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Company Description: 10 person gourmet Bread Company distributing to grocery stores in the Baltimore, MD area. Employees: 2 owners (one handles finance), 2 bakers, 2 packaging/delivery people, 1 person handling inventory and ordering, 2 sales and marketing people, 1 administrative assistant. They anticipate hiring additional bakers and delivery/packaging people as business increases, but their office staff does not expect to expand much over the next five years. Existing system: -Six laptops (everyone but bakers and packaging/delivery people), LAN computer network, good laser printer that runs on their LAN (they want to keep that), fax machine. -They use the fax machine to take orders and they enter those into Excel. -They use Windows 8 and Office 2013. -They outsource their payroll to ADP so that is out of scope. -It's a small company with no formal HR department, so they don't anticipate needing an HR system. -They currently use Excel to handle everything and it's causing problems because they have lost some orders, so that's why they need a new system. -In addition to a system that would prevent them from losing orders, they also want to become more competitive and feel a more efficient system would help with this goal. -Their computers are on a LAN, so they are networked. -They have internet access. Timeline: 9-12 months including training. Training is one month with two additional months of phone support. Employee computer skills: The owner who handles the finances is very good with Excel. All other office employees have basic-intermediate skills. Bakers and Delivery/Packaging area have limited computer skills (besides internet use). Ongoing Support: Taste of Brazil has no budget for hiring additional support staff, so the system must be able to be supported by the existing staff. They would like to use our consulting firm to support them and can budget for up to 5 hours per week at $80 per hour. New System Requirements: Needs to cover finances, sales, inventory, and order processing. Budget: Small to medium. Maybe 100K? Other items discussed: We have to make a chart of all of their options regardless of cost, according to the assignment. Then we will recommend two of them in more detail. Some options we discussed were giving them an ERP (expensive), giving them an Access database (cheap), doing a SaaS option.

SYSTEMS STUDY - SECTION 2

Hardware and Software Inventory Group Member B

List the Inventory of hardware and software already deployed in the organization. When inventorying computer hardware, we should check such items as type of equipment, status of the equipment (on order, in use, in storage, in need of repair), estimated age of equipment, projected life of equipment, physical location of equipment, department or individual responsible for equipment, and any financial arrangement for equipment (owned, leased, rented). Certainly, the identification of existing equipment to re-use also is important to note and added to the final inventory list.

Systems Study Group Member B

When evaluating the current system, the group needs to understand how the current system works to include measurements of time to complete a task and the system’s capacity to fetch, store, and complete the transaction.

Estimate both current and projected workload for the system.

Evaluate the performance of current hardware and software using some predetermined criteria.

Systems Study Results Group Member B

Detailed results of the systems study

HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE INVENTORY

(a) LIST THE INVENTORY OF HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE ALREADY DEPLOYED IN THE ORGANIZATION

· Six laptops

· Internet access

· LAN network

(This suggested below will also help in the inventory section. You can make reasonable assumptions) .When inventorying computer hardware, systems analysts should check such items as

· type of equipment, 6 laptops(HP Laptops)

· repair status of equipment’ never repaired, just normal expected maintenance

· estimated age of equipment, for example 3years (this is based on assumptions which are reasonable and acceptable)

· projected life of equipment, for example 10 years(this is based on assumptions which are reasonable and acceptable)

·

· physical location of equipment: within the business premises of (name of the chosen company)

· department or person responsible for equipment: IT department (it is important for your company to have IT department. You might want to suggest this for the group or make it as one of your assumptions). NOTE: IT equipment cannot be controlled by any other department, except, u invite expert from outside to help manage it each time it malfunctions. I will suggest creating IT department)

· financial arrangement for equipment: This will depend on calculated NPV or IRR. (Whichever is better either lease, owned or rent)

EVALUATION OF CURRENT SYSTEMS

Evaluating current hardware:

· the involved persons, including management, users, and systems analysts, should take the following criteria into consideration: time required for average transactions (including time for input and output), total volume capacity of the system, idle time of the central processing unit, and size of memory provided.

Evaluating projected workload:

· cover finances, sales, inventory, and order processing.

· ERP systems, Access database , SaaS options

EVALUATION OF HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE USING PREDETERMINED CRITERIA

· When evaluating hardware vendors, the selection committee needs to consider hardware support, software support, installation and training support, and maintenance support as well as the performance of the hardware.

· When evaluating software packages, the selection committee needs to take the following factors into consideration as well as total dollar amount to purchase them (100k). They are: performance effectiveness, performance efficiency, ease of use, flexibility, quality of documentation, and manufacturer support.