System Analysis And Modelling For The Marias Aquarium Business

Answer :

Introduction

The aim of the report is to present information about the system analysis and modelling for the current and the proposed payroll and revenue information system for the Maria’s Aquarium Business. The business has scaled up significantly in the past years. Now it is operating from multiple locations. Other than the head office, there are three additional retail outlets in Gosford, Chatswood and Wollongong. The business is also planning to open more outlets at Canberra, Goulburn and Coffs Harbour. And before opening the outlets, it wants to streamline its current business process with the help of an automated information system. 

The business bred fishes, both cold water and tropical in their own hatchery and sells the same to the customers. The customers are individuals and wholesalers. At the same time, it stocks various aquarium items from wholesale suppliers and sells the same to customers. Other than the head office and the outlets, they have a hatchery and a warehouse. 

In the following sections of the report, there are information about the user requirements, logical data flow diagrams of the current system and the proposed business system, ER diagram, selection criteria for the new payroll and revenue system and comparison of two of such available solutions for the Maria’s Aquarium business.

User Requirements List

The user requirement list of the proposed new payroll and revenue systems are, 

• Fixing the issues of the price book 
• Improvement of the data collection process so that the issue with the ‘double entering’ of data in the system is reduced. 
• Reducing the manual data entry process to reduce the scope of error in data entry. 
• Automating the warehouse and stock management process 
• Automating employee working hour tracking process 
• Implementation of a centralised system to connect all branches 
• Implementation of an RFID based warehouse management and stock management system 
• Implementation of automated order management process with customer information collection and tracking. It will help to get repeat business from the customers. 
• Automated invoice generation process 

Logical DFD of the Current System 

Currently, each store runs semi-independent business and data are collected in a paper based information system. There are following types of employees at each of the outlets. 

• Sales person 
• Storeman 
• Store manager 

Sales persons handles the selling and taking care of fishes in the store. Storeman processes the deliveries of the stocks of the fishes and the aquarium supplies. And a store manager keeps records of the details of the sales, orders of new stocks from the head office, rosters of the sales staffs in a week and sending the weekly payroll details to the head office. The Payroll system at the head office is a computerised system. 

A price book is maintained at the head office and the copy of the same is distributed to all outlets. Head office has an office manager who takes updated prices from the suppliers and updates the same in the price book, or updates the prices from the invoices sent by the suppliers. 

When there is a selling activity from any store, the sales person of the store takes the price from the price book and adds that to the customer invoice. Then the sales person collects payment from the customer and updates the daily sales register. Store manager updates the stock cards of each item manually based on the sales of the previous day and the orders for the items and the shipments from the head office. Stock replenishment is also a manual process. 

Logical DFD of the New Business System 

The proposed information system will track the stock and payroll information automatically and will feed into the proposed accounting and the payroll management system. The logical DFD of the proposed information system is given below, 

In this case, the proposed payroll and revenue management system interfaces with the warehouse management process and the automated sales process directly. So, all stock and price related information will be fetched from the system. The system will determine the reorder level and will order items from the supplier. The system will track the employee details also and will prepare rosters for them and will determine their payments. 

ER Diagram 

The ER diagram of the payroll and revenue management system is, 

Selection Criteria List

The selection criteria for the revenue and payroll system are, 

• Functionalities of the revenue and the payroll management system 
• Whether it is scalable 
• Whether it is flexible 
• Whether it is offered as stand-alone solution or as a cloud based solution 
• Additional features 
• Pricing 
• Integration with the human resource and other business information system 
• Does it support automation and employee self-service technology or not 

Evaluation of Products  

Two of the selected payroll and revenue systems for the business are, 

• Xero 
• Zoho Books 

Zoho Books is an online accounting software. It helps to manage the invoices, banking operations, bills, and inventory and supports mobile accounting. It also supports various taxation activities of the state and national laws and boards. It has easy to use interfaces and help businesses to manage cash flows. The features of Zoho Books are, 

• It allows tracking of bills payable to the suppliers and can generate bills automatically. So, Maria’s Aquarium business will be able to streamline their supplier billing and invoicing process. 
• It can fetch all bank details and allows to automate the payment for the employees of the business. 
• It can keep track of the billable times of the employees and the business 
• It can be integrated with the inventory management process to keep track of the stocks and for calculating and tracking revenue. 
• It can be used to send sales orders for the customers 
• It can be used to manage purchase order from the suppliers. 
• The business workflows can be automated with the proposed information system 
• It helps to centrally store all documents on the cloud 
• It supports mobile accounting. So, all accosting tasks can be done from mobile devices running on Android, Windows and iOS. 
• The business can take the professional version of the solution and the cost will be around A$ 36 per month for 10 users. It also allows to add more users. So the solution is scalable and flexible. 

Xero is another cloud based accounting system solution that offers payroll and revenue management. It offers the following features, 

• It allows sending online invoices to customers and suppliers. 
• It allows inventory management and stock management 
• It allows payroll management like paying the employees, running reports
• It can be integrated with the banking system to automate transactions and payments
• Bank reconciliation is also possible to track money for daily updates 
• It offers customisable dashboards to get an idea of the whole accounting process from a single screen with charts and graphs. 
• It tracks the payment of bills to the suppliers 
• It has extra layer of security 
• It tracks money and how it’s being spent
• It helps to track and manage expenses and sending receipts online 
• It supports mobile interface
• As this is a cloud based solution 

It offers free trial and the business can purchase the premium 5 version at the expense of A$65 per month. Additional users can be added to the system.