Assgn 4_group A



Executive Summary

The system being developed is an online reservation/scheduling system for a new e-business (express service). The purpose of express_ is to provide services to people who are either too busy or are not able to perform tasks on their own. For now, the services offered will include: delivery of food orders placed through express service, scheduling emergency doctor appointments and provision of transportation.

A prototype approach was used in developing this new system. For doctor’s appointment, there would be a link to the websites of various hospitals in the area so patients can go directly to the site they desire and make appointments. Additionally, the system will allow patients to view doctor’s availability. The system will be able to locate information for a specific patient, check for open appointments, make or cancel an appointment, generate a late cancellation fee, and change patient status (checked in, diagnosed, released, etc.). Patient information on the system will consist of their name, patient number, address, phone number, date of birth, and current amount owing. The system would be able to control how far in advance customers can schedule and cancel an appointment.

For food delivery, customers will have access to the menus of various local restaurants. The system will allow them to place orders online. As such, a link will be provided online with menus from different local restaurants. Additionally, customers will be able to place orders online to any restaurant of their choice, edit or delete an order and also need to be able to make payments for their orders online. System will then generate a receipt after payment is made, along with an e-mail confirming the order. Express service charges a fee for this delivery service. For cab/van service the system will allow customers in need of transportation use our links to locate taxis/other transportations that they can do business with. In addition to the links, customers would be able to see what services are available. Transportation companies on the other hand, will be informed as soon as a reservation is made so they could send out confirmations by e-mail. The system will utilize the database management approach (DBMS) as a means of managing the organizational data. With this, we will be able to consolidate data records into a database that can be accessed by the many different application programs.

This is a venture that we believe will turn profitable in a short time. It is a revolutionary idea of which it is the first of its kind in the Baltimore area. With the average American getting increasingly busy year after year, and getting fewer time to complete daily tasks, express service can be a tremendous resource to people with busy schedule and well as the elderly population. This is a viable business that will yield profit if some time and resources are invested in it.

Part A

a. The prototype approach will be appropriate for this new business. Prototype is better for a eBusiness due to time involved in developing a system using SDLC. Time is of essence since IT strategic advantages are short lived in the “e” world

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Systems Investigation

This phase is where planning is performed for a general overview of objectives. An initial assessment and feasibility study is made. Some of the questions addressed during this phase of the project include: Is there an existing system? Is so, should the existing system be modified or replaced? If not, what is the cost of a new system? What are the technical aspects of the hardware and software? A team of end users and people who would actually be working on the system is pulled together to assist in this process. At this point the actual team to work on the project is also implemented. Typically, this team will carry the entire project forward for design and implementation.

A preliminary investigation (often called the feasibility study) was conducted to determine whether the systems project should be pursued, what the problem is and what to do about it. At the end of the study, it was determined that given the nature of the market, these three service sectors online would prove profitable.

Problem Definition: Nature Scope and Objectives

Problem:

The initial problems appear to be that:

a) Emergency Appointments: There is at the moment no quick and efficient way for people, especially the elderly, to make emergency doctors appointments without calling the doctors office. Many people would like the convenience of making their appointments online and heading straight for the hospital without having to spend the time on the phone to do this.

b) Food Orders: Diners would love to be able to make reservations and /or see restaurant menus online without having to place phone calls to different restaurants to find out what they have available on their menus before placing an order. An online service that would enable customers to look at different menus all at once and at their convenience and to place orders would be a huge improvement on what is currently in existence.

c) Transportation: At present, even though there are a transportation services that take people wherever they wish to go, most people are not aware of the different services and rates available so they tend to stick to one transportation service and miss out on various discounts and specials.

Scope:

In order to stay within our budget and schedule, a determination was made to focus on the Baltimore Metro area. Establishing the scope of the problem is critical because problems tend to expand if no firm boundaries are established.

Objectives:

Our objective is to accomplish three things: (1) provide online links to menus of several local restaurants to enable customers select items from the menu. (2) Enable patients make emergency appointments online by providing a link to local hospitals and will charge an appointment fee for this service. (3) Provide links to taxis and van services.

