Case Study: Home Design Limited.
Background:
Home Design Limited is a Brisbane based business which sells imported home-wares to retail outlets and through representatives who sell the home-wares at parties. The business purchases home-wares from a number of sources in both China and Italy, with delivery through the postal service.
The business was started by the business owner, Jim Daly who undertook all the ordering and selling however the business has now grown to include both part-time and full-time employees. The organisation is also looking to expand further. Currently the business still has manual stock control and customer relationship systems which have worked well in the past and an off the shelf accounting system which is used to manage the accounts receivable and accounts payable of the business.
The sales people are given their own geographical area to sell in. This is so home-wares
stores are not approached by more than one sales person, however sometimes the sales people prefer to work in pairs, particularly if they are targeting new customers. More than one party plan representatives may be assigned to one sales area. The home-wares stores are charged
for the product at recommended retail price less a discount. The amount of this discount varies according to the volume of home-wares brought by the store and is normally assigned by the sales person when they gain a new client.
The party plan representatives are also sold the home-wares at recommended retail less a discount which is the same for all representatives. As these party plan representatives sell to private people rather than businesses, Home Design Limited does not want to keep a record of who they sell to. They must pay for any orders at the time they order however head office want to be able to see a total of how much they order every year.
Although an off the shelf accounting package is used and email for communication with suppliers and customers there is currently a low level of computer use in the organisation. The sales people and party plan representatives phone orders in to head office and telephone
to check on the progress of orders. This means that currently some staff at head office almost exclusively handle telephone calls from these people. The head office staff have got to know the sales people well as they have worked together for a long time and they often enjoy a chat about what is happening in head office, when the sales people phone to order. These phone calls are often lengthy as some sales people only phone their orders in once a week, this concerns Jim Daly as she does not know the value of the daily sales of each sales person, or who they are visiting as the sales people control their own schedule.
Although the manual systems for stock management and customer relationship management have worked in the past, Jim Daly and her new purchasing manager, Max Drummond and customer manager David Smith feel an information system could offer significant improvements to the work processes currently in place.
David Smith would like the sales people and party plan representatives to order products online as they make the sales. One of his requirements would be to enable the sales people to "check in" online at every home-wares outlet they visit whether or not they make a sale. This is so he can check what sales calls they make. The sales people are concerned that this takes
away the autonomy that they currently have. While Max Drummond would like to run a report once a month that showed stock levels and how long each unit of home-wares takes to sell. He would also like to make bigger orders less often to take advantage of smaller shipping costs per piece of home-ware and bulk ordering discounts offered by their suppliers.
Business Processes:
A JAD session with key stakeholders revealed the following information. The business processes described below are the system requirements for this information system solution:
• It has been decided to first build and implement the customer relationship management application and run the purchasing project at a later date. Therefore do not model any of the purchasing system (where Home Design Limited purchase from their suppliers).
• Before a home-wares store can become a customer of Home Design Limited, that store must fill in an application. Applications are reviewed by the management team and not all applications are approved. Home Design Limited records the following details for all customers: Name, Business number, Address, Telephone, Email, Application date, Discount level, Sales area, and Date last visited.
• The geographical sales areas for the sales people have been defined for the whole of Australia using current population numbers, however Home Design Limited does not yet have enough sales people to cover all of Australia so some sales areas do not yet have a sales person assigned while some sales people are assigned to more than one geographical sales area.
• The management team would like to be able to run a report as they want that showed sales areas with no assigned sales person, those sales areas who do not have a dedicated sales person and the population in those sales areas'.
• David Smith wants to run a sales report on the first of every month that shows the amount of sales, per sales area and per sales person.
• David Smith also requires that the following information on each sales visit be kept, the customer, the date of the visit, sales people (s) who visited, and amount of order. Please note for unsuccessful sales visits to potential customers, it is planned that a customer called "potential customer" be created for each geographical sales area to track these visits.
• The party plan representatives are expected to manage their own customers and work load so Home Design Limited so does not store any details of the parties held.
• Any payments for salaries or expenses to sales people are outside the scope of this system
End of Case Study
Part A
Question 1: Essay
Your manager has done some reading and is unsure if a predictive or adaptive systems development approach is necessary for the new information systems project to develop a customer relationship management system for Home Design Limited.
To help your new manager and the organisation's executives understand how the two approaches work, write a short essay comparing and contrasting the two approaches. State under what circumstances each one would be used. Illustrate your answers by using some of the systems development approaches, covered in Satzinger et. al in chapter 8 as examples. It is expected that you use the detail from the case study in your essay.
Your target audience is executive business people, who have extensive business experience but limited computing knowledge.
Your essay should be no less than one thousand (1000) words and it would be best to be no longer than one thousand five hundred (1500) words long.
Appropriate referencing is required. The textbook Satzinger et. al is a valid resource, however it is expected that at least five (5) other resources will also be used.
Question 2: Event Table
Review the Home Design Limited case study and prepare an event table for the information system to support the business processes as described. Use at least the following headings for the Event Table:
Question 3: Domain Model Class Diagram
Review the Home Design Limited case study to prepare a domain model class diagram for the supporting information system.
Solutions must follow the methodology as outlined within the Satzinger et al textbook. Solutions are expected to show:
• The class name and attributes list for each class and sub class as required
• All required associations
• All attributes as specifically mentioned in the case study must be reflected
• Other attributes as needed to support the described functionality.
It is not necessary to show methods, however you may include them if you wish.
Question 4: Design Class Diagram
Prepare a Design class diagram for the Customer and Salesperson classes ONLY. These two classes should be part of the Domain model class diagram solution for the previous question.
Each of these design class diagrams are expected to have a complete attributes list and a comprehensive methods list which supports the specified functionality as described in the case study.
Solutions must follow the methodology as outlined within the Satzinger et al textbook.
Question 5: Use Case Diagram
Review the Home Design Limited case study and your event table solution from question 1 to prepare a Use Case diagram for the supporting information system.
Solutions must follow the methodology as outlined within the Satzinger et al textbook.