Book Talk

Introduction and nature of the

problem
I chose to computerize my father’s company, Book Talk for my computing project.

Book Talk is a book seller, whose trade consists in selling books, by retail where books are imported from
various countries and either as publisher which involves the production of the books from the author’s
manuscript. Publishing remains the core business of the company. It deals both as a retailer and a
producer. Book Talk commenced its journey in 1993, my father Mr. Rana Sultan Mehmood being its sole
proprietor. Till date Book Talk is a sole trader ship business, i.e. Mr. Mehmood is the only one who owns
controls and finances Book Talk although he has employed a number of managers and staff members
but control remains in his hands .in the organizational chart Mr. Rana Sultan Mehmood is at the top and
right after his place in the organizational chart is Mr. Rana Dawood Sultan, the production manager who
supervises the production and Mr. Khizer Sultan the marketing manager who supervises all the staff at
Book Talk and Mr.Alvi Malik responsible for the Accounts department. Book Talk only deals with
permanent clients. Its permanent clients are the universities which purchase books in bulk. There are
three departments in Book Talk namely marketing department, production department and Accounts
department.

Marketing department deals with selling and purchasing of books whereas production department deals
with the publishing of books and Accounts department deals with the staff’s payroll and the finance
management of Book Talk. I have decided to computerize the Marketing department of Book Talk.

Production and Account’s department are both semi computerized whereas marketing department is still
controlled manually.

With the passage of time and increase in literacy rate of Pakistan, demand for books has also grown,
giving Book Talk a good opportunity to grow its business activity. Being controlled manually

Book Talk is losing this opportunity. As clients buy books in a bulk, it is very difficult for the staff to write
down various details about books in registers and at the same time go through dozens of registers to
find out whether a certain book is available or not. It slows down the business activity drastically, thus
potential customers are no more willing to waste so much time on just placing orders. In addition to this
it takes a great deal of time to retrieve data and make updates about the stock level. Facing a sudden
drop in demand for Book talk’s products in the market and my father’s serious concern for it encouraged
me to computerize Book Talk for my computing project.

The type of data produced is mostly alphanumeric which covers important details such as ISBN number
of books, book name, author’s details and publisher’s details .Other types include numeric data to store
book ID, publisher ID , author ID etc. Data types such as currency and date/time to store price of books
and store dates respectively. Data is mainly originated from receipts generated to customers and from
the purchase orders that they make to other publishers. Other sources of valuable data are the registers
which contain important information about Book Talk’s clients.

Organizational Chart

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Plan of Investigation
I have decided to use all three methods for investigating the business activity at Book Talk.

Interview

First of all I will plan an interview with Mr. Rana Sultan Mehmood .Interviewing the CEO would help me
to find the exact possible problems faced by Book Talk as he is the one who has direct contact with the
problems and can provide me with the most accurate and unbiased details.

Direct Observation

I cannot cover all the details of the problems faced, in just one interview. If I interview the staff members
they may provide biased information as they may only be concerned about their own advantage. In
order to overcome this problem I have decided to observe the work directly as it would help me to verify
data collected through interview and also allow me to discuss real, indisputable actions as they occur.

Document Analysis

I will also analyze various documents such as invoices and the database of books as I need to find out the
exact data and the manner in which it is stored, sorted and retrieved.

Interview with the CEO

Date _________________________________________________

Name __________________________________________________

Designation_________________________________________________

Q. What is your role at Book Talk?

I am the CEO of this company. I own this company and everything remains in my control. I am an
autocratic type of leader and like to keep the control of the business in my hand.

Q. What type of decisions do you take, and how is it that you keep control of the business in
your own hand?

Decisions like buying new books, which books to buy and from which publishers, are kept in my hand. I
decide the price to be charged, the percentage of discount to be given and when an order should be
delivered.

Q. Ho w are you informed, when a book reaches its reorder level?

As the data base is controlled manually managing stocks is a very difficult task for us. We have no
specific and automatic method of doing that due to which we are losing on potential customers as we
are mostly out of stock. What we usually do is that at the end of each month staff members go through
the store room (where books are kept) and check for books which need to be reordered.

Q. What is the maximum number of a book that you have sold?

It depends whether the book is local or it had been imported. Books published in Pakistan are usually
inexpensive and are sold in a larger quantity up to 600 books. On the other hand books which had been
imported are very expensive and the maximum number of an imported book that I have sold is not more
than 75.

Q. Do you offer any kind of discounts to your clients?

Yes, to all of them.