For all services above, a reference fee will be charged. Next, we conducted a systems analysis to system requirements based on these objectives.

Systems Analysis

The importance of accurate requirements cannot be overemphasized since a misunderstanding can result in a poor evaluation of the system and even cause a delay in project completion. Some of the questions we tried to answer here are what are the precise requirements of the end users? Do the requirements fit with the overall information requirements? This phase is where the user requirements analysis is performed; requirements consolidated, and functional system requirements are generated. Also, problems identified during the planning phase were examined in greater detail. End users and designers worked together in this phase to define the system and identify problem areas. The physical design completes the layout for the screen, menus, reports, and other devices. The purpose of gathering and analyzing data is twofold: to understand the system and, as a by-product of that understanding, to establish the system requirements, a detailed list of the things the system must be able to do. We determined and documented specific user needs.

Patient Appointment System Functional Requirements:

After extensive investigation, we discovered that for the patient appointment system, the system must allow patients to visit a doctor at the hospital of their choice. As such, there should be a link to the websites of various hospitals in the area so patients can go directly to the site they desire and make appointments. Additionally, doctors want to use the system to record their appointments and check their availability and appointments, and the hospital management wants to use the system to produce schedule information and produce bills for the patients. Therefore the system will need to be able to locate information for a specific patient, check for open appointments, make or cancel an appointment, generate a late cancellation fee, and change the patient status (checked in, diagnosed, released, etc.). All appointment information for a patient should contain the date and time of the appointment, and the doctor name. Patient information on the system should consist of their name, patient number, address, phone number, date of birth, and current amount owing. The system should be able to control how far in advance customers can schedule and cancel an appointment. One should also be able to set how close to the appointment time they are allowed to cancel their appointments.

Online Order Taking System Functional Requirements:

Customers need to have access to the menus of various local restaurants. They also need to be able to place orders online. As such, a link needs to be provided online with menus from different local restaurants. Menus need to include restaurant name, hours of operation, daily specials, prices, and taxes. Additionally, customers need to be able to place orders online to any restaurant of their choice, edit or delete an order and also need to be able to make payments for their orders online. Customers also need a receipt after payment is made, along with an e-mail confirming the order. Customers also need the option to have their meal delivered to their home for an additional fee. If it is an order for delivery, then Express_Service needs to know so the food can be sent along as soon as it is ready. The restaurants need to know as soon as an order is placed online so that the kitchen staff can start working on it.

Transportation System Functional Requirements:

Customers in need of transportation should be able to use our links to locate taxis/other transportations that they can do business with. In addition to the links, customers would like to see what services are available e.g., such services as airport transfers, charters, corporate day trips, point-to-point transfers, and special events and the rates. Customers would also like the ability to schedule pick-ups and make payments online. Additionally, they would like to receive confirmation of their reservation by e-mail. Transportation companies on the other hand, needed to know as soon as a reservation was made so they could send out receipts and confirmations by e-mail.

System Design

Preliminary Design:

Here, the system requirements were reviewed and some of the major aspects of a system were considered -- Should the system be centralized or distributed? Can the system be run on the users' personal computers? How will input data be captured? What kind of reports will be needed? A key question addressed here was whether packaged software should be purchased, as opposed to having programmers write custom software. That is, instead of designing, developing, and implementing a new system from scratch, if we could obtain an existing system -- acquisition by purchase -- to meet our client's requirements. We determined that in order to provide the best support and service, we needed a new system that could be easily adapted to suit different clients with different needs.

Patient Appointment System Specifications:

System features should include:

-- Links to various hospital websites

-- Online emergency appointments

-- Patient name, address and phone number

-- Doctor’s name

-- Add, change, or cancel appointments

-- Reason for appointment and/or primary complaint:

-- Date/Time Desired:

-- Additional Information or Comments

-- Automatic appointment confirmation e-mail sent to customer

-- Automatic appointment notification e-mail sent to staff member

-- Automatic appointment reminder e-mail sent to customer

-- Print individual appointments in a printer-friendly format

-- Add customer while making an appointment for them

-- User-defined reports for appointments

-- View appointment reports for current and past appointments

-- View and edit customer profile information from appointment page

-- Service Charge for use of the online service

Restaurant Online Ordering System Specifications:

