Cpsc 451: Supplier Group #7

GorillaSoft

Management Plan

Overview

System Functionality

Relation to Existing Northam System's

System Data Storage Requirements

Preliminary System Implementation Plan

Overview

This section of our proposal discusses the key aspects of the proposed PSDS system. This is intended to give Northam an overview of what the system will do and how it will relate to Northam's existing systems. Key business rules and practices that need to be established by Northam and made available to the system are also highlighted. This section will also address our thoughts on the mininal system that we are highly confident that we can delivery by the end of February. Components are identified that are additional to the minimal system. These are not expected to be delivered by the end of February. We have structured the proposal in this fashion to give Northam flexibility to progress the system development at a pace that is reasonable regarding cost and the assignment of Northam personnel to interface with our team members. We have also included a list of the key personnel that will comprise the development and implementation team for the PSDS system.

The following topics are addressed:

Please refer to Figure 1 for an overview of the structure of PSDS, its proposed and planned subsystems and interfaces with existing Northam systems/databases.

Figure 1.

System Functionality

This section describes the major functional groups of the proposed PSDS system. Aspects of a minimal system delivered by the end of February are noted. The full PSDS system will have the following functional subsystems:

a Sales and Customer Service (SCS) subsystem,
a daily Product Delivery Scheduling (PDS) subsystem,

The SCS (Sales and Customer Service) subsystem will provide functionality to allow Northam's sales staff to efficiently handle requests from new and existing customers, including:

establishing new household and retail customer accounts,
requests for new magazine subscriptions,
cancellations to existing magazine subscriptions,
capturing data for credit card payment of subscriptions,
generating refund requirements as needed for cancelled subscriptions,
requests for home newspaper delivery,
short term stop requests for home newspaper delivery,
newspaper delivery subscription cancellations,
customer complaints and special delivery instructions.

The above SCS functions are considered part of a minimal system.

The SCS interfaces will permit sales staff to conveniently and efficiently capture all relevant data for each of these transactions. The data captured by this subsystem is required for proper operation of the daily Product Delivery Scheduling subsystem and will also initiate action by Northam's existing accounts receivable system to invoice new magazine subscriptions not payed by credit card.

The PDS subsystem is the main subsytem of the PSDS system. Any minimal system delivered must include this subsystem. PDS will provide functionality to Northam's product distribution department staff to enable them to efficiently manage the logistics of product delivery by generating daily orders,

for packing staff indicating amounts of each product to assemble for each delivery driver,
for drivers showing amounts of each product to deliver to each retail customer, news box and carrier drop location,
for carriers showing amounts of each product to deliver to home customers and any special delivery instructions.

In addition it is propsed that the PDS system provide an interface for delivery drivers to set up and organize their delivery routes. This would permit drivers to establish the order of their deliveries in a way that is efficient for them. This setup information is captured and forms part of the rules for generating daily orders for packing and driver deliveries.

It is assumed that Northam will establish a daily deadline by which all customer data and delivery order changes must be in place from sales staff. The generation of packing and delivery orders for the next day would be generated after this cutoff time.

It is proposed that the PSDS system have an interface to allow an authorized employee (e.g. system administrator/sales staff) to conveniently change business rules established in the system. For example, these could include product pricing/subscription schedules, refund calculation rules, etc.

In addition to the minimal PSDS system, a Sales Planning subsystem (SPS) would provide sales planning staff with interfaces to extract data views that would permit them to make decisions on product offerings and retail customer and news box stocking quantities.

Relationships to Existing Northam Systems

The PSDS will have to interface with several existing systems and databases of Northam. We propose to work further with Northam to identify how to interface with the existing systems.

In particular, the invoicing function mentioned in the Informal Specification is typically part of a larger accounting/accounts receivable system which it is assumed that Northam already has in some form. For this proposal we have identified that as a minimum the PSDS system must capture data relevant to the accounts receivable function of Northam and also possibly trigger events in that system. The existing Accounts Receivable system is assumed to be currently capable of providing (or could provide with some modification) the following functionality:

generate invoices for household customer magazine subscriptions not paid by credit card.
generate refunds for customers cancelling subscriptions before expiration of the subscription.
generate invoices for product quantities actually sold by retail customers.
generate invoices for carriers to deliver to household customers and
generate collection sheets for use by carriers to manage and document their payment collection activities.

Accounts receivable will have to be able to notify the PSDS system that payment has been received so that home magazine delivery can begin. Decisions on overdue accounts to suspend delivery can also be made by setting PSDS data after being notified by accounting of the situation.

For subscription cancellations, the PSDS system will generate the amount of the refund in accordance with cancellation rules and delivery data, and only supply the refund amount and customer account to the Accounts Payable system.

We recognize that Northam's Informal Specification suggested that billing was currently a "rudimentary, operator" managed process. If our assumption of an existing Northam accounting system with billing capability is invalid, the only change to our proposal would be that billing system capability be integrated into existing accounting systems. This work will not form part of the minimal system to be delivered by the end of February.

The PSDS can also interface with an assumed Management Information Reporting system of Northam to provide sales volume data in various forms. Note this function is not what is envisioned with the proposed future Sales Planning subsystem of PSDS.

System Data Storage Requirements

The data storage requirements of capturing daily data for Northam's product delivery and sales volumes if done at a customer level can be enormous. At this point we need to discuss the specific data needs of Northam in more detail before implementation. However, our preliminary thoughts on this are that data would be captured at the customer level for a typical sales cycle (e.g., 7 days for newspapers, monthly for magazines) and then accumulated into a running total by customer. This may be a practical approach that will satisfy Northam's needs while keeping data storage to a reasonable level. Data over a year would then be archived.

Preliminary System Implementation Plan

At this point the PSDS is largely a data management challenge. It is proposed to develop the application using the Microsoft Access relational database and interface application development tool.

Data collection at retail customer and newsbox locations will be a significant time consuming activity for drivers. The data collected is vital for revenue accounting, invoicing, sales / stocking decision making, etc. It is proposed that Northam equip its drivers with state of the art hand held data collection input devices to allow drivers to scan newsbox barcodes, product barcodes, enter retail customer account numbers and enter unsold product amounts collected from retail customers and newsboxes.

Minimal System

Group Structure