Utilizing Information System For Automated Order And Billing Process

Use of the New Information System

The New Information System that is to be deployed would be utilized for the purpose of handling the ordering the process. The main reason for the purpose of the implementation of the Information system is for saving time along with the handling of the customer database and the bills. Tracking and documentation would be greatly helping in the solving various kind of issues. By adaptation of the Information system “Grow Your Business” would become capable of delivering their food products without any kind of errors besides this the billing procedure would also become automated so making the process of purchasing much more easy. The information system would be associated with the elimination of various kinds of errors which includes the errors in the accounts, errors in providing the right delivery to the right person, delay in delivery, and many more.  

Grow your business  has grown a lot in the past few years so the system also needs to be developed so that it can match the level of the work at the farm. The sale and the production at the farm have been increased as compared to the past. The customers are confused sometimes when they come to pick the order from the farm. The staff at the farm which looks after the pickup orders is even in a trouble when there is a rush at the pickup counter. If things are well organized then the possibilities of the difficulties would be a lot less.

 The customers need to be informed about the seasonal vegetable that will be replacing the older vegetable that they had in there order, So that they don’t get disappointed with their order.

The New System Should Be Capable of:-

• Collecting Information about the production at the farm.
• Collecting and storing information about the customer details.
• Collecting and storing information about the pick-up time for the orders.
• Collecting and storing information about the orders to be packed.
• Collecting information about the orders.
• Check weather all the products that are there in an order are they all present at the farm.
• Colleting the orders via phone call or email.
• A website should be made to help the customers so that they can order from the website with the knowledge of the products available at the farm. Apply Changes to their order at any time.  

The New System Will give the following benefits to the company:-

• Maintain correct information about the customer.
• Maintain Correct Information about the orders.
• If the pick-up time is well organized there will be no rush at the pick-up counter.
• Making their own orders with available items at the farm will never disappoint them.
• No worries about the payment as they will be made online.
• Upcoming changes will be uploaded on the website so that the customers can make the changes to their orders accordingly.
• Customer relationship management that comes with the new information system will enable attraction of more customers to the business. This is due to the track of the most frequent customers to the business, the frequent products that the customers get from the business, the business will improve the customer intimacy. That is the closeness of the customer to the business.
• Timely order placements. Using the online real time order placement, orders will reach the business in time. The business will check the availability of stock through the stock management module and respond to the customer timely.  
• Efficient and timely delivery of products. After receiving the order and finding out that the products ordered are in stock the business sets plans for delivery of the goods. The customers and the organization will be both able to track and trace where the delivery of their goods has reached.
• Efficient, accurate and less tiresome management of funds. The business will be able to keep track of the payments against the products bought to ensure there are no losses incurred.
• Proper management of the assets and properties of the business where by the machinery manager updates the status of the machines in the farm in a daily, weekly and monthly basis so as to identify those that are wrecked, those to be repaired and those that need maintenance.
• Effective and efficient management of employees. Employee details will be stored safely in the system. when one needs to access the employee details he or she will have to have a username   

Packing and sorting of the orders depe1nd on the orders taken by the customers of the growing your business farm. Before sorting and packing of the orders is done the persons responsible first check the orders given by the customers. 

The first task that needs to be achieved is the development of the order taking for customers to make orders for the system   

With reference to (Thompson and Walsh 2012) 

The path starts with taking orders followed by checking accounts then getting products for orders placed, then packing orders, then sorting the orders, then checking production which is followed by clearing and the last process is closing 

There are nine tasks and each of them takes 5days. Therefore the total time taken will be 45 days. The requirement specification will be the first stage then followed by the interface requirement which is followed by system design phase which is followed by the system development phase which is followed by the testing phase and the deployment phase comes in last.  

Customers may not be comfortable using the new information system for growing your business farm which may lead to loss of customers.

Training of the employee on how to use the system will take a lot of time and will require money to train

System Vision Document

New employees may be required to train the existing employees or even phase out the employees who do not know how to use the new information system.

The system may crush upon deployment, may be due to inappropriate use of the commands stipulated to be used in the system. This is highly unlikely to happen. 

Customer relationship management that comes with the new information system will enable attraction of more customers to the business. This is due to the track of the most frequent customers to the business; the frequent products that the customers get from the business, the business will improve the customer intimacy. That is the closeness of the customer to the business.

