1.3.1Analysis of Current System

1.3.1Analysis of Current System

During an interview with my client, Mrs Culley, I worked with her to drawthese flow charts which show how the current system works. The first flow chart shows how the customer orders part of the system works, and the second flow chart shows how the re-ordering of stock part of the system works.

Customer Ordering Process

Modified Flow Chart (created after more information was gathered)

The following flow charts show the decisions that the Current systems operator must make when taking a customer order, or reordering stock. I constructed this flow chart from my observation research and my interviews with Mrs Culley.

Mrs Emma CulleySigned:Date: 01/08/2011

Organisation

Mrs Culley is a co-owner and day-to-day manager of The Village Loaf. Mrs Culley has 9 employees 6 of which are full-time staff. The business is experiencing a rise in sales and has been since it opened in June 2009.Mrs Culley is not planning to expand any further at this stage, although new products are always being developed. Mrs Culley does however want a computer system for managing customer orders, and re-ordering stock.

Marketing

Mrs Culley uses The Village loaf website to promote her products and services. The Village Loaf also promotes to existing customers by contacting them by phone to inform the customers of new products or services on offer. The Village Loaf is also promoted in the Overstone and Sywell village magazine; this reaches out to the local residents.

Customer Ordering Process

The, Customer Ordering process, flow chart above shows the full Customer ordering process. Customer orders can be received through three channels, by phone, by email or face-to-face.

The most common route is face-to-face where the customer visits The Village Loaf café and speaks to one of the nine members of staff. A member of staff will greet the customer before locating the cafés customer order diary. The customer is then asked for the delivery date for there order, and the member of staff will open the diary to that day. The member of staff will then ask the customer for the important information for example the name and address of the customer and the contents of the order. The diary is then returned to the office where the orders are reviewed at intervals during the day. Orders can also be taken by phone it is the same process as face-to-face however details are jotted on a rough piece of paper before they are transferred to the necessary date in the diary. Although rare, orders are also received by email. In this case Mrs Culley will email the customer an email asking for any details not given in the customers order email. Again the order is then transferred to the diary.

During free periods of the day Mrs Culley, or one of the other six senior members of staff, will asses newly taken orders to see whether new ingredients need to be ordered in to meet the order, as well as asses when and how long the order will take to prepare. At this time they will decide whether an added reminder will need to be created to ensure the order meets the deadline (this is usually required for large orders that will take a lot of preparation or when there are many orders due around the same time).

Before the delivery Mrs Culley will look at whether the order has been payed for or whether a payment is still required. If a payment is still required then Mrs Culley will create an invoice which is given to the customer upon delivery, they then have 30 days to pay The Village Loaf. If a payment is not paid within the 30 day period then a new invoice with a reminder attached will be sent to the customer. Reminders will continue until the payment arrives, and an extra charge maybe added depending on the circumstances.

Main Problems

The main problem is that the current system has no real format as pieces of information for each order is written on a piece of paper or in the orders diary, this means some key information may be missed out creating problems with the order. Furthermore the only validation of data is the person who took the order asking the customer to clarify the order. Also as everything is stored on pieces of paper it is hard to store each order and there are no back-ups created so data is easily lost and hard to back-up and retrieve lost data. Also as data is stored on pieces of paper it takes a fairly long time to search through past orders to gather information needed by the user. Furthermore there is no security for the paper based system; unauthorised people can easily gain access to the customers and suppliers information creating security issues. Lastly invoices have to be created separately on the computer as the paper-based system isn’t linked to the computer at all.

Conclusion and Possible Improvements

After discussing the current systems problems with Mrs Culley I have come up with a few possible improvements Mrs Culley could incorporate. First of all Mrs Culley needs to have a solution that allows her to efficiently organise her pieces of customer, and customer order information, so that the information is not lost which in turn will mean that the business gets the orders out on time and completed to the customers exact requirements. Also I would suggest that Mrs Culley incorporates a system that has many layers of validation, this will ensure that any data collected and entered by a user is valid and fairly accurate. Again this will ensure information is accurate and valid so it is less likely that a customer is unhappy with the order they have received, or have any complaints about not receiving an order. Another problem that needs improving is the lack of back-ups of data in Mrs Culley’s current system. The Village Loaf should have some form of computer database which holds all of the businesses data on Customer orders. This would improve the data organisation and ease of use, but also it would allow Mrs Culley to efficiently back-up the data on a regular basis. In turn this will ensure that important data is kept safe, especially personal data as Mrs Culley must meet the Data confidentiality act, and it will also provide Mrs Culley with a way of restoring the system if it is lost or damaged in any way. As the current system makes has no efficient search facilities to search through past orders, I recommended that Mrs Culleys solution does. This will allow Mrs Culley and her staff to search through past orders easily and efficiently pick out important data for analysis use etc.To improve on the security problems Mrs Culley’s current system has, I recommend that the new system has password protection with a function that allows the password to be changed at regular intervals. This will ensure that only authorised people can access the new system meaning that Mrs Culley is more likely to meet the Data Confidentiality Act. The last improvement I am suggesting is that the new system has some form of invoice creator function which will allow users to quickly create an accurate and professional looking invoice. This will improve the image of Mrs Culley’s business, with standard professional documents, as well as the efficiency to track payments, more specifically costly late payments.

Overall I am suggesting Mrs Culley adopts a new system that incorporates as many of these as possible to get the best system solution. I will now email Mrs Culley my recommendations and ask for her feedback.

Below is the email I sent to Mrs Culley, asking for her to look over my analysis work and give any feedback she felt was necessary.

Below is the reply I received from Mrs Culley shortly after, it contains her feedback on my findings and suggestions.

After looking at Mrs Culleys feedback I can see that she wants a system that improves in everyway from her current paper-based system. Therefore I will now bare this in mind when creating a requirement specification, to ensure that I include all the features Mrs Culley is looking for in a new improved system.

Mrs Emma CulleySigned:Date: 01/08/2012