System features should include:

-- Links to several local restaurant menus, showing specials and prices, taxes included

-- Restaurant hours of operation

-- Customer name, address and phone number

-- Automatic notification to restaurants when order is placed

-- Ability to make payments for service online

-- Automatic Notification from restaurant when food is ready for delivery

-- Automatic confirmation and receipt to customer upon placing order

-- Secure login for returning customers

 

Transportation Services System Specifications:

System features should include:

-- Links to various local transportation services with services and rates

-- Transportation services hours of operation

-- Name, address and phone number of person requiring transportation

-- Pickup Location and Destination

-- Date and time of pick-up

-- Automatic confirmation and receipt to customer upon placing order

-- Secure Online Payment System

-- Secure login for returning customers

Security

Security is a critical component of any e-business. Customers must believe that they can do business with a company without compromising their privacy. A breach of security can threaten the existence of any e-business, therefore end-to-end security is mandatory. The security system should be designed to protect all layers of the e-business environment including network, servers, and operating systems.

Questions we addressed:

1. Authentication: Does security methods provide the means to authenticate users of e-business systems, both internal users and external users?

2. Access Control: Does the system have enforceable access controls across e-business architecture?

3. Data Integrity & Protection: Is data being protected from being corrupted through either malicious or accidental means? Does company have thorough virus protection and firewall technologies guarding e-business? Is data adequately protected so that in the event of data corruption, clean data can be restored quickly?

Are backup and recovery, disaster recovery and business continuance policies and practices consistent with e-business requirements?

4. Confidentiality: Does electronic transmission of data have to confidential? Does the identity of the transmitting party need to be kept confidential? Have data encryption techniques been considered, relative to the sensitivity of the data being transmitted?

System Implementation

In the systems implementation phase, the system design specifications serves as a blueprint for constructing the new system. During this phase, the development team planned, developed, documented, integrated, and tested all new programs and code modules. If the design is based on a commercial software package, team members can add custom features by using the application’s built-in development tools of by creating additional programs and modules. At this point in systems development, programmers and systems analysts assumed different responsibilities. An analyst delivered a clear, accurate set of highly detailed specifications to a programmer. The programmer then coded, tested, and documented the individual program modules, while the systems analyst planned the integration of the program and ensured that systems components will work together properly. Programmers and analysts often work as a team to test and document the entire system. In addition, we performed the following tasks:

-- Cycle of coding, testing, debugging

-- Database customization, tuning

-- Input of data

-- Documentation

-- Training

Hardware/Software Evaluation:

For the hardware, some of the most important criteria are how easy to use and how easy to navigate the system is. Safety and simplicity would be important for the user. Also, connectivity would be important since many network technologies have the ability to connect the Internet and Intranet. How easy it connects to LAN and WAN would be important. Performance is crucial as poor performance could easily translate into waste of time and resources. Is it fast and accurate? Another factor is cost. How expensive will it be both to implement and to maintain? One should also factor in the cost of either purchasing or leasing. Another factor would be reliability – are the risks of malfunction low or high? What does the system cost in terms of lost income when it is down? Does it have good error and diagnostic features? Other factors would be technology and scalability. Where is the product in its life cycle? Consideration also needs to be given to how well it can handle the demands of various end-users, transactions and queries. Very importantly, how easy is it to get support and how available is support? When there is a system breakdown, how quickly can one get support and be up and running?

For the software, in addition to a lot of the factors checked for the hardware, efficiency, flexibility, security and quality are also major considerations. How much CPU time and disk space does it use up? How secure is student information? Does it have controls to stop improper use? One would need to examine its connectivity also. Is it equipped to quickly and easily access both the Internet and the Intranet? What is the quality like as far as the program code? Other factors to check would be if updates and new features can be implemented by staff rather than having an external person come to implement them. Documentation would be another factor – how well documented are the processes and does it have help screens? If customers have to call every single time they are trying to do something online then it is not very productive or user-friendly. One would also need to make sure that the existing hardware has the features required to best use the software. Serious consideration needs to be given to cost, ergonomics, performance, reliability and support characteristics also.

