Peachy Business Forms Ltd.

Sales Routing System Requirements




Overview

Peachy Business Forms, Ltd. is a supplier of business forms to commercial customers in the city of Calgary. A dynamic company, we have developed the need for a sophisticated computer system to keep our sales staff working efficiently. A database system is required that will anticipate our clients' needs for PBF's high quality business forms.

The primary purpose of this system will be to produce a daily list of these companies for each of our salespeople to visit. Each list will be an ordered subset of an individual salesperson's route (or territory). While each salesperson should maintain the order of her route, the system should determine the daily selections. There are currently five routes in the city, representing several hundred customers each, and we expect future increases in the numbers of both.

The daily route selections will be based on past customer and product information; the system should keep track of previous orders for all customers and products. Ideally, the system will anticipate the reordering needs of our customers. However, a salesperson should be able to manually enter an expected date for a customer to reorder, particularly in the case of a new customer with no ordering history.

Each of our salespeople should have direct access to information that relates to her route along with a limited set of permitted actions (e.g. printing a route list, adding a customer, or changing the order of the route). Management personnel should have access to all routes plus additional administrative functions.

We will discuss these requirements in more detail under their appropriate headings.


Our Products

The system should keep track of the following product information: product number, a general product description, product price per unit, and the quantity currently sold. The product number is of the format, nnnn-mmm, where nnnn is the four digit product number and mmm is the three digit motif number (e.g. color, design, font). A product description consists of the type of the form, a size designation of the form as well as any other pertinent information needed to describe the product (up to 100 characters). Product price is gauged by its price per unit (e.g. $5.00/1000 sheets) and must be a non-negative real number with two decimals.

The product quantity is a cumulative amount determined by how much of a given product has been sold. This final product attribute will give the company the ability to gauge a business form's performance and from this continue or discontinue its production. The reports that contain this information need to be able to show the amount of a product sold in any particular time period.

Salespeople need to know what products that we currently carry, so the system has to provide them with access to list products out. This list should include product ID, description and unit price.


Our Customers

The system must keep track of our list of customers, which includes information about each customer's purchase history (amount of which form sold and the date of sale), as well as their address, phone number, and the sales territory that they are located in. It should also keep track of the contact's name and what the company does (affects what forms they may use).

Our staff should be able to add new customers, make changes and deactivate them by entering a customer name or number. When "deleting" a customer from a salesperson's route, the customer information should NEVER actually be removed, but instead stored for possible use later.


Our Salespeople

The administration menu should allow the administrator to add a sales person to the system. The administrator should be prompted for the sales person's name, phone number, social insurance number, route number, system password, and the maximum number of companies the salesperson can be expected to visit each day. The administrator should be able to change any of these attributes at a later time. In the event that a salesperson leaves the company, the administrator should be able to delete him from the system (and either have the salesperson's customers assigned to another employee automatically or have the system print a list of the customers that need to be reassigned).

The system should display a list of all the customers to serve on a particular day for a particular salesperson. Each entry should include the customer name, the address, the type business form ordered, the quantity, and the reordering rate (how many times the customer reorders that product per month, for example. This would be used as an aid for the salesperson to determine when to take the next order for that customer. It could also be used for stock management, etc.).

Since each salesperson is assigned to a specific region of the city (NE, NW, SE, SW, or downtown in this case), the salesperson will deal with only those customers in his region. So, if the salesperson works in the NE area, then all the customer addresses should be in that region. This is the information the salesperson will use to set up his daily route. As well, the system could save this list to a file, with the name specified by the salesperson, to allow a copy to be printed later.

A salesperson should be able to modify his route. This function should display all the customers for the salesperson, in the route order the salesperson has specified. He should then be able to modify the route as needed. For example if the current order is :

  • 1) Henderson's Hardware,
  • 2) Greg's Groceries,
  • 3) Larry's Law Office.

    The salesperson decides that a new order would be better as:

  • 1) Greg's Groceries,
  • 2) Larry's Law Office,
  • 3) Henderson's Hardware.

    The system should allow this and display the newly ordered list.


    Administration

    The system should possess an administrative dimension able to alter both relevant sales and routing information, as well as override such things as route scheduling (i.e. # of customers, customers on a given route). This will allow for basic additions, deletions and modifications of various system information (e.g. newly hired salespeople, new or deleted product, change in product type, etc.), in addition to a basic flexibility in route scheduling. With this in mind, the administrative level in turn will have complete control and access of the system.

    For administrative purposes, we require the system to generate various reports, including salesperson, customer and product information. These reports will allow management to view each of the intrinsic components of the routing process to determine many factors including a salesperson's route, the route a customer is currently on, the cumulative quantity ordered (within a specified date range) for a specific business form, and any other information available from the system. These are but just a few of the reports needed by our company, yet they provide a general idea of what is desired.

    In order to follow up orders for a customer and project sales, we have to get information about the customer such as all orders that have been placed in this year, the customer's needs (i.e. all products that the customer has ordered and number of times that each product is ordered), and name of the customer, person to be contacted, telephone number and address.


    Summary of Reports Required

    Reports specified as "On demand" should:
  • be available from the appropriate menu;
  • query the user for a time period, by asking for a start date, and providing information relating to orders placed from that date until the current date or a user-specified end date.

    1. Salesperson Report

    2. Inventory Report

    3. Order Report

    4. Individual Customer Report

    5. List of All Customers

    6. Daily Combined Customer Report

    The list of the customers for all the salespeople could be merged together for that particular day and printed on the screen. The merged list could be saved to a file and the file could be printed later. This list is generally used for accounting purposes.

    7. List of Sales People

    8. List of Products

    9. Salesperson Customer Information

    10. Salesperson Daily Route List




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