Q. Does the discount rate differ for different clients?

All our clients are permanent and have been our potential customers since I don’t know how many years.
All of them are offered the same amount of discount i.e., 3% on each book.

Q. What is the major problem faced at Book Talk, which is not letting the business to grow?
There is not a single problem which is causing a hurdle in Book Talk’s growth. There are so many of
them. I find stock control as one of the major problems faced by the business.

Q. Why is stock control the major problem for you?

As I mentioned earlier that we have no specific method to find out which books have reached their
reorder level and need to be reordered. At the end of each month workers go to the store room and
collect the copies of each book. We are then able to find out which books have reached their reorder
level. As there are thousands of books in the stock it takes a great deal of time for the workers to go
through all the books. As we only check for books at the end of each month there are times when we
can’t provide our clients with all the books they ordered for, as we are mostly out of stock. As a result we
lose our potential clients to our competitors who use fully computerized systems and are well aware of
their stocks. Clients are the key to success of business and if we keep losing them to our competitors we
are doing no good.

Q. What is it that you would like to see in your new computerized system for Book Talk?

I would wish to see a fast searching and sorting of data. I would like to see results of books by certain
author, publisher, type and language .One of my major wish is to be notified if a certain book reaches its
reorder level. I would want the receipts to be generated quickly unlike my current system which takes a
great deal of time to write down a receipt.

Direct Observation
On August, 19, 2010 I spent six hours at Book Talk observing how each and everything was carried out.

I was able to gather a reasonable amount of information regarding how an order was placed. The client
placed the order via telephone. I could easily see how difficult was It for the staff members to write the
names of 27 books along with the names of their authors and edition. After all the details were written
down two of the staff members went through dozens of registers to see whether the books were in the
stock or not. This process took more than an hour. After checking for the books, a call was made to the
client to inform them whether all the books were available and the prices of each book. After this the
client then confirmed the order.

Document analysis
Registers
They contain the entire database of books and the clients. I was able to find out what details regarding
books and clients would need to be stored in a computerized database. There were three types of
registers. One contained all the information regarding books, it included details like ISBN number, book
name, authors and publisher of books, their prices, edition, cover type, language and the book year.
Other register contained details about authors and publisher. Various details regarding publishers such
as the publisher name, country, address, telephone and email address were recorded there. The third
type of register had valuable information regarding Book Talk’s permanent clients. It had the names of
the clients, their telephone, address, shipping address and history of previous transactions. Data in each
of the registers is sorted in alphabetic order.

Invoice
I studies thoroughly the invoice generated to the clients. One of the most important outcomes was that
then clients demanded all the details of the books to be showed on the receipts. It had the book name,
its author, publisher, edition, book year, language and its price.

Description of the existing system

Books are imported from various countries. They are delivered to Pakistan by ship and then transferred
to vans which deliver the order to Book Talk. After unloading the books, marketing staff writes the
information of each book in the book’s register. At this stage data regarding book’ name, book id, book
ISBN, author name, publisher name, cover type , language, edition , price , quantity and book year are
noted down. Mr. Rana Sultan himself supervises the whole activity. He then orders the marketing
department to arrange the books in the stock room. Different shelves and cabinets are allocated for
books starting with different alphabets. Clients place orders via telephone or through a face to face
meeting with Mr. Rana Sultan Mehmood. This decision is totally up to the client. While placing an order
the marketing staff first checks for client’s details in the client’s register. It has information regarding
university’s name, their address, telephone number and email address. The information is then read out
to client for verification. After this the employee copies down client’s information in transaction, giving
the transaction a new id, and the specific date on which the order is placed. The client then places the
order. They tell the name of the books and sometimes specify details such as book year, edition, authors
or publishers. After taking the order, the marketing department checks for all the books that the client
has asked for in the stock room. They then call back the client and inform them about books which are
available at Book Talk and the ones which are not. Client will finalize the order if they think that the
books offered by Book Talk meet what they have demanded for. A few members of the marketing staff
issues a receipt for the transaction, the book names and a few other details are already written at the
time when order is being placed rest of the information is taken from book’s register as the clients want
all the information regarding books on the receipt. The other members of marketing staff then pack the
books in cartons. If the clients are form different cities their order is delivered to them via railway or if
 they are in the same city books are delivered on vans. Payments are made afterwards. Client issues a
cheque for payment, they owe to Book Talk. The Account’s manager Mr. Rana Khizer Sultan will then
deal with managing profits. The data in Account’s department is managed in a computerized system. A
certain amount of profits is taken for the CEO Mr. Rana Sultan Mehmood while the rest is invested back
into the business to be used in Production department for publishing books, paying the employees and
for covering other costs such as utility bills. Reports for various data are generated at the end of each
month. It’s up to Mr. Rana Sultan to decide what kind of report he wants. He usually orders for the
reports of clients who bought books from them during that specific month it includes details such as the
name of the university. Other searching criteria is the report of books which were sold in that month, it
includes all the information of the books sold, its name, type, language, price and quantity sold.
Transactions made is another report generated at the end of each month ,it has data regarding each
transaction made ,name of the client, name of all the books bought, quantity of each book sold, price
of ,subtotal and the grand total. He is also interested in knowing about the books that have reached
their reorder level at the end of each month. He orders the marketing staff directly for generating
reports. All of the staff works together to collect all this information from the registers so that reports
can be generated as quickly as possible.