Timely order placements. Using the online real time order placement, orders will reach the business in time. The business will check the availability of stock through the stock management module and respond to the customer timely.  

Efficient and timely delivery of products. After receiving the order and finding out that the products ordered are in stock the business sets plans for delivery of the goods. The customers and the organization will be both able to track and trace where the delivery of their goods has reached.

Efficient, accurate and less tiresome management of funds. The business will be able to keep track of the payments against the products bought to ensure there are no losses incurred.

Proper management of the assets and properties of the business where by the machinery manager updates the status of the machines in the farm in a daily, weekly and monthly basis so as to identify those that are wrecked, those to be repaired and those that need maintenance.

Effective and efficient management of employees. Employee details will be stored safely in the system. When one needs to access the employee details he or she will have to have a username and a password and most of all have the access rights to the information on the employee. This ensures the security and confidentiality of the employee details. 

Expense Category	Amount
Salaries(includes benefits costs)	$926,000
Installation	$306,000
Training	$75,000
Facilities	$55,000
Utilities	$99,000
Travel	$83,000
Licenses	$16,000
Total	$1,560,000

Recurring Expense	Amount
Hosting	$166,000
Programming	$73,000
Help Desk	$81,000
Total	$320,000

Benefit or Cost Saving	Amount
Recapture/prevention of lost sales	$201,000
Increase sales to existing customers	$296,000
Sales to new customers	$352,000
Increased efficiency in order processing	$48,000
Equipment costs because of hosting	$147,000
Total	$1,044,000

	Category	Year 0	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5
1	Value of benefits		$1,044,000	$1,072,000	$1,102,240	$1,134,899	$1,170,171
2	Development costs	-$1,560,000
3	Annual expenses		-$321,000	-$321,000	-$321,000	-$321,000	-$321,000
4	Net benefits	-$1,560,000	$723,000	$751,000	$781,240	$813,899	$849,171
5	Discount factor	1.0000	0.9434	0.8900	0.8396	0.7921	0.7473
6	Net present value	-$1,560,000	$681,965	$668,170	$655,608	$644,274	$634,080
7	Cumulative NPV	-$1,560,000	-$895,035	-$224,865	$428,743	$1,075,017	$1,711,097
Playback period  2 years +226665/(226665+430743)=.35

According to the estimated annual benefits the system will be bring to the business, where there is prevention of sales loss by $201,000 ,increase of sale to the existing customers to $296,000, sales to new customers will be $352,000, increased efficiency in order processing amounting to $48,000 and the equipment cost because of hosting is $147,000. The proposed project is worth continuing or proceeding with as it brings more benefit to the business (Kateb et.al 2015).  

Questionnaires – this is where there questions are set for the employees, stakeholders and the customers using the new information system to answer at their own free, comfortable and private place or zone (Ritchie et.al 2013).

Observation – this is where one takes notes and an account on the operation of tasks, placing orders, checking for products, packing, sorting and delivering of the orders according to (McDaniel and Gates 2013). After the observation of the operations one is able to come up with the flaws of the existing system and ways to solve them in a systematic manner.

System Capabilities

Survey (Palinkas et.al 2015) – almost the same as the observation but in this case the analyst takes samples to take account on.

Accountant – the person responsible with receiving of the payments from the customers after placing orders online.

Stock keeper – the person responsible for packing and sorting of the orders once placed and paid by the customers of growing your business.

Use case	Order placing
Scenario	Placing order for organic farm product
Triggering Event	A customer wants to place orders for certain products
Brief Description	The customer first prompts the system for placing order form. The system gives the customer the platform to enter order details. After entering the details the system checks whether the products ordered are in stock or not. If the products are not in stock the system displays a message the products are not in stock. If the products are in stock, the system checks whether the customer is of category regular or variable. If the customer is of regular category there is a discount offered whereas if the customer is of variable category then there is no discount offered. The system then prompts the customer to choose the mode of payment and after paying a message for order placement is displayed.
Actor	Customer

Product packing use-case brief description

Use case	Product packing
Scenario	Packing products ordered
Triggering Event	Ordered  goods have been paid for and need packing
Brief Description	The store keeper receives the orders placed by a customer via the system he or she checks the product types and amounts and starts packing.
Actor	Store Keeper

