appliancewarehouse case study 9
kamishliang
appliancewarehousecase8.pptxService Department Software Design
Joseph Kamishlian
22 July 2020
User Interface
Link with parts department
Recording of appliances brought for servicing
Status of appliances
Link with finance department for billing
Link with Sales department
Communication with Customers
Report generation
Service Department Software Design
Service Based Applications that can be used for the Service Department
There are two main service based applications that can be used for the department
SaaS (software as a service)
SaaS is an on-demand third party software where the organization pays to access the services it desires.
2. In-house customized software
A software specifically designed by the organization to meet its needs. The organization has to maintain the software
There are two main service based applications that can be used for the department.
The first is SaaS which is an on-demand third party software where the organization pays to access the services it desires. The organization will not have ownership of the software. They will rent out the software designed and maintained by a third party. The organization will have to pay monthly or annual payments to have access to the software.
The second type of service based application is an in-house customized software. The software is specifically designed by the organization to meet its needs. The organization has to maintain the software to ensure that it serves them
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Advantages of SaaS
SaaS has five main advantages
Has easy accessibility
Has easy upgrades
Low up-front costs
Can be easily set up and deployed (Souri, Asghari & Rezaei, 2017).
Supports scalability
SaaS has five main advantages.
The first advantage is that it can be easily accessed. All that is needed is a computer connected to the internet and that has a browser.
The second advantage is that SaaS providers deal with hardware and software updates, deploying upgrades centrally to the hosted applications and removing this workload and responsibility from you.
SaaS is generally subscription-based and has no up-front licence fees resulting in lower initial costs. The SaaS provider manages the IT infrastructure that is running the software, which brings down fees for hardware and software maintenance.
SaaS application is already installed and configured in the cloud. This minimizes common delays resulting from often lengthy traditional software deployment.
Lastly, SaaS providers generally offer many subscription options and flexibility to change subscriptions as and when needed, egg when your business grows, or more users need to access the service.
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Disadvantages of SaaS
There are four main disadvantages of SaaS
There is a limit on the range of applications and their services
There are many security and data concerns in the use of SaaS
There is lack of control (Nowrin & Khanam, 2019)
It is dependent on the internet
There are four main disadvantages of SaaS
The first disadvantage is that there is a limit on the range of applications and their services.
The second disadvantage is that there are many security and data concerns in the use of SaaS. The organization has to consider whether it is willing to share its data and security protocols to a third party
The third disadvantage is that there is lack of control. in-house software application gives businesses a higher degree of control than hosted solutions where control resides with a third party. Typically everyone has to use the latest version of the software application and cannot defer upgrades or changes in the features.
Lastly, SaaS is dependent on the internet. Since the SaaS model is based on web delivery, if the internet service fails, the organization will lose access to its software or data
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Advantages of In-house customized software
There are four main advantages of the in-house customized software
Tailor-made solution
Return on investment
Offers high security (Wiesbaden, 2016).
There is improved software support
There are four main advantages of the in-house customized software.
The first advantage is that the software can be tailor made to meet the exact needs of the organization.
The second advantage is that it has a high return on investment in the long run as there are no monthly or annual subscription payments
The third advantage is that it supports high security. The organization can better secure its data and processes as it does not deal with third parties
Lastly, since the software is in-house customized, in case of an issue or a challenge, the issue can be sorted fast.
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Disadvantage of in-house customized software
There are four main disadvantages of in-house customized software
It is a high cost investment.
It is time involving.
Needs additional technical expertise.
Possible challenges in support and documentation.
There are four main disadvantages of in-house customized software.
The first disadvantage is that it is a high cost investment. The organization will spend money on getting an analyst, a developer and a project team
Secondly, developing a software is time involving as the developers have to go through the software development lifecycle.
Thirdly, developing and maintaining customized software needs additional technical expertise.
Lastly, there are possible challenges in support and documentation.
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Recommendation
I would recommend the use of the in-house customized software based on three reasons
The solution can be tailor-made to meet the needs of the organization
The solution offers advanced security features
The solution is high return investment (Brambilla, Cabot & Wimmer, 2017).
I would recommend the use of the in-house customized software based on three reasons.
The solution can be tailor-made to meet the needs of the organization. Secondly the solution offers advanced security features.
Lastly the solution is a high return investment
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Requirements the software must do to support the Services Department.
The software must be compatible with the other software used by the parts department.
The software must allow recording of appliances to be repaired.
Employees in the department must be able to indicate the status of appliances brought for services.
Employees must be able to communicate with customers on the status of their products.
The software must be linked to the finance unit of the organization for billing.
The software must be linked with the sales department to confirm if an appliance brought for service has a warrant or not.
The software must support report generation to enable the department identify the repairs that they do the most
There are seven requirements the software must do to support the service department
The software must be compatible with the other software used by the parts department.
The software must allow recording of appliances to be repaired.
Employees in the department must be able to indicate the status of appliances brought for services.
Employees must be able to communicate with customers on the status of their products.
The software must be linked to the finance unit of the organization for billing.
The software must be linked with the sales department to confirm if an appliance brought for service has a warrant or not.
The software must support report generation to enable the department identify the repairs that they do the most
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Communication Plan on the project process
The project manager will communicate after every two days, weekly, fortnightly and monthly
The service department manager/IT manager- every two days via status reports
Operations manager-Weekly
Executive Management of the organization-Fortnightly via email
The board of directors- Monthly via the organization’s monthly meeting
The project manager will communicate after every two days, weekly, fortnightly and monthly
The service department manager/IT manager- every two days via status reports
Operations manager-Weekly
Executive Management of the organization-Fortnightly via email
The board of directors- Monthly via the organization’s monthly meeting
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References
Souri, A., Asghari, P., & Rezaei, R. (2017). Software as a service based CRM providers in the cloud computing: challenges and technical issues. Journal of Service Science Research, 9(2), 219-237.
Wiesbaden, S. F. (2016). Developing our own software and IT expertise gives us an advantage. ATZ worldwide, 118(4), 22-25.
Brambilla, M., Cabot, J., & Wimmer, M. (2017). Model-driven software engineering in practice. Synthesis lectures on software engineering, 3(1), 1-207.
Nowrin, I. N., & Khanam, F. K. (2019, May). Importance of Cloud Deployment Model and Security Issues of Software as a Service (SaaS) for Cloud Computing. In 2019 International Conference on Applied Machine Learning (ICAML) (pp. 183-186). IEEE.
