Information Systems Multi-Chapter Case Study

Information Systems Multi-Chapter Case Study

Personal Trainer Inc., Information Systems Case Study

Business Profile, Organization chart, Susan vs Gary, Systems Discussion

The three most critical business processes for Personal Trainer are centered on their customers, and include new customer acquisition, customer service processes, and customer loyalty processes. These three processes together form the foundation of how Personal Trainer creates and keeps a customer.

Organization Chart for Personal Trainer:

Gray actually sees the system as overwhelming and indicates this with the comment of not knowing where to start. Gray also realizes that the organization needs to have much better Web access, yet also doesn't understand exactly how to put that into place as well. In general, Gray doesn't see the need for significant change over and above the existing accounting system and seems to be resisting it to an extent. Susan however handles the resistance well and looks to define strategies for making the centers more productive. This is going to be one of the most difficult aspects of the implementation; changing peoples' persons of the systems involved and what it means to their jobs and roles on a daily basis.

As Personal Trainer is primarily a business-to-consumer (B2C) business, the use of enterprise computing and transaction processing are beyond the scope of their needs and are actually more designed specifically for the needs of larger, enterprise-level organizations that sell to other companies, who are in other words, B2B in focus. In terms of business support, knowledge management and user productivity, Personal Trainer can definitely use these tools for making their business more effective in attracting, serving and retaining customers. As all business whoa re viable have the need for business support, this is critical, as is the need for knowledge management, as Personal Trainer must retain the lessons learned and knowledge from their operations if they are to succeed in the long-term. As part of any Web-based initiative the company must also embrace Web-based B2C transactions in the form of online ordering of service packages as well. This is underscored by their operating centers in a dozen Midwestern cities where orders for both standard fitness packages and special services need to be reported to a central location for accounting and financial analysis.

Chapter 2: Mission Statement, Interview List, Internal/External Factors, Recommendations List

Mission Statement: Personal Trainer is passionately committed to getting you to your fitness goals while providing you with tailored programs that are designed for your unique needs.

As Susan and Gray begin the process of defining the information systems plan, they will need to speak with the following people in the organization. As the case study has not specifically mentioned the names of people in the company, the following titles are used:

Manager of Marketing

Manager of Operations

Manager Finance

In addition to personal interview, the team defining the new system needs to concentrate on value stream mapping each of the dominant processes the company relies on, in addition to measuring and monitoring key performance metrics relating to each process. As part of this analysis there also needs to be a review of documentation, make observations of key operations (which are measured through value stream mapping and key performance indicators (KPIs)) in addition to operations research approaches to defining best practices.

Of all the internal and external factors that will have an impact on the proposed center, the greatest will be internal. Specifically the resistance to change on the part of employees will be significant for any new systems, and as Susan has mentioned she would like the system to have an enterprise resource planning (ERP) planning aspect to it, the changes to those in all areas of the business both from a process and system use standpoint, is going to be significant. Change management issues, or getting the staffs of the various departments most affected by the systems and their new processes, will be the greatest stumbling block going forward. Additional internal factors including the need for advanced training and thorough orientation on the system, the development of entirely new approaches to compensating and rewarding performance based on the system, revising the roles and responsibilities of key contributors all must be redefined. There is a massive change required at the process level across all client-facing strategies to attain the level of synchronization required to make the system successful. Of all internal and external factors, this will be by far the most challenging and critical of all to undertake as part of the system development.

The following are the list of recommendations to Susan and Gray for making their written and oral communications. The following are the recommendations defined in priority order:

Consider the audience and their unmet needs that are met with the proposed system, their role in the proposed system changes, and the development of change management strategies that will involve them. In short, this first priority is to explain the system and its relevance to the people affected and enlist their support in making the system successful. What Susan and Gray need to concentrate on in this first aspect of the presentations is to get ownership from those most affected.

Define the agenda that maps to what the most critical unmet needs are for those most affected by the system. This requires advance planning and consensus-building to be effective.

Keep the graphical definition of processes simple and to the point, showing the specifics of how the process improvements made by the proposed system will increase their performance while making the task easier to accomplish.

Once the consensus levels have been achieved and the value stream mapping and graphical definition of the processes are in place, the presentation itself can be created. Beginning with the introduction, leading to a definition of system requirements and process workflows supported, then finally to findings of the analysis of key process areas, the presentation needs to underscore an unmet needs to problem solution orientation to be successful.

