Holmes College Housing Office - Business Solution Essay.

Discuss about the Business Overview for staff and faculty for housing opportunities

The main purpose of this report is to provide a business solution for the Holmes College as per the case study so that they can arrange a rent for the college student as housing office. It will contain an online rental business in which the user can know about the site, register to it and provide with their details and search for some appropriate rental place as per their convenience.

The report will give the overview about the business that the Holmes College will implement. There will be an overview about the structure of the company with some key activities. The report will also provide with details of the problem that might occur in developing the business process for the Holmes College. It will contain the information about the gaps that has occur and the opportunities that the college will get with this company. It has some functional decomposition which will be discuss in the section of the company overview. The next section will be about the analysis of the current processes. It will determine the requirements followed by the data flow diagram containing the context diagram, Level 0 and Level 1 diagram. The analysis will also be done through logical modelling in which a decision table will be design with all possibilities for the process in the system. With it a decision tree will be drawn for the system that will reflect the process that has been used in the system. The analysis will be completed with an ER diagram. Once the analysis is completed the functional and non-functional requirement specification will be discussed in brief. The report will propose a business solution in the form of reports forms and user interface design. The understanding of the project feasibility will depend on the benefit, cost and risk analysis. Some options will be provided for the implementation. A request will be done for the maintenance and for implementing the changes. Finally, the report will conclude with a key area that are recommended for the detailed analysis.   

• The system will have a registration page and a login page.
• Every access to the system must be authorised to the system.
• The property would be maintain by the admin.
• The student will identify whether the property type is residential or commercial property.
• The Admin can inform the student regarding the type of property and update the information on the system and inform the user by mail
• The student should book the room for rent by providing their details
• The system is very useful for the Holmes College to post and edit details about the rental house and the admin can monitor the personal information of the owner of the property and the information about the student which will be recorded in the admin system.
• The system is useful in searching the details of the property and also it tracks the account details of the student who are about to stay in rent.

Well planned approach to be made: The Holmes College would look forward to organise and plan a system for the student to take a rental house for them to stay in their comfort zone. Every details of the student will be properly stored in the data stores, through which the information would retrieve easily from its storage.

Accuracy: The system has proposed a level of accuracy but could not guarantee that it will satisfy the student as per their need. However, all possible feature has been provide in the system to meet the accuracy level.

Analysis of the Current Processes

Reliability: Reliability will be high for the system that has been proposed due to the reason that has been stated above. The system reliability get increased because the storage of information in appropriate.

Holmes College is located on West Coast. It provides a dormitory housing for the student. As some student preferred not the live on campus had choose for dormitory housing.  The housing office of Holmes College uses a multiple cumbersome system binders so that they can keep track of the college students, staff and faculty for housing opportunities.

The key activities for the listing of the housing mainly for the college are the owner list which consist of the housing owned by the college, rent for individual room or private landlord or those who are looking for roommates. The current listing system has three binders namely undergraduate listing, graduate listings and staff or faculty listing. The structure of the system includes the type of housing which could be an apartment, house or condo. It contains a square footage, multiple bedrooms with attached bathrooms. The system include rent with security deposit and some utilities. It has other features and amenities with the system. The data contain availability date, allowed multiple lease parties, lease term and contact information. There are some restrictions on the rental housing for the student. The student are not allowed to smoke inside the rental area. However, if they want they can go out of the area and smoke. Opposite genders are strictly restricted to bring in the room. If there is any genuine reason for then they need to inform the landlord or the owner. The pets are accepted inside the room however if the student wants to keep the pet that a fees need to be deposited for the pet and the type of pets that are allowed in the room are small dogs, large dogs, cats. In case if the college rent the property then the binders is removed from the list. The private landlords need to call as the listing has been remove. By the end of the month binders are reviewed by the office staff of the housing. All the older private listings are removed that are older than 2 months.  

There is a problem in the current system as maintaining and keeping up-to-date becomes difficult.

The president of the new college has now approved the fund for the system development as to get easy access and the listing of the details will be maintained properly.

Functional and Non-functional Requirements

The current process of the Holmes College uses multiple binders that can easily keep track of the college housing opportunities for the faculty, staff and students. It consist of a housing listing system were it include housing of the college-owned, the landlords and the individual who look for the roommates are the private parties who owned their housing. The system include the various type of housing like the apartment, condo, house and more. Utilities are included with the rent and security deposit. It further has other features and amenities. There are some data elements like the date of availability, rental restriction, pet policy, number of bedrooms with bathrooms and list of owners.

The system face difficulties in maintaining and keeping up-to-date the data. Thus the funding need to be provided to the system to develop and access the maintenance of list. In case if the college give the property for rent then it remove the list from the binders. The private landlords need to give a call for giving their property for rent.

Decision Table:

Conditions	R1	R2	R3	R4
Time spent for maintain the system	X
Review the listings		X
Development Type			X
Installation			X	X
Free Support				X
Actions	>30 hrs		Over 2 hrs	Under 2 hrs	Cost more than 4000	Cost less than 4000
Overtime		X
Delete listings		X
In-house Development			X			X
Software package				X	X

Table 4: Decision Table

Source: (Created By Author)

Hardware Requirements: The software should be ran on any of desktop or laptop environment, regardless of the operating system. Essential input/output devices are keyboards, mouse, and printers; nothing else is required but can be recommended if desired.

System Interface - Primary Tasks:

• View all available rental properties: Connects with the database and   display all rental properties
• Search for desired property by property type like Square footage, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, date of date of availability and more: A search bar will be implemented on the website that will search the site based on the input.
• Allow for registration:  registration display form
• Allow for log in: log in display form
• Allow administrators to change what property is available for rent: Administrators will log in through the log in display form such as other user would, but would have a different looking interface to allow for them to add and remove options

System Interface - Secondary Tasks:

• Authenticate any user logging in: communicates with the database to verify the inputted username and password is correct
• Send an email to verify a registration: Once a user registers and click the complete registration button, an email will be sent to the email the user provided, provided a link in the email that will allow for a verification that this is the said-user.