Critical Evaluation of the Existing

system
Advantages of the current system

 The current system at Book Talk does not require any technical understanding, as it only requires data to
be recorded in registers. As a result of this it is easier to employee work force at low costs.
 There is low set up cost, the shelves and cabinets altogether cost less than implementing a new
computerized system.
 There are also no indirect costs for Book Talk to pay because there are no computers to consume
electricity.
 The manual system is not bound by electricity issues. Work can still be done if there is no electricity .the
computerized system could have been a problem as there are serious electricity issues in Pakistan.
 Disadvantages of the current system

 When entering data staff members accidentally switched details and data a few time since it is hand
written. There were a few cases when client’s address was switches with another client and the order
was delivered to a wrong client.
 If there are any changes to be made, the data will have to be entered again which is very time
consuming.
 Since the data and paper is stored in filing cabinets it consumes too much place, as the amount of work
done on paper increases the filing cabinets too increases. The amount of data has increased to such
extent that Book Talk will either have to hire a new store room or else dispose off few of the previous
data. Both the options are not very feasible.
 The information of customers and books details are stored in different parts of the site and so take a
long time to retrieve the data. It takes a long time to find the information about a relevant book or
client. In case of a Delivery, the delivery will be held back. This results in a sharp drop in sales, unhappy
customers and a bad impression on Book Talk.

Alternative Solutions
Off the shelf software

One of the solutions available is to implement an off the shelf software. We can buy software for Book
Talk which suits it the best.

Advantages

 As only one software and the hardware is required to implement it, it would not take much of time or
effort.
 Off the shelf software are comparatively cheaper than custom written software, as a result it will save on
costs.
 It gives an assurance of reliability as the product has been suitably tested by various customers. This
makes investment in the software safe.

Disadvantages

 Off the shelf software are made for a wide range of audience. Thus the development team has to
provide a set design; it may not cater to the exact requirements of Book Talk.
 Off the shelf software have off the shelf updates. Each there is a revision in software It will be required
to pay for update fee. There might be a possibility that a few softwares may not even have updates for
too long thus making Book Talk use obsolete software which might have a negative repercussion on the
business.
 As Book Talk is faced by serious competition by its competitors, it needs to be more effective than its
competitors to emerge as one of the best organizations in the eyes of its customers. The same system
can be bought by their competitors thus it is very difficult to gain any competitive advantage from its
use.
 Custom written Software

Being a computer student, I have another option that is to write software for Book Talk.

Advantages

 It will enable Book Talk to take out customized reports as per their unique business requirement. It will
help me to develop a software solution that will map unique business processes for Book Talk. It will
help to cater to the exact requirements of book Talk, making the business more efficient.
 It is easier to update the software from time to time, giving Book Talk a very up to date software.
 It will be easier for marketing staff to use the system as it would not contain any unnecessary or
superfluous facilities.
 The use of custom written software applications can give Book Talk a significant business advantage over
its competitors.
 It is much more flexible than packaged software and can be modified and changed over time as the
requirements and business practices for Book Talk would change, as I would always be there to update
the system for Book Talk.

Disadvantages

 The investment required will usually be much higher than with packaged software. This is usually the
biggest reason for not going down the custom route – Book Talk will need to undertake a business
justification exercise and compare the costs against the expected benefits and commercial advantages.
 A large investment in time is required during the development process and this type of software will
take longer to implement.
 The marketing workforce will need to be trained. Training will add up to the costs.

Semi computerized system

Another solution is to divide the system into two parts i.e. computerize part of the database. In this case
I will computerize the storing of data regarding books, clients, author and publisher. The other part of
the system i.e. issuing of the receipts will be done manually.

