so that they didn’t have to travel into the office to produce their reports. This would money because the extra travel fuel would not be needed and it would also save time. The old system was difficult to navigate through because the text boxes are in no particular order so it makes it hard when entering data from a document because the user has to keep searching for the relevant text box. Also, with the current system in place, a separate program is required to produce the invoiced which takes extra time because the users have to run it separately and then open up the information that they had just entered in order to produce their reports. There are some good points with the current system that I will ensure that my new system keeps. They are that, although there is little layout to the data entry, it can produce basic stock reports when it is told that the level of stock is low but it doesn’t tell you itself when it is low. The old system is in company colours which I will maintain when I create the new database.
The new system must be able to store and process information entered into suitable outputs such as invoices and daily records sheets for both the Service Engineers and the office Staff (meaning a minimum of two copies per report). This system should be able to keep track of the stock used when repairing products and be able to produce valuable outputs when the stock level gets below a given level and needs to be updated. There will only be four users for the system, which will be one administrative member and the Service Engineers themselves. This is because each Service engineer will have a separate copy of the computer system that will relate personally to that engineer but a member of the office staff will also be able to access any individuals program. A password system will need to be created for the program to prevent unauthorised access to the system. A username and password for each of the users will need to be created so that only those employees will be able to change or view any of the company details stored. The passwords will only be changeable by the administrator of the system. A standard company password will be used and this does not need to be personalized as all the data stored in the system is associated with Mastercare and it contains no personal information, other that what is required to complete the jobs, about either customer or engineer.
Outputs will be required regularly by the system such as a report for every customer’s job attended and details of that job such as whether it was completed, required delivery to the workshop and stock used in repair. Order forms for the stock will need to be created and printed when the levels of each item are below a required level. Other outputs include stock reports on how much stock remains available. Queries will need to be used to search for past customers that needed a return visit to pick up or deliver back their appliance that was needed to be repaired at the workshop and also queries used to search for stock that is below a required level in order to be able to generate an order form to order the new stock.
Regular backups of the system will need to be made so that any data loss does not destroy weeks of information. There will be a full backup of the system which will be backed up at least once a week. There will be two backups taken every time so that there are always 2 versions of the system to revert to in case of emergency.
Here is a summary of the objectives for the system that I am going to create:
- Create relevant tables and have relationships that link them together.
- Create forms that have a consistent layout
- Create an easy environment for the user to navigate around that isn’t too complicated.
- Create daily reports that list each job attended that day and details of each task.
- Create a password system that allows more than one user to log onto the system and have the authority to be able to change their password when necessary.
- Produce Stock Reports when the level of stock drops.
- Produce order forms with details of the stock items that need to be reordered.
- Have a feature that lets you search for past customers
- Be able to backup the system.
I will not be able to create a payroll section to the system as I would have liked because the staff at Mastercare, understandably, did not want me to be viewing their financial earnings and thought that the information that would have been required was also quite personal. Also, with the amount of information and processing it would have required, I do not think I would have had the time (or technical knowledge) to create this section of the project.
[For the client]
I have read the previous proposed system objectives and am happy to see these objectives implemented into a new system for Mastercare.
Signed ___________________
1.3.3 Operational Environment
The new system will have 4 users. One of them will be an administrator who gets access to everything contained within the database. The administrator will have the availability to see the table structure of the system and be able to update anything on the system or to add anything new. The administrator will be the only user that has access to the “Users” table and information that contains the usernames and passwords for all of the current users of the system. They will be able to change passwords in this section and also add or delete users on the system. The administrator will also be able to use the system just like the regular users.
1.3.4 Outputs
My proposed system will be able to create a variety of reports to aid the users in their work. All reports will be viewed on screen on the laptops and then with the option to print via a printer, which will be recommended for all reports. The reports that will be generated by the new system will be:
- Stock level report – This report will contain details about the number of each stock item remaining and give notifications when amounts of the items require re-ordering.
- Job Invoice – This report will contain all of the details about one job. It will include the Customer’s name and address, details of any stock used in the job and its quantity and the financial information of the job.
- Customer Report – This gives details of past customers and what product needed repairing so that if a customer has had a previous repair, the engineer can use past information to assist them.
- Supplier invoice – This will contain details about the stock that has been delivered and which member of staff has received the delivery. Quantities of stock will also be included.
All reports produced by my system will contain the company logo and name, and will also include company colours to keep the authenticity of the reports maintained and the layouts of all reports will be the same.
1.3.5 Inputs
1.3.6 Audit, Security & Privacy
The proposed system will be backed up twice a week onto a CD, making use of the CD Re-Writing capabilities of the laptops. The CD should then be stored away from the laptop in case of a fire or other damage. To coincide with the Data Protection Act, no unauthorised access to the database will be allowed and only employees currently working at Mastercare will be allowed to log onto the database. No information about staff, products or suppliers will be given out that is not already known by the staff. There will not be a need for transaction logging or audit trails due to the small scale of the system and the number of employees that will have access to the database.
1.3.7 Performance Requirements
In total, there will be a maximum of 10 users that the system, with only one employee using the system at any one time. The system will start off having four users, they are three engineers and the system administrator, who will have the ability to add new users if required. The system will not be networked across multiple computers due to the fact that the system is on individual laptops that the service engineers have and they will be travelling around with them which means that it is not possible to connect them together. It is hard to estimate the amount of disk space that the database will use as I have not began designing it yet, but I can guarantee that it will be able to fit on a standard 700mb CD and, as the current amount of free space on the laptops provided is 35Gb, there is more than enough free space for the database. The system will be too large to fit on a floppy disk.