Chapter 3: System Requirements, Scalable Issues, Sampling, FDD

As today Personal Trainer relies on BumbleBee accounting software to manage revenue and expense reporting, including the generation of three accounting reports, there is already a foundation in place for managing financial information. The system requirements must center on the scalability and growth of this platform to include the customer-facing initiatives and programs the managers have asked for including offering a wellness log, personal coach service, e-mail communication with members, and the development of more personalized approaches to training. To accomplish these broader objectives, Susan will need to concentrate on both hardware- and software-based system requirements which are defined as follows:

Hardware Requirements

Intel-based server capable of managing multiple accounting, finance, marketing, sales, service and purchasing workflows without having a reduction in performance.

Development of network routing typology supported through a series of routers that interlinks connections between one Internet Service Provider (ISP) to another from the dozen locations to the Chicago home office.

Firewall protection and encryption of accounting data sent from over secured router connection to another over the Internet.

Software Requirements

Enterprise Resource Planning platform that includes support for analytics, customer relationship management (CRM), marketing and sales management, with integration to the Bumblebee financial accounting system. This integration is critical for the development of actionable metrics based on customers' preferences and the performance of Personal Trainer corporate-wide.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that supports a wide variety of selling and support strategies that are specific to services businesses, in addition to support for analytics and reporting.

Support for a business process management (BPM) functionality including the development of workflow analysis that can be used for re-defining processes as the company matures and changes over time.

The scalability of the systems and software involved in the implementation needs to be tested and planned to specifically support multiples of the users online today, as the company plans a global expansion that will require a significantly higher level of resources than the company has today.

Scalability at the hardware level needs to be tested at the operating system level, then incrementally loaded with additional applications to see at which load level of applications and operating systems the server indicates a lessening level of performance. So far the analysis has only centered on the ERP, CRM, service and financial applications, yet scalability will require orders of greater magnitude if Personal Trainer chooses to move in the direction of hosting their own website internally as well. Web server scalability will force the company to consider an entirely new class of servers if they choose to keep this aspect of their applications strategy in-house.

Susan needs to consider using a random sample to get a representative indication from the systems' potential users as to what their key requirements are.

FDD of main operations

Chapter 4: Context Diagram, ODFD Diagram, Leveling Memo, Balancing Memo

Context Diagram

Diagram 0 DFD for the new system

Brief memo that explains the importance of leveling a set of DFDs

Brief Memo that explains the importance of balancing a set of DFDs

Chapter 5: Use Case Diagram, Class Diagram, Object Relationship Diagram, State Transition Diagram

The following are possible use cases and actors for the Personal Trainer workflows being developed as part of the system:

Creating new accounts (actors include customers and customer service reps)

Updating existing accounts with new services (actors include customers and customer service reps)

Canceling an existing account (actors include customers and customer service reps)

Re-opening an existing account (actors include customers and customer service reps

Class diagram of creating a new account:

Object relationship diagram

State transition diagram of typical member states and how they changed based on specific actions and events

Chapter 6: Web-Based System, System Requirements Document, Prototype, Financial Analysis Tools

The new system needs to be Web-based for the following reasons. First, as Personal Trainer expands globally, the system will be available through web browsers anywhere in the world. Second, the ease of completing system upgrades across all users at the same time needs to be taken into consideration, and the use of the Web-based system architecture hosted on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform is critical. Third, by taking this approach Susan can b e assured there will be higher levels of system adoption through the organization by making the graphical interfaces as easily used as possible. Fourth and finally Susan needs to complete Web-based development in-house as the total cost of ownership of a system based on this development technique and hosted on a SaaS platform will be inherently easier to manage than traditional client/server applications.

The main elements of the systems requirements document need to include the introduction, systems request summary, findings, recommendations, project roles, time and cost estimates, expected benefits and an appendix of results. These are the key elements that need to be in the systems development plan. Susan will need to begin with an overview of the existing systems architecture, a breakdown of the costs of operating the accounting system separately from the main system, in addition to the planned build-out of the system. She needs to preface the technical discussions with an overview of the unmet needs of each category and class of user she has designed the systems for. Keying off of the unmet needs of users and the interrelation to the cost of ownership for the system, Susan needs to show that the benefits of the system to users also have a financial implication and contribution to the company as well.

Susan definitely needs to have a prototype developed and built for the meeting to specifically show how the new client sing-up process can be made more efficient and integrated to the main systems in Chicago via the Bumblebee accounting applications. She needs to accomplish the goal of showing how easily used the application is, thereby increasing the odds of adoption throughout the organization as well. Ultimately the prototype needs to show how the system both meets unmet needs while at the same time increasing adoption of the system over time.

In calculating the total cost of ownership for the system, Susan will be able to use the following tools:

Payback analysis - Advantages include being able to see the breakeven point of the proposed project and a thorough review of costs; disadvantages include their inability to compensate for cost variations, uncertainty in projects, and lack of measurement of effects from other projects.

