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Undergraduate Project for University Students
Typology: Thesis
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Chalmers University of Technology University of Gothenburg Department of Computer Science and Engineering Göteborg, Sweden, March 2011
Haseeb Zulfiqar
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The Author grants to Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg the non-exclusive right to publish the Work electronically and in a non-commercial purpose make it accessible on the Internet. The Author warrants that he/she is the author to the Work, and warrants that the Work does not contain text, pictures or other material that violates copyright law.
The Author shall, when transferring the rights of the Work to a third party (for example a publisher or a company), acknowledge the third party about this agreement. If the Author has signed a copyright agreement with a third party regarding the Work, the Author warrants hereby that he/she has obtained any necessary permission from this third party to let Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg store the Work electronically and make it accessible on the Internet.
Online Sales System
Haseeb Zulfiqar © Haseeb Zulfiqar, March 2011.
Examiner: Sven-Arne Andreasson
Chalmers University of Technology University of Gothenburg Department of Computer Science and Engineering SE-412 96 Göteborg Sweden Telephone + 46 (0)31-772 1000
A Sales System is an online web application of sells forest products, paper in particular, around the world.
Department of Computer Science and Engineering Göteborg, Sweden March 2011
Acknowledgement
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Online Sales System is a web application which is a product of FSA Fortex AB 1 .The idea of this thesis is to study the company’s current working. And propose a solution in order to digitalize their current processes and overcome the current issues which are being faced daily due to lack of computerized solution. This need of digitalization of their current processes related to order handling will help the company in forecasting their business growth. The customer places an order through a website which is examined and later accepted by Fortex AB. Fortex AB looks for a potential supplier against each customer order and sends a pro forma invoice which is generated by the system, as it is termed as a mini agreement between Fortex and supplier.
As an initial step of the thesis, the understanding of Fortex AB current work flow is built. After that the system requirements were identified and documented. Theoretical review of similar systems was made. And as a result of this thesis recommendations were given to Fortex AB, whether the system should be developed in house or by using other existing systems like ERP or CRM.
(^1) Name of the company
1.1. Acquirer The acquirer of this thesis is an enterprise named FSA Fortex AB, consisting of retailers dispersed around the globe.
1.2. Background FSA FORTEX AB is a company that buys and sells forest products, paper in particular, around the world. It is a small size company which has sales in approximately 35 countries and suppliers in some 25 countries. The company handles shipments and financing to customers. It handles about 1,150 shipments per year approximately.
Currently FSA FORTEX AB doesn’t have any computerized system to manage workflow of orders. This situation is causing hurdles in management and overall productivity of company.
1.3. Problem Statement In today’s fast paced society, it’s very hard to be competitive without using cutting-edge technology available in market. After years of business, the data has grown much for Fortex. It is becoming a challenge for Fortex to manage that data in an effective way. To be more productive in order processing, Fortex needs a solution which can facilitate their current processes with use of technology and software.
With increased amount of orders, it is becoming difficult for Fortex to manage orders in effective and efficient manner. It is very hard to go through all paper work and backtracking orders. If there is any complain or review of any order, it takes large amount of effort and time to backtrack and fix the problem. This results in loss of resources, increased time, and low output.
All orders are managed using different papers; all information regarding one order is stored in one physical file. This file contains all the documents related to that particular order. Once Fortex receive an order, they assign a unique number to that order/file. Some of financial details regarding orders are managed in an Excel sheet.
1.4.1. Customer Management Fortex is currently following very complex work flow for managing customers, which is at most due to lack of computerized processes. Customers, clients, sales persons are contacted directly to or by Fortex. There is no such system currently at place which can provide details of the stakeholders swiftly, represented through graphical/histogram or by any effective means of information sharing, which is based on stakeholder’s historic data.
1.4.2. Invoicing Fortex is maintaining most of its information on physical documents. Invoices are handled in physical document formats, where orders can be received by means of an email, fax or a phone call. Every actor is currently using their own format for placing an order, mostly by pdf, word document or other means of communication. This makes information management difficult and complex for Fortex, and utilizes much more resources to manage that information. This is mainly due to the absence of any specified format by which customers can place their orders.
1.4.3. Order traceability Order traceability is the most time consuming process throughout the order life cycle. It increases the overall effort due to lack of any computerized management system for information traceability. All the information at present is cross checked manually, which most of the time makes traceability much more difficult and exhaustive. It gets more complex when dealing with orders with a larger life cycle.
1.4.4. Financial Details Management Financial details are handled on multiple Excel Sheets at present. There is no such efficient system available which can help Fortex to manage their financial details. They are facing challenges in handling and updating financial information while performing different processes during completion of one order. For Fortex it is important to verify financial information at every step during orders from multiple files, and documents which makes it more complex and time consuming.
1.4.5. Demarcations The application does not focus on the development of systems that authorizes the payments from the customer.
1.5. Scope of project Scope of this project is to investigate and design a software solution which can facilitate Fortex in performing their daily tasks, improving efficiency, and helping them to be more productive. This project will provide a solution through which Fortex can easily manage, handle and generate all required information in their respective format when needed. It will help them to manage order details, financial data, and historical data and also in producing documents of different formats for different customers.
This solution will help Fortex in reducing effort spend on managing orders. It will also provide them opportunity to explore possibility of generating documents, managing financial details and analyzing historical data with use of digitalized solution.
2.4. Order to Mill
After customer agrees on Pro forma Invoice, Fortex will order the goods to the mill. This order will include all the detail of goods, cost, delivery time, shipment details including ports detail etc.
2.5. Handle Shipment
When goods are manufactured by the mill, they transport those goods to Fortex. In some cases the mill can handle shipments but it’s mostly Fortex who manages shipment of goods to the customer. This includes finding shipping company, communicating ports of delivery and receiving, goods details etc.