1.3.8 Constrains
I have found out that the laptops that will be used for the engineers using the system have Microsoft Office 2000 that contains the necessary programs that could be needed in order to create and use the system. The packages on the laptops contain spreadsheet, database and word processing software. Not all of these packages will be needed to create the system but I will find out which program will be needed in the design stage when I find advantages and disadvantages of using each package for the task required.
Mastercare will need to provide a printer for the system because it is not currency connected to a one and there isn’t one available so one will need to be purchased in order to maximise efficiency and to be able to accord to the system objectives (creating and printing invoices and stock reports) . The printer does not need to be too expensive but it will be required to print in colour. This should not cost that much to Mastercare and they will greatly benefit from it in the long term.
Here is a time plan of the stages that I will undergo when creating the system.
Here is a detailed time plan for the design stage and the sections that I will complete when designing the system.
1.3.9 Training
The computer skills of the users of the system are adequate enough to utilize the system without the need of any training other than being shown how the system works and a user manual to refer to when problems occur during use of the system. This is because the engineers have had experience with computers as they have been using the old system for a few years. The engineer that will be the system administrator is the youngest user of the proposed system and he has had a lot of experience in working with databases when he was at college a few years ago and this is why he will be the system administrator. He will be able to assist the other engineers if they encounter any initial problems. If there is something that he cannot answer, I will be available to offer assistance. The office staff and the engineers that will be using the new system have basic computer skills that include previous work using database (the old system), word processing and spreadsheet packages to a non-advanced level. The users who will operate the new system have some experience of data input as it has been used frequently for a long time but they have no experience of advanced database programming which is why I am creating the system for them.
1.3.10 Acceptance Criteria/Performance Indicators
My client and the other 3 users of the system will measure the performance of the system via a survey and the system will start off with a two-week trial period where any changes that the users would like to be made can be carried out and once the system has been tried and tested it could go into permanent use. The survey will measure the ease of particular features and functions related to the objectives of the system. Quantitative indicators will be measurable for example the time taken to record the information in comparison to recording the information the previous way on pen and paper and time taken do an automatic mail-merge compared to doing the task manually the long way. It will also measure the time taken to compile and print out an invoice compared with writing it down on paper. Qualitative indicators will be used in the survey that will record the ease of the functions in the database like using drop down boxes instead of typing in data and the tab order of the input boxes.
1.3.11 Costs/Benefit Justification
There will be a small number of costs for Mastercare that are required in order for them to receive maximum efficiency from the proposed system. The main cost will be purchasing a printer so that all of the reports are able to be stored with the rest of the finances and documents for the company. It does not need to be a “state-of-the-art” expensive printer but it will be required to print in colour so this may cost them roughly between £20 and £40. As Mastercare already have a laptop with the required software in place, no additional hardware or software will need to be purchased other than the printer. The small costs will be justified in many ways due to a large amount of time storing product, supplier and employee information on a computer rather than referring to this stored manually on paper in a filing cabinet. These costs would also greatly improve the time taken to recover from a natural disaster like a fire because the database and reports will be backed up twice a week so if there is a disaster, it can be recovered easily. The use of stock level indicators can ensure that the staff know the quantity of items remaining in stock so that they aren’t left with jobs requiring stock that they don’t have. This will help them but also it would please the customers because their product will get repaired faster than if Mastercare had to take time ordering the product.
[My client and I have signed the end user requirements specification as an agreement for the system that I am going to develop. The “Sign-Off” document is located at the end of the coursework after the evaluation.]
1.4.1 Current System Data Flow Diagram
This Data Flow Diagram (DFD) shows the flow of data for the current system in use. The customer gives their details to the engineer who records them manually so that they can enter them into the database when they next go to the office. The engineer inspects the appliance so that they know what the fault is and know what stock it requires. The engineer then checks if the item is currently in stock. If it isn’t, he will then order it and book another visit with the customer for a future date. If the item is in stock, he will then repair the appliance and give the customer an invoice.
1.4.2 New System Data Flow Diagram
This Data Flow Diagram (DFD) is for the proposed system for Mastercare. The supplier will bring the required stock items and they will be stored in the warehouse or with the engineer. The engineer will give the supplier an invoice and update the supplier details in the database. A customer who needs their appliance repairing gives their details to the engineer and stores them in the database. The engineer will assess the appliance to see how to fix it and see if it requires any stock to repair it. The engineer will get the stock and then repair the appliance. He will then enter the job details into the system and then create an invoice and give one to the customer.
1.5.8 Summary of System Objectives
Here is a summary of the objectives of the system:
- Create relevant tables and have relationships that link them together.
- Create forms that have a consistent layout
- Create an easy environment for the user to navigate around that isn’t too complicated.
- Create daily reports that list each job attended that day and details of each task.
- Create a password system that allows more than one user to log onto the system and have the authority to be able to change their password when necessary.
- Produce Stock Reports when the level of stock drops.
- Produce order forms with details of the stock items that need to be reordered.
- Have a feature that lets you search for past customers
- Be able to backup the system.
