Automating Systems at Tri-Cities Furniture: A 10 page paper offering a proposal to a three-location furniture retailer to automate its business process systems. The paper discusses the benefits of such a system; provides a diagram of the hardware system; and makes comment on how much the organization will be able to save. Bibliography lists 4 sources.
Name of Research Paper File: CC6_KSitPropTriCit.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Tri-Cities Furniture has outgrown its long-standing methods of managing business processes. This is a proposal for automating business processes in a manner that does not require the
companys non-technical owner and employees to become experts in hardware and software management, yet achieve and maintain greater efficiency and effective management information. The Situation
Tri-Cities Furniture is a three-location business serving the cities of Endicott, Binghamton, and Johnson City, New York. The primary location of the company is the Johnson City
store, which possesses a single older computer running proprietary software developed for the computers original owner. Some records are kept on the computer but are duplicated manually, because Tri-Cities
manual systems have been more reliable in the past than its automated ones. Currently, the company routinely uses its single existing computer only
to print sales price tags for the stores inventory. Recommendation This is a proposal that Tri-Cities Furniture: * Acquire a client/server computer system;
* Acquire pre-packaged software; * Contract the services of an application service provider (ASP) to manage the system; and * Redesign outdated business processes for automation. Rationale
Superficially, it may seem to be counterproductive to replace the existing computer, particularly when it never has performed to the expectations with which it was acquired.
The current approach to information management is not reliable, however. Its cost does not include only its purchase price. It requires the too-regular attention of a costly
consultant without providing the benefits that the company should be able to expect from it. One long-term employee - the bookkeeper - is retiring soon. An effective information