The company
The Officionadocompany offers clients a range of office supplies. Consultants deal with corporate and private clients; senior consultants are more likely to deal with corporate clients, whereas consultants and trainee consultants are more likely to deal with private clients. The list of clients is set up on a database, and you may assume that all clients have agreed that their personal data may be used in this way. A couple of years ago, the company had a new product database created (OOPS: Officionado order profile system) which enables orders to be taken from clients. There is also a supplier database, indicating the liaison representatives within Officionado and the types of products supplied (SLIPPER: supplier liaison information for product purchase, enquiry and reordering) which enables purchase orders to be made with suppliers to refresh supplies of products. Supplier liaison staff generate purchase orders when product stock falls below the predefined reorder level; no details of these purchase orders are stored in the database at present. Data has been extracted from the databases into CSV files for your use in the development of a management support system as described below. Management are now investing in the development of a management support system (ODDS: Officionado data and decision support system) which will include both client and supplier details to evaluate the performance of the company and improve decision-making at senior management level. In particular, a decision needs to be made on the location of a new office.
Harry Vellum recognises that extending the use of information technology in support of management decision-making can make a significant contribution to the goals of enlarging and developing the company, in particular opening at an additional location to extend the business. The HR Manager, Cynthia Transom is under constant pressure to develop recruitment, retention and reward strategies to support the company’s existing and future staffing requirements. Identifying staff training needs or recognition of excellent performance will be important components of her staffing policies.
The OOPS and SLIPPER systems are intended to enable staff to take orders from clients and make purchase orders with suppliers. The management support system ODDS now required is intended to offer decision support facilities to senior management at the Totteridge office. In the future it will allow sophisticated data mining and modelling of product, client, supplier and staff data for performance measurement purposes as outlined above.
Initially, the Officionado UK Ltd management (represented by a steering committee) requires that the ODDS project team consider several key management decisions and develop a ‘proof of concept’ MSS for any one of these decisions before further development work may then be undertaken.
Steering Committee
The project is being overseen by a project steering committee. The committee meets approximately once a month at the Officionado HQ in Totteridge
· for a report on progress from the project team;
· to make important decisions regarding budget, resources, time and quality;
· to determine the overall direction of the project
· to review a key project deliverable: the Design Specification with software
The steering committee consists of the following people:
Steering Committee role
|
Position
|
Name
|
Executive
|
Managing Director
|
Harry Vellum
|
Senior user
|
Operations Director
|
François Fry
|
Senior user
|
Senior Consultant
|
Royce Bentley
|
Senior user
|
Supplier Liaison Manager
|
Helen Highwater
|
Senior user
|
Financial Controller
|
Penny Stamp
|
Senior user
|
Sales & Marketing Manager
|
Andrew Dover
|
Senior user
|
HR Manager
|
Cynthia Transom
|
System support
|
IT&IS Manager
|
Duncan Biscuit
|
Management decisions
The ODDS steering committee have identified the following management decisions as suitable candidates for a management support solution:
- Where should we locate the new Officionado office?
- Who are the most effective consultants?
- Who are the most effective order staff?
- Which suppliers do we use most?
- Which are the most popular products?
- Which are the most popular product categories?
- Who are the best private clients (consider how to evaluate “best”)?
- Who are the best corporate clients (consider how to evaluate “best”)?
- Which are the best geographic areas for business from clients?
It is worth remembering that the MSS to be developed is not intended to provide a complete answer to any one of these questions, but should provide significant support to the manager(s) responsible for making the decision.
The files you will be given contain data extracted from the OOPS and SLIPPER systems in CSV format, and are as follows:
File
|
Data items
|
staff
|
staff-id, last-name, first-name, job-title, reports-to
|
suppliers
|
supplier-id, supplier-company, supplier-contact, supplier-address, supplier-tel-num,
|
clients
|
client-id, last-name, first-name, title, status, company-name, address, tel-num
|
orders
|
order-id, client-id, staff-id, order-date
|
items
|
order-id, product-id, number-ordered
|
products
|
product-id, product-description, product-group, pack-size, pack-price, no-in-stock, reorder-level
|
product groups
|
group-id, group-name, supplier-id
|
You will need to identify entities, primary keys and foreign keys in order to design the database at the heart of ODDS.
At present, Duncan Biscuit the IT & IS manager has only been able to provide you with some of the data files relating to Officionado,but he has undertaken to provide the remaining files by next week.
- end of case study -
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