Performance Requirements:

• Ability to maintain mass amount of users on the system at once without crashing
• Speedy performance / transmission of data
• Send any emails immediately

Security Requirements:

• Secure any transmissions of private information of users
• Prevent third party users at administration level
• Verify website security certificates
• Prevent false email inputs from being used when registering

Quality Attributes:

• Maintain a user friendly environment that is visually appealing
• Easy to see and use navigation
• Maintain readable content

In order to determine the feasibility of the economic the report has examine the tangible costs and benefits. The housing office can decide whether to go with the development process then they can either develop through in-house or else can even purchase as a vertical package. They has to just configure the office needs.

Presently employees has created the housing listing at the housing of the office. While keeping the records of the previous work logs the office employee has determine the time spent in order to maintain the manual system. It create a sheets of list for the binders, filing a list and copying. The employee works for 30 hours in an average of overtime per month. The cost that is included for the overtime is $25 per hour which is also included overhead. Every month the housing list will be reviewed by the student. The worker has to spend 25 hours for a month and at the housing office it has to go through 15 binders. For pulling the old list and review them the students are paid $12.50 for per hour. The system automatically conduct a review and generate a new list for review.  

Proposed Business Solution

• Improve service for the student: By devoting less time in processing and collecting the checks for the rent. Putting more focus on marketing efforts and a better relationship is built with the owners and the residents.
• Due accounts of the past are minimize: Multiple options are provided for paying the rent through various mode basically eCheck, credit card or PayPal to reduce the late payments. Residents are remind with the use mobile alerts to pay their rent due.
• Security Enhancement: Risks are eliminated through the online payments that are associated with the policies of the cash payment.
• Dispute resolution is simplify and audit trail are created: When the residents’ claims about the payment, the system can instantly check the payment and verify the claim and if not paid then it automatically disapprove.  

Risk	Description	Impact	Probability	Responsible person	Mitigation
Improper requirement analysis	If the project managers are unable to make proper analysis on the project requirements then it can generally create number of obstructions in meeting the demand and needs of the customers.	Medium	Medium	Business analyst	It is very much necessary for the project managers to analyse the requirements of the project so that the website can be successfully implemented for meeting the need and requirements of the customers.
Inappropriate security measures	Due to inappropriate security measure, number of security related challenges can generally occur within the project.	High	High	Technical engineer	It is very much necessary to utilize appropriate security measures so that the entire website can be properly designed without any type of security measures.
Inappropriate management	Due to inappropriate management, it became quite difficult for the project managers to implement the rental system quite effectively and thus they can face difficulty in finishing the project within the expected budget and time.	Medium	High	Project manager	In order to avoid this type of challenges, it is very much necessary to hire experienced project managers so that they can be able to manage the project quite effectively.
Technology competence	Due to technology competence, the designers face lot of difficulty in designing the website and thus the website does not get completed within the expected time and budget.	Medium	High	Technical engineer	It is very much necessary to avoid number of technology competence so that the designer can be able to implement the entire website quite effectively.
Due to changing requirements	As the project scope is not approved by the project stakeholder then number of issues can occur due to changing requirements within the project	Medium	Medium	Project planner	It is quite necessary to approve the scope of the project with the help of the stakeholders for avoiding changes within the project.

The interface design that is made is an online rental business for the students who wants to search home for living. The interface design of the online rental business is made so that the user finds the rental website easy to use. The interface design has many such pages that will help the students to search rents for their living. There are mainly three factors that are included while implementing a website. The three factors that can be described for using the website of online rental business are defined below.

The system feasibility aims at working of the website. The interface design that is designed for the online rental business for the student should work well. The design of the website should be user friendly and all the systems that are involved with the design should work well while the website is implemented. The system feasibility is a report that mainly examines all the systems that are required to implement the system online and making the system a successful one. In system feasibility the objective that is to be perceived is important factor for all the institutions and the investors who will invest on the project.

Hardware feasibility implements all the hardware that are needed to implement an interface for the online rental business. The hardware that are needed to implement the website is should be clearly mentioned in the report of feasibility. All the hardware that are used while making the interface design are satisfied.

The financial feasibility includes the cost of making the interface design of the project and them implementing it online. The financial feasibility that was assumed to make the project was correct and the interface design of the online rental business is satisfied. The system that is designed satisfies the cost of making the project. 

The site contains detail information of the student. Thus, it is important to maintain the site. The admin is requested to check through the site regularly and free all bugs and error that can occur while the user use the site.

The Online Rental Business site has the registration page, login page and search page. It is requested to the user to implement more features like comparing between two different rental housing, their rates and benefits that are provided by different site. This will help student to get better and good quality rental house with minimum cost.  

Conclusions

Feasibility Analysis

From the above report it could be concluded that online rental system could be used by the student, faculty, staff has to book for rental housing. It is cheaper to use. Though there are problems encountered in the system such as the hardware limitations where the space in the disk is exhausted. It is recommended to get the most possible solution for the system that could be provided is that the disk space need to be extended. Moreover the speed of the internet connection would be minimum 128 kbps. Thus, in the whole process of the business report, the requirement of the project is first gathered and the time schedule is decided. Once the planning has been done the documentation of the project has been design. With the completion of the design the system code were generated. At the designing phase, effort estimation and error estimation of the code were done. However when any error occur it has been solve. Finally the cost has been decided provided with its benefits and also has analyse the risk.

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