Company called Bookshop Essay

1. Introduction 1. 1 Backg binge The participation that I ca utilization chosen to do my project on is a refined check distri saveion company c completelyed Bookshop. Bookshop is a sm every last(predicate) company establish in South London and was set up in archaean 2002. They have a baseborn(a) workforce of 4 people. Each someone on that pointfore has a hulky and important role to the company. Each histrion is al courses hard pushed to meet deadlines for cultivates and social centres demanding books. Beca social function that ar a small company they cannot afford to have volumed computer staff to tone after al their accounts.They are limited to the time that they can come about on different tasks. Each day they deal with a round i?? 1000 worth of orders, but this might vary to as much as i?? 4500 or as little as i?? 500. The director of the company has put in a astronomic lump sum as a loan to start forth the company, which she hopes entrust trunk into profits, wh ich she get out later recoup. 1. 2 Statement of the conundrum I have conducted an interview with the director of the company and we encountered the following worrys.  Because the bookstore is vernalfangled, in that respect are many things that could go wrong and ca utilise bankruptcy. in that respect is the fact that the company has no real image and cannot conduct rely on customers. Therefore they need to profit maximise. They need all staff operative to their full potential. They need no wastes of time with things that can be accept automatically.  Also with the small amount of property avail satisfactory to them they had o dedicate do with previous(a) computers, which ran old computer political programs that are DOS found. The occupation that ABC Books as a company has is that it is limited to the workforce that it ca spend on different tasks. Therefore time is a major part of what is wrong.If there were a path that was quicker than the authoritative w ay to do it then the time taken by each individual would be greatly reduced and there may be a chance that each someone would have much time to do other jobs. For example two people handle all the accounts.  If there were an easier way then they might only need 1 person and therefore there would be an extra person left everywhere to do other work. Because of a shortage of time that they spend on the accounts, orders dont get delivered and because it is a small business, it needs all the orders it can get and any a late order and schools ordain look to other suppliers.This was picked up on by Pat Horsefield (director) when a meeting was held to discuss the problems with the dust. Mrs. Horsefield recovers that  with the introduction of a computer accounts form,  a placement that can process customer orders faster and more accurately,  a lessening in the amount of paper generated by the system and feels that a modify system could improve communication between staff, then the whole company will run more smoothly and then they would make more money and she would start going in to profit.As the company is refreshful they have not got enough capital to go out and but fleets of vans and cars, they have to rely on people own cars and transport of that of a delivery company which all costs money. Because of this they need to save money on expensive large especially designed programs by large specialist companys that produce such programs. 2. Investigation 2. 1 The rate of flow system The current system that the company use is a spreadsheet package that was created 17 years ago and is therefore quite canonical and not easy use for all the staff that are used to more modern forms of spreadsheets.At the moment as each school places an order, it has to go through a processing system that takes a pine time to fill out. Input Processing Output Forename cognomen Position School Address Home Phone Mobile Books consistent Total Price Paid Payment method This is the route that the current selective information takes. 2. 2 Constraints of the Current system The format of the current accounting system system is in DOS and therefore has no GUI that is operating(a) to a user for formats like EXCEL. The packet and hardware are old and need to be replaced.That main one is that it is not like the new accounts systems such as EXCEL and SAGE Line 100. There are many problems encountered when external people wish to view the accounts i. e. Auditors.  Another problem is that when outside people wish to review the accounts, they are totally foreign with the system and are not satisfactory to use it correctly. This is mainly because of the layout and the staple fiber look of the interface. There is one major problem with the actual system and that is that it does not automatically perform calculations. Therefore all calculations need to be done using a calculator.This is time consuming. If there were a way that the users could j ust put in numbers and the computer could automatically visualize the totals and the answers the user would have more time to do other things.   delinquent to the lack of complexity of the system, errors are often made. 3. Requirements of the new system 3. 1 General objectives The general objectives that I hope to be able to strain are  To create an up-to-date system that can be well used by the staff and new staff  To be based on a modern GUI that all users will understand.To make it self explanatory so that new users will be able to pick up the methods quickly.  It will need o be able to hold the companys accounts  There will be no need for passwords to any of the data, as no strict personal data is held on the computer 3. 2 Specific objectives quantitative Customer accounts should be found in less then 20 seconds  The user should be able to locate a page by using in the click of a button.  All users should be able to use the system to do accounts.  Customer Details should be able to be printed finish up at the click of a button.There should be buttons to do all reasonable jobs (print/open/add) All pages should have links back to all the other pages, with the click of a macro and should be clearly labelled. 4. The current systems 4. 1 Hardware The hardware that is obtainable to the users is a small local area network of 4 computers and a server. All the computers have a barcode scanner for scan in book barcode numbers and ISBNs. The computers that I have available for me to use are a set of 5 networked PCs at my house of which one has a barcode scanner. At college there is a large number of networked PCs for pupils use. Intel Pentium 4 Processor Processor urge on 2. 0 GHz All 5 of the PCs that I have available to me at my house are all the same. (see above) 4. 2 Software The software that the user has available is Microsoft Windows 95 professional edition with Office 95 and all germane(predicate) software for the b arcode scanners and for the tele-book ordering. What I have available to use is Microsoft XP professional with Office 2000 which has excel, which Im using to create the new spreadsheet program 4. 3 Users IT skills and knowledge I feel that the users ICT knowledge and skills are limited to what they can do.They are inexperienced in computer use and therefore they have not developed, because of this there will need to be a basic and informative and self-explanatory interface. I think that the interface will need to be bold and relevant to the tasks. The user manual will have basic information in using the system as well as a disconcert shooting section. 1. Consideration of a possible solution There are many different packages that I could use to create an accounts program there is shrewd Line100, which is widely used in large company businesses. There is similarly Microsoft own Excel, which is widely used, in smaller businesses.I am going to use excel to create the program because it is the most normally available and is therefore the best choice to use. I think that it is also the easiest to use out of the two because many people use the program already and have a basic knowledge of the program already and how it works. It is also a lot clearer to see than the basic graphics of Line100. there is also the case that Excel is cheaper to buy than a copy of Sage Line100. at i?? 250, Line100 is rather too expensive for a small company. I feel that with the cheaper, only i?? 89. 99 Excel they will have a better deal on their hands.