Allsports is a multisport club which has several thousand members who take part in a diverse range of sporting activities, such as football, cricket, athletics and even darts and table tennis.
The club publishes a newsletter, The Sports Report, under the supervision of the club president every week. The newsletter incorporates 10 articles written by club members featuring the highlights of the week in their particular field of sport and 5 small paid advertisements from outside businesses. The income helps to meet the cost of publication. For each newsletter, the president selects a club member to act as editor of the newsletter on hourly payment basis and it is the editor’s responsibility to obtain the articles from other members for inclusion and to obtain the advertisements from advertisers. For all administrative work 5 casual staff members are employed on hourly payment basis.
Newsletters are published on the Wednesday of each week and cover activities for the previous Monday to Sunday.
The majority of members have email addresses and have agreed to receive the newsletter in an electronic format. Those members who for some reason cannot receive the electronic form may have a paper copy posted to their mailing address. Since there is no online system, so all these processes consumes money in terms of manpower and material cost.
Currently the president uses word processor and spreadsheet programs but is experiencing some difficulty in keeping track of details such as which members have submitted articles, what advertisements have been published and who to schedule as editor for upcoming editions. The president has asked you, a business systems analyst with HighVoltage Information Services, to carry out analysis and develop the specifications for a new automated information system, Allsports Sports Club Information System (ASCIS).
More information on their operations is provided below.
Proposed system
Information that needs to be stored includes:
For members:
• their full names, addresses, contact phone numbers, email address and the sport(s) they play.
For newsletters:
• published weekly so the date of intended publication is shown – this could also act as an identifier (perhaps something like 2016NOV09 which would indicate a newsletter to be published on 9th November 2016)
• titles of articles accepted for inclusion
• titles (file names) of articles are given by the member submitting and could be something like “TennisReport5thNov.docx” or “ResultsCricketChampionship.docx”.
• details of advertisements such as the identifier as supplied by the advertiser and the subject of the advertisement.
which member has been selected to act as editor
For advertisers:
• name, address, person to contact and their contact details.
• Some of these requirements may be simple attributes, others will need to be modelled as relationships between entities.
Problems associated with the current system
With the present number of members and limited software options, recently some newsletters have been published late. This is causing a degree of dissatisfaction in the members. In addition, the president is having difficulty accessing information efficiently. For example, the president would like to generate reports of members who have not yet edited a newsletter. While this can be done with a spread sheet it involves filtering content which is complicated and time-consuming.
Desired enhancements for the new systems
The system is required to generate a number of reports. The following reports are essential:
• a list of all members and sports played
• a list of articles to be published in upcoming newsletters
• a list of advertisements to be published in upcoming newsletters
• a list of all members and the newsletters they have edited
• a list of all members with email addresses
• a list of all members without email addresses
Desired New System
Toni Carlow owner of Allsports Sports Club has identified that her major priority is to create a system that ties together all the key elements of sporting activities transactions. She has hired your company, HighVoltage Information Services as consultants to carry out analysis and develop the specifications for an Allsports Sports Club Information System (ASCIS).
Toni has earmarked a budget of $60,000 for this project with a discount rate of 6%. She estimates that the new system will help her reduce her staffing cost by $2,000 per month and increase income by atleast another $1,000 per month thus increasing her overall profitability by ($2000+$1000) $3,000 per month. Maintenance cost could be estimated at around $1200 per month. Any other figures could be assumed by giving justifications.