Return on Investment - Advantages include measuring the impact of the investment on sales, as the investment in the project is divided by the incremental sales generated, in addition to the benefit of being able to defend an investment when the ROI is positive. Disadvantages include the lack of clarity and control over results from using this financial analysis measure.

NET Present Value (NPV) - Advantage is that this financial tool shows the discounted revenue streams from the project, and also aids in defining how much debt (if any) should be taken on for the project as this approach can yield an Internal Rate of Return (IRR). Disadvantages are that this approach takes significantly more time to do correctly and takes multiple iterations to complete successfully.

Cost/Benefit Analysis - Comparable to ROI, this approach is more subjective in interpretation yet can be used for arguing for a specific project that has other projected strong financial results based on the use of other financial tools.

Chapter 7: Detailed Report, Switchboard Design, Storyboards, Mail-in Document

The following is the detail report to show all the Personal Trainer Courses:

Trainer Name: Trainer Number:

Students' Social Security Number: Course Name: Telephone Number:

Summary of Students:

Switchboard design:

Storyboards for the following screens:

Members:

Member Name: Member ID:

Mailing Address: City: State: Zip:

Service Plan:

Years a Member:

Preferences:

Fitness Instructors:

Instructor Name: Trainer ID:

Schedule:

Specialties:

Activities and Services & Services:

Activities Instructor Dates & Times

Fitness Class Rosters:

Mail-in document:

Web Document:

WEBSITE DOCUMENT

APPLICANT INFORMATION

SSN:

Driver's License:

Cell:

City

State

EMPLOYMENT INFORMATION

Current employer:

Employer address:

City:

State:

EMERGENCY CONTACT

Name of a relative not residing with you:

City

State

Cell Phone:

Relationship

SPOUSE INFORMATION if JOINT MEMBERSHIP

Date of birth:

SSN:

Choose One of the Following Membership Options

All Members are required to show proper identification to the front desk upon arrival.

Member Signature

Chapter 8: ERD, 3NF, Data Population, Message to Susan

3. 3NF

Customer Social Security Number

Service Plan

Pricing Level (links to pricing database)

Trainer ID (links to trainer database)

Location or Center ID (links to another database)

Ann Taylor

Deluxe

Basic

A. Schwarzenegger (1)

Ontario

Tim Cruise

Deluxe

Advanced

Dr. Phil (2)

Ontario

Lindsey Lohan

Deluxe1'

Advanced

B. Spears (3)

Ontario

4. Date format for the new system, message to Susan:

Dear Susan,

It is advisable to adopt the date formats specific to Ontario, Canada as Personal Trainer will need to appear as closely aligned with the specific customs and requirements of the region as possible. It is far better to make the investment and be localized on this fundamental aspect of our systems that risk input errors and potential backlash from customers as a result of adopting a standard that does not match their own.

Chapter 9: ERP, Client/Server Architecture Check-list, Backup/Disaster Recovery Recommendation, System Design Specification Outline.

Incorporating an ERP strategy at Personal Trainer would be advisable given the need for integration across accounting and financial systems, in addition to serving as a platform for the customer-facing strategies that include attracting, selling to, and servicing clients. An ERP platform would also give the company an opportunity to further extend their locations globally as this is an essential part of their strategic plan. Lastly, and ERP system will give Personal Trainer the ability to track revenues and costs on a per-process basis over and above relying purely on functional reporting within the organization. In researching ERP vendors, IBM, SAP, Oracle, and over a dozen other software vendors offer systems that have the combination of features for managing retail service operations in addition to financial reporting and analysis.

In the event Susan chooses to pursue a client/server architecture, the challenges will be scalability of the applications, the support for client/server applications which are increasingly being replaced by Web-based applications based on nth tier architectures including J2EE and Microsoft.Net, and the need for more precise application integration when using client/server vs. nth tier architecture. The checklist of issues includes the following:

Availability of client/sever programming and support talent.

Scalability of client/server architecture given the geographic dispersion of the company

Ability of client/server applications to be continually upgraded with new features relative to more advance nth tier and Web-based applications.

The back-up and disaster recovery system should be outsourced to a company such as SunGard which has very high levels of support, scalability, security and reliability in their service centers. There also needs to be periodic backup also within the company as well in back-up servers.

System Design Specification outline

Executive Summary - Defines the goals and objectives of the study and also defines the system design objectives and goals.

Systems Component - Defines the specific components of the system and whether they are to be created internally or purchased from the outside.

System Environment - Defines the key system prerequisites and values for the system applications to perform effectively over time.

Implementation Requirements - Requirements for installing and using the applications on an ongoing basis.

Time and Cost Estimates - Defines the Gantt chart, budget and timelines for the specific project components.