For a software solution, Express_ needs a software that one could configure solutions to meet the company’s specific goals and way of doing business at low cost in order to free resources for other activities and improve efficiency throughout the process. It also needs to have other modules that one could incorporate when ready to do so.

As far as integration, the payment process needs to be fully integrated. The payment system should be able to work, the module notwithstanding. Customers who want to order transportation or get their food delivered should be able to pay online for these services. The system does not require three separate payment systems. The ordering and payment processes need to be merged into a seamless unit.

System Testing:

During the system test, users entered data, including samples of actual, or live data, perform queries, and produce reports to simulate actual operating conditions. Users and the project development team to ensure that the system functioned correctly verified all processing options and outputs. System testing has the following major objectives:

• Perform a final test of all programs and ensure that the system staff has the documentation and instructions needed to operate the system properly and that backup and restart capabilities of the system are adequate.

• Demonstrate that users can interact with the system successfully.

• Verify that all system components are integrated properly and that actual processing situations will be handled correctly.

• Confirm that the information system can handle predicted volumes of data in a timely and efficient manner.

Final acceptance tests, however, are performed during systems installation and evaluation.

Documentation:

The documentation describes the system’s functions and how they are implemented. The

analyst prepared most of the system documentation during the systems analysis and systems design phases. Documentation includes data dictionary entries, data flow diagrams, object models, screen layouts and source documents. Updates to the system documentation should be made in a timely manner to prevent oversights.

Training:

All users were trained on how to operate and use the system. Questions were answered and users were taken through the entire system to familiarize them with it. The programmers fixed unforeseen situations that came up and changes were documented.

System Maintenance

After the system implementation, constant monitoring is required to ensure that everything is running smoothly. A review process is established to monitor, evaluate and modify the system as needed.

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c. Technical, Economic and Operational Feasibility

Technical Feasibility

From a technical standpoint, this e-business venture is all set to proceed without much difficulty. Similar to other small businesses that have established an online presence, some of the basic components required to run an e-business are most readily available and at very reasonable rates and include the following:

Web Server: This will serve as the base of our website and will enable us to host web pages. The server will have web server software installed on it that will enable us to capture data and use several site management tools to run and maintain our website. There are several web servers that are readily available and some are even open source such as the Apache server that runs on a Unix Platform.

Web Application Servers: These servers provide specific business functionality required of a website and as such are required to perform the necessary e-commerce transactions. Some of the application servers that we will most likely incorporate are a mail server to manage the email requests received from our customers, and a transaction processing server to process a customers order to fix an appointment with a medical facility, schedule cab rides and process food orders. The transaction-processing server will also process the payments once the customer’s payment information details have been received. We will also use a database server to store customer account information and order history as well as to store the list of restaurants with their corresponding menus, cab company information and hospital information.

Payment Processing: There are a huge number of companies that aid in secure online processing of payments. We will use Verisign’s Pay flow Pro service which will enable us to securely process payments online, directly from our website.

Hardware Platform: There are a lot of hardware components required to run an

e-commerce website and all of them are easily available at reasonable rates for a small online business. For example, network PC’s are readily available and we will be using several PC’s that will be connected to our network, to enable our workers to process orders online as well as over the phone. Additionally we will be employing a suitable internet connection that will provide an adequate amount of bandwidth to enable us to meet our peak demand forecasts.

Website Development: There are several software suites that make it easy and efficient to develop websites such as Microsoft Front Page, Dream Weaver etc. We will be using Dream Weaver for creating our website.

IT Support Staff: Technical support staff are also available to support the maintenance and operation of an e-commerce website and we will employ them to make sure that our website is running 24/7 without any flaws.

Economic Feasibility

This e-business seems to have reasonable costs associated with it to make it economically feasible. There are the basic fixed costs that one will have with this e-business, as well as any other business. Those costs are salaries and wages to IT workers building the website, as well as completing maintenance. Other fees would be acquiring the website URL, and the software/hardware necessary to build the e-business.