2.6. Generate B/L (Bill of lading)
Once shipment is started, Fortex will start working to manage B/L.
2.7. Generate Documents for Bank
In many cases, to complete the delivery, Fortex needs to generate and compile documents in order to let customer get their delivery from port. This process includes communication between bank and Fortex, finalizing packing list and compiling documents for bank/customer.
2.8. Receive Payment
After completion of all above steps, Fortex will receive payment on basis of invoice generated. In some cases, Fortex will generate invoice in the end, after the delivery has been done.
Fortex AB system is a combination of software and hardware components, whose purpose is to provide services related to sales and purchase of goods. All the information is being stored in database, and retrieved when needed by means of display or print.
There are four stakeholders involved in the system (Fortex AB, Mill, Customer, and Bank). All the communication between Fortex AB, Mill and Customer has to be digitalized as a part of this thesis and the communication between bank and Fortex is out of the thesis scope.
These requirements are elicited during informal meetings with the stakeholders within Fortex AB. These requirements are divided into three main categories: hardware, functional, and non-functional requirements. Which are as following;
3.1. Hardware Requirements
Dedicated application server with minimum specification, are as; a. Intel Core 2 Quad b. Memory 2*2GB DDR c. Hard Disk 1 x 360 GB HDD SATA d. Ethernet Card 10/100/1000 Mbps e. Microsoft Windows 2003 Small Business Server.
Dedicated Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with minimum specification, are as; a. Intel Core 2 Quad b. Memory 2*2GB DDR c. Hard Disk 1 x 360 GB HDD SATA d. Ethernet Card 10/100/1000 Mbps e. Microsoft Windows 2003 Small Business Server
The safety of the system information shall be insured by means of firewall.
The Fortex AB system is going to be used commercially, so the project in not open- source and the source code cannot be published.
The Fortex AB system is the first project for the company, therefore there is no such existing system which needs to be integrated.
4.1. Technological Factors Technological Factors Flexibility and Changeability Impact T1: General-purpose hardware T1.1: Processor The processor must be good enough to use the system, according to the institution size (number of users).
The processor for the server is going to be chosen according to the Fortex AB size and it will probably be reviewed/updated after every 3 years, according to the technological advances and the institution’s growth.
The change of processor will not require changes in the system source code. It will only affect the overall performance of the system.
T1.2: Disk Disk space should be proportional to the number of orders. It should be at least 30 MB
It should be taken into account that, in the future, the typical maximum size of an order can exceed 50 MB. It is also supposed that the number of orders will have an average growth of 15% to 30%. The disk must be updated as needed.
A disk upgrade is not suppose to require changes in the system source code, but not doing it on time will affect the system performance, availability and reliability.
T1.3: Network Institution must have a connection to the Internet of at least 15 MBit/s.
The number of clients (Global) is likely to grow as the number of company users increases. The broadband is strongly necessary to access the server, which has the information of all the clients and orders in the system.
The expected response time and the availability of information through the network will be strongly affected if it does not have enough bandwidth.
T1.4: Access devices The system will be accessed from web by the clients and staff.
In the future, the system should support access from different kinds of devices. It is important that the system support integration with new devices e.g. desktop application, android, iPhone, and other mobile platforms.
The usability of the system is affected by this aspect. It impacts in viewing company information.
Product Factors Flexibility and Changeability Impact previous paper-based orders. P2: User interface P2.1:User interaction model The system should have predefined profiles for different types of users e.g. account manager, financial manager, customers, etc. Each different profile has a filter, which makes the user view only relevant information related to clients and orders. The objective is to avoid information overload.
In future versions, each user would be able to create/modify its own filter.
This feature affects the output controller component.
P2.2: User interface portability The system should be able to display information on different types of devices: PC’s, thin clients or even handheld computers.
More devices may arise in the future. The system should be scalable.
This feature affects the output for different devices.
P3: Performance P3.1: Order/Client information retrieval performance Order/client information retrieval may not exceed 2.0 seconds.
This requirement for retrieval time can be reduced in the future.
Profiling techniques should be used in order to eliminate bottlenecks. P3.2: Fortex AB system capacity System must support a high number of orders (at least 1,000,000).
These numbers may grow in the future.
This feature affects the order’s sharing and storage.
P.4: Dependability P4.1 Safe transfer of information The system should be able to safely transfer information between different users.
Requirements are stable. This has an impact on the way the system performs communication over a network. P4.2 User authentication The system should prevent un-authorized
Requirements are stable. This feature affects the company private information.
Product Factors Flexibility and Changeability Impact persons from reading the company’s order/client information. P4.3 Availability The system must show correct information 24 hours a day, 7 days of a week, all year.
Requirements are stable. This may require redundant hardware.
P5: Failure Detection, reporting, recovery P5.1 Recovery The system must survive communication breakdown and failures, keeping the data available.
There’s no flexibility in this requirement.
This may result in code spread across the system that aims to warn system administrators of some failure. There should also be a history/log manager system to deal with integrity. P5.2 Error, Access and Transactions Logging The system must record all the access made by users, clients, and staff.
The consult to this information may be done according to the users’ permissions or profile.
This feature affects the transaction handling adding new responsibilities to the system. P.6: Service P6.1 Extendable The system should be able to support new types of data previously not supported, specially related to different types of invoices (regional).
More information may be needed to be stored in future.
It impacts all the components of the system that deals with data handling.
P6.2 Maintenance of Software The domain rules related to the orders/clients; and data manipulations are likely to change in time according to new laws and communication protocols.
This is a fact about the implementation of this kind of systems, so the system is very likely to change in time.
This impacts the implementation of the system in order to make it easy to maintain and change in the future.
