F4 System For Family Farm Fresh Foods: Order Management, Delivery And Payment

1.Use the background information to create a short summary (one short paragraph) about the “Family Farm Fresh Foods” business.
2.Create an Organisation Chart for the Family Farm Fresh Foods business.
3.Use the information above to describe the area of the organisation under study (i.e. the business functions that will be handled by the new information system).
4.Add the background information, organisation chart, and business functions to your Report document in Part A: Initial Investigation.
 

Overview of F4 System

The system will be maintaining functions like registering the customers, calculating their type, order maintenance, assigning delivery personnel, payment handling and many more. The customers will be providing their personal details and the system will be storing it into the database. At the registration period the customer will be normal but as he/she starts purchasing regularly the system automatically mark them as regular customers. The system will be handling the inventory related activities of the farms. The delivery man will get message regarding the order details and customer details who has placed the order.

The most interaction with the system will be done by the admin. The admin will be responsible for managing most of the manual processes. The admin will be handling cases like placing order by phone, contacting delivery man in case system is unable, updating data that are not able to identify by system and many more. The delivery man will be providing status of the delivery. The customer who places order may not be home at the time delivery man reaches or delivery is delayed. In such cases the data regarding status of delivery will be provided by deliver man.

Sign Paper Credit Slip: The system will be creating a paper based credit slip for each order. The customer will be signing the credit slip after delivery is complete. The slips will be provided to the customer at the end of each month.

Delivery: The deliveryman is responsible for delivering the places order. Customer and deliveryman both are associated actors. The delivery can be done by two ways such as to home of the customer who placed order and local store from where the customer will collect order.

Payment: The payment will be done by the customer after each delivery. The payment will be calculated using the order cost and discount. The payment can be done through two ways such as using cash or credit.

Local Daily Activity Report: The system will be generating daily activity report based on the day to day business processes. These reports will be sent to the head office for decision making and business process tracking purpose.

Figure 2: Activity Diagram of F⁴ Order Place

(Source: Created by Author) 

Duplication and inconsistency can be see for customer as the customer can be moving from one place to another without informing the organization. In this case the organization delivery service will be hampered. The same customer can get registered into the system using different verification proof. In such cases chance of duplication of data is very high. The data duplications can be seen in terms of products that the organization sell. Various farms sell the same products to the nearby customers. The name of the products may vary (regarding few products) for farm to farm. Data inconsistency can be seen in various parts of business operations also. 

Use Case: Place Order

Data Populate:

Maintenance Connection: It is a cloud based software framework utilized in the business with the purpose of handing maintenance. As the software package is suitable for SME, Family Farm Fresh Foods can use this package within its environment (Maintenance Connection 2018). The organization can edit the home page of the system as per the role of the end users. It is very supportive in terms of customer support and training. Tracking assets can be done through various ways.

Get Swift: The package is very good in terms of cut costs, speed up and reducing path covered in terms of delivery of product. The package is able to provide enhance efficiencies within F⁴ customer support center (GetSwift 2018). The staff needed to handle delivery of products needs not be increased as the organization will grow for certain enhancement in business area coverage. 

In House System: In house system is the IT framework in which all the IT assets are own by the organization itself. The hardware will be purchased by F⁴ and the organization will be responsible for maintaining the system (Kessel et al. 2016). In case the organization is looking forward to using the in-house system for a long time, it is the best solution but for a short period of use it is very costly.

Management Information System: The management information system will be controlling all activities of the organization that are related to management (Laudon and Laudon 2016). The system will be handling delivery process through the GetSwift software package.

Enterprise Resource Planning: ERP will be using for establishing a proper communication organization wide. All the aspects of the business from farms to delivery man to customers will be under the supervision of ERP (Leon 2014). ERP is more costly than MIS. It can be cloud or in-house system.

Conclusion:

From the above study it can be concluded that the new system can be a great source of innovating business for Family Farm Fresh Foods. The use case diagram has provided the understanding of end-user interactions. The activity diagram has been done for only one use case, an activity diagram consist of all the activities done by the end users and system will be able to provide better understanding of system functionalities. The database is comprised of all the data that are relevant for business, there is a scope of improving the database. The system can be using various packages like customer relationship management, inventory management, delivery management and much more. As the organization is medium sized, the delivery software package and business maintenance software package is required most.

Packages for Enhancing Business Processes

Including all the Stakeholders: Family Farm Fresh Foods has various internal and external stakeholders like customer, employees, suppliers and man more. Considering the impact of all the stakeholders during development of system is crucial. The stakeholders will be included in various processes of development where they are most appropriate.

Making Change Management Plan: Implementing a system at Family Farm Fresh Foods’s environment will result into changes in business process. The organization must create a change management plan so that these changes can be handled properly.

Security: Security of data and system is a significant part of information system. It is because the system will be storing customer details and business related sensitive data.

Maintenance: The system must be maintained after deploying in the Family Farm Fresh Foods’s environment. 

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