Other costs associated with this e-business deal with customers using the services listed on the website. These costs include the worker who has to make the appointments for the hospitals, as well as the cab services. Also, there has to be a worker who is constantly checking emails for requests for service. On our website, customers email us to request which service they will be using, and through which business they will directly use.

Other economical costs that could occur are associated with the growth of the business. If the volume of customers continually increases, then the website will need to be able to handle the large volume of consumers traveling through the site, as well as the volume of emails.

These costs in the big picture are small compared to a regular brick-n-mortar store, where a physical building has to be created. Salaries and IT tools are the largest cost of this e-business. This website is entirely feasible economically speaking.

Operational Feasibility

In the Baltimore metro area, three service sectors online would prove profitable:

Emergency Appointments: There is at the moment no quick and efficient way for the elderly to make emergency doctors appointments

Food Orders: Diners would love to be able to make reservations and /or see restaurant menus online without having to place phone calls to different restaurants.

Transportation: At present, even though there are a transportation services available, most people in the Baltimore area are not aware of these services and of the different services and rates available.

Providing these services online would be extremely beneficial to the Baltimore area and would also prove profitable. During our feasibility studies, Baltimore residents indicated that not having these services available online is a problem. According to the study, about 20% of the senior population throughout the region are in the "High Need" category, characterized as traveling infrequently, having a moderate to severe physical disability, and reliant on friends and family for both long and short-distance travel. Most of them would value a transportation service. Many Baltimore residents also indicated that having an online service available to help in making emergency doctor’s appointments would also be beneficial to them. The study also found that many families with young children would like the convenience of seeing restaurant menus online. This would offer them the convenience of ordering online and having the food delivered to them. These are services that residents are willing to pay for.

A consensus was reached that by implementing these three services online, Express_ stood not only a chance to make profit but to also meet the needs of the population. Service organizations provide up-to-the-minute business process status and results: doctors’ appointments and food orders can be made in real time, customers are able to move from paper-based to web-based processes, which can result in enormous savings. Invoices get filed faster, which means they get paid faster, and this can equate to thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional revenue each fiscal year.

Threats

It may be difficult to get word out about the new services available. There are so many websites that creating traffic to this one might prove somewhat difficult. Advertising is expensive, especially for a start-up business so Express_ may have to rely on word of mouth to start out with.

Customers may be unwilling to try a brand new service, preferring to stick with the old thing they are familiar with. Older companies with more established names might make it difficult for the company to take off.

Conclusion

All things considered, we are convinced that this would be a viable venture to invest in. The ever decreasing cycle-time of market changes is driving the need for companies to be much more agile in their response to business variations. Improving the ability of business intelligence solutions will provide greater value to operational business teams will make them more relevant. Organizations are struggling to integrate their operational activities and processes and address performance and process improvement imperatives. To ensure that existing and new IT investments are leveraged to allow businesses reach their full business potential there must be a new and integrated approach and this is where Express_ comes in. This is a viable business that will yield profit if some time and resources are invested in it.

Part B

Decision Support System (Please look at DSS.xls file for the spreadsheets)

1) The Ebusiness will become profitable in the year 2006

2) See Sheet 3: If the price of appointments is raised by 2%, and the price of rides is decreased by 5%, there will be a greater loss in years 2004 and 2005 when compared to the original unmodified DSS. However profits will increase in year 2006, but will decrease in year 2007 and there will be a loss to the business in the year 2008.

3) See Sheet 4: If the salary is raised by 10%, the losses for the first two years increase and profits for the remaining three years decrease, when compared to the original unmodified DSS.

4) See Sheet 5: I don’t think it is possible to get a 100% Profit on revenue generated as this will imply total revenue = total profit and this is not possible since some cost will always be incurred in running a business. However I think that the profit can be increased substantially by increasing the rates of food order deliveries, appointments and rides by 50% for each successive year. This will increase the profits for the years 2005-2008 by a huge amount and reduce the losses incurred in the year 2004, when compared with the original unaltered DSS.

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Reference

Enhance systems Inc. E.management: A Critical Success Factor For E-business.

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