Advantages

It will be much quicker than designing a new a whole new system.

Part of database can be stored on computer thus reducing paper work greatly.

Receipts and most of the data will be generated manually thus there will be no need for technical skills
to use the computer.

Work efficiency will increase , as computer can work 24/7 unlike manual labour.

As part of the work of the manual labor will be done on computer ,it is possible to make some
employees redundant , it will save on the costs thus increasing profits.
Disadvantages

There will be extreme confusion as to which data is stored on what medium.

Workers will need to be trained to use the computer system

Data cannot be imported and exported between manual and computerized system.

Proposed Solution
In my opinion, designing a new computerized system is the best solution to this problem.

My father Mr. Rana Sultan Mehmood was interested in a low-cost yet an efficient system. Being a
computer student I would not charge him for designing a system for Book Talk, it will lower the
designing costs. According to me designing a computerized system from scratch will make business
more efficient than implementing an off the shelf or semi computerized system. It will cater to the exact
requirements of Book Talk and will be designed to solve the exact problems faced by Book Talk. As this
was the major requirement of my client Mr. Rana, I was able to convince him easily on the proposed
solution which resulted in our agreement that a new computerized system will be designed for Book
Talk.

Requirements Specifications
Functional Requirements
The new system is required to store all the data regarding books, clients, publishers, transactions,
authors and the purchases of Book Talk. It should deduce the number of a specific book sold, from the
quantity of that book in stock, it needs to add up the quantity of the book in the stock that have been
bought. It should generate receipts; automatically calculate the subtotal, discount and the grand total.
In order to avoid errors from excess typing Mr. Rana Sultan wants the new system to have ‘point and
click ‘data entry for the data like date, language of the book, cover type and the type of the books. The
new system will be typed in such a manner so that the user does not have to type in the same data
again and again. Look up will be used for selecting books and clients from the database while issuing
receipts to speed up the data entry and to avoid the errors. Mr. Rana wants special validation checks on
data entry for receipts so that same books are not entered again and again in the same receipt. He
wants the new system to inform him of the books which have reached their reorder level. Mr. Rana
Sultan wants the new system to provide audio alerts to inform him of his stock level. The new system
will also have the feature of calculating discount, subtotal and grand total for transactions and
purchases automatically.
Mr. Rana wants the backup of the system on CD-ROM. He wants the automatic backup of the system on
weekly basis.
My client wants the output in form of both the hard and the soft copy. He wants the receipts and other
reports to have the facility of being output on both the paper and the monitor. Rest of the output such
as forms, tables and other data will be showed on monitor.
My client Mr. Rana Sultan wants the new system to give a very professional look; it should use the logo
of Book Talk and graphical representation of data to make it easier for the user to use the program. In all
he wants the new system to be very user friendly in order to speed up the user’s work and increase
business efficiency. Hence I have decided that I will use GUI based interface for this system.

Input Requirements

Category: Books

Book ID

Book Name

Book ISBN

Cover type

Edition

Language

Category

Book year

Price

Qty

Reorder level

Author

Publisher

Category: Author
Author ID
Author Name

Customers

Customer ID

Customer Name

Customer telephone

Customer address

Customer Email

Shipping Address

Category: Publisher

Publisher ID

Publisher Name

Publisher telephone

Publisher country

Publisher Email

Publisher Address

Category: Purchase
Invoice ID

Date of sale

Publisher ID

Publisher name

Book ID

Book ISBN

Book Name

Cover type

Language
Category

Price

Book year

Reorder level

Edition

Quantity

Quantity in Stock

Subtotal

Grand total

Category: Transactions
Invoice ID

Date of sale

Customer ID

Customer Name

Book ID

Book Name

Price

Quantity

Subtotal

Quantity in Stock

Total

Discount

Grand total

Output Requirements
Category: Books in the Stock
Book ID

Book ISBN

Book Name

Cover type

Edition

Category

Language

Book year

Price

Quantity in Stock

Reorder level

Category: Receipt
Invoice ID

Date of Sale

Customer ID

Customer Name

Book ID

Book ISBN

Book Name

Cover type

Edition

Language

Category

Book year

Price
Quantity

Subtotal

Discount

Category: Customers
Customer ID

Customer Name

Customer telephone

Customer address

Customer Email

Shipping address

Category: Purchases
Invoice ID

Date of sale

Publisher ID

Publisher name

Book ID

Book ISBN

Book Name

Cover type

Language

Category

Price

Book year

Reorder level

Edition
Quantity

Quantity in Stock

Subtotal

Grand total