Use case	Order delivery
Scenario	Delivering products ordered
Triggering Event	Ordered products have been packed and need delivery
Brief Description	After the packing of the products ordered the delivery staff gets a notification on the system.  The delivery staff check the payment method used in the system if it is pay on delivery, they will pick the payment when they deliver. The system checks the amount and notifies the staff whether it is for delivery or for pick-up. The team makes deliveries based on the information from the system.
Actor	Delivery staff

Use case	Report generation
Scenario	Report generation
Triggering Event	At the end of the day the manager prompts the system for the daily report
Brief Description	The manager prompts the system for the daily reports. The system check the days date and generates the report
Actor	Manager

 Use case full description with activity diagram (Swain et.al  2010)

Use case	Order placing
Scenario	Placing order for organic farm product
Triggering Event	A customer wants to place orders for certain products
Brief Description	The customer first prompts the system for placing order form. The system gives the customer the platform to enter order details. After entering the details the system checks whether the products ordered are in stock or not. If the products are not in stock the system displays a message the products are not in stock. If the products are in stock , the system checks whether the customer is of category regular or variable. If the customer is of regular category there is a discount offered whereas if the customer is of variable category then there is no discount offered. The system then prompts the customer to choose the mode of payment and after paying a message for order placement is displayed.
Actor	Customer
Related use cases	Packing and delivery use cases
Stake holders	Accounting and store keeper
Pre-conditions	Products must exist and the customer must exist
Post-conditions	Order is placed and information is stored
Flow of activities

One farm has employed so many delivery persons, the relationship is one too many. One farm has so many customers the relationship between a farm and customers is one to many. One customer can have so many orders, the relationship is one to many. Many orders can contain many vegetables. One farm can have many vegetables the relationship between a farm and vegetables is one to many  

FarmID	FarmName	CustomerID	PersonID	VegetableID	OrderID
19600101	Growing your business	024576	065756	5646667	5678
19600102	Veritable Vegetable	647488	253673	7448983	36478
19600103	Batalion	454334	456788	1213455	90888

CustomerID	CustomerName	CustomerStatus	OrderID
024576	Julius Caesar	Regular	6474784
647488	What Baldwin	Regular	7746484
454334	George Gars	Variable	6547634

PersonID	PersonName	OrderID
566577	Tim Carrick	78786
234566	Terry Tina	78868
678456	Noel Noelleta	878790

OrderID	OrderName	VegetableID
78786	Fruits	N/A
78868	Cabbage	34555
878790	Kales	435666

VegetableID	VegetableName	Price per unit
34555	Cabbage	$5
435666	Kales	$4
677888	Lettuce	$2

The customer first prompts the system for placing order form. The system gives the customer the platform to enter order details. After entering the details the system checks whether the products ordered are in stock or not. If the products are not in stock the system displays a message the products are not in stock. If the products are in stock, the system checks whether the customer is of category regular or variable. If the customer is of regular category there is a discount offered whereas if the customer is of variable category then there is no discount offered. The system then prompts the customer to choose the mode of payment and after paying a message for order placement is displayed. 

Software	In-house developed	Farm Fresh Organic vegetable	Agrivi
Order processing	yes	yes	yes
Customer Management	yes	yes	yes
Labor Management	yes	no	yes
Delivery Traceability	yes	no	yes
Price Management	no	no	yes
Financial Management	yes	yes	yes
Farmer decision making	yes	no	yes
All Platform support	yes	Android only	yes
Inventory Management	yes	yes	yes
Cost of deployment	Expensive	Expensive	cheap

The online software Agrivi is the best way to about the implementation and deployment of the new information system. This is because first it is cheap to implement as compared to the other two software, it can support any gadget a user uses to access the system and it supports all the business processes like order processing, customer management, financial management, delivery traceability and helps give farmer insights for decision making. 

Conclusion

The in-house-developed system is more expensive as compared to the Agrivi and unlike Agrivi software it does not support price management which is a major feature for the system.  The development process for the in-house development system is also time-consuming as compared to the deployment of Agrivi. It should therefore be dropped for Agrivi online system whose security, maintenance and update will always be done with the cloud solution providers.   

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