CASE STUDY Swifty Unified Management System (SUMS) Swifty is a vehicle rental business

1. CASE STUDY Swifty Unified Management System (SUMS) Swifty is a vehicle rental business recently established in Melbourne Assessment item 1 – Inception Phase Value: 10% Due Date: 29-Mar-2020 Return Date: 21-Apr-2020 Length: 1500 words Submission method options: N/A – submission not required/applicable TASK You are provided with a case study about a business that needs development of a modern information system to support its day to day operations. In your role as System Analyst, you will help the business in development of the new information system. Read the detailed document and then complete the following task. You will use the same case study to complete assignment 1, assignment 2 and assignment 3. In the inception phase of the project, your goal is to investigate the scope of proposed business information system in the given case study. To present your understanding of the project, you are required to submit a System Vision Document which includes the following sections · Project Introduction · Important system capabilities · Perceived business benefits · Resources required · Stakeholder map It is important not to mix the system capabilities with perceived benefits. These two are closely related but not the same, so you should list them separately. RATIONALE back to top This assessment task will assess the following learning outcome/s:

2. · be able to describe the relationship of analysis and design activities to the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC). · be able to analyse a case study and construct a business proposal to argue the feasibility of a client software proposal. CASE STUDY Swifty Unified Management System (SUMS) Swifty is a vehicle rental business recently established in Melbourne. Their business is growing rapidly and they require a new unified information system that will be used by operational staff, managers and vehicle servicing partners. Your company has been awarded the contract for development of this unified system, abbreviated as SUMS. In your role as a system analyst, you have gathered the following vision of how clients wants their new system to work. Siwfty have a variety of vehicles available for hire such as small or medium cars, luxury cars, SUVs, Utes, minivans and small trucks. These vehicles are usually parked at one of the depots. There are currently two depots under Swifty’s possession but more will be added later. To book a vehicle for rent, customers can either visit company website, or call the customer service or visit one of their depot counters. The website and online booking process is already implemented through a separate system and is out of scope. On the other hand, phone and in-person bookings should be handled by SUMS. For both phone and in-person bookings, the process is mostly similar. The customer service representatives (CSRs) ask the customer about their vehicle requirements including type of car, booking dates, driver’s age, pickup and drop off points. CSRs key in the customer requirements and system returns a list of cars that are available on the said dates, along with the rental costs. CSRs briefly explain this information for customers, who may then choose to proceed with a booking. CSR would then ask for customer’s primary information (name, DoB, address etc.) and key it in so see if a profile already exists in the system. If it is a new customer, a new profile has to be created. Using the supplied information, a tentative booking is created and a customer invoice is generated. Customers can pay for the rental over the phone, or they may choose to pay in person at the counter when picking up the vehicle. Depending on customer requirements, a booking can also include extras such as baby car seats, GPS navigation units, additional insurance protection etc. Once a booking is made, customers may also call or visit to change/cancel a booking. On the day of car pickup, customer visits the depot and provides a proof of their identity. They are also required to pay a holding deposit which varies according to the type of car. After finishing the paperwork, they drive the car away. Upon return, they drop off the keys and the staff records all the updates in the system. Staff also record the fuel gauge and odometer readings at pickup and drop off times. The administration staff are required to maintain an up to date database of all cars in the system. For example when a new vehicle is added to fleet, the system must be updated with all necessary data like make, model, year, seating capacity, mechanical specifications and in-car facilities. A vehicle may

3. need to be removed from the system once it is retired, or it may need to be marked as temporarily unavailable due to repair or service etc. Additionally, vehicle registration payments, toll payments and insurance premiums are to be recorded in the system, including the payment due dates. To maintain business reputation, all vehicles must be routinely washed and serviced. Swifty have a service partner who handle minor vehicle care jobs (like car wash or fuel fill-up) or major mechanical jobs (like routine service or mechanical repairs). It is expected that SUMS provide a feature to keep records of which vehicle needs what kind of service. For example, when a vehicle needs an oil change service, an admin staff keys this requirement into the system which then sends an email notification to the service partner. The staff at service partner also have access to SUMS system where they login to record pickup-for-service and drop-off-after-service events. Similarly they key in information about what kind of service or repair was performed, what new parts (if any) were installed, and they can also upload the invoices for the servicing job. Some major repair jobs require an advance payment. Once a payment is made by Swifty, the admin staff can mark an invoice as paid in SUMS. Note that payment handling is not part of SUMS, it is only the payment notifications that are to be implemented. The managerial staff want an ability to generate some business reports so that they can get an idea of how the business is running. A variety of reports are planned, for example, weekly or monthly total rental earnings, per-car rental earnings, vehicle utilization reports, repair history for each vehicle, customer demographics, at-risk customers etc. Some reports would need to include visualizations and charts for easier data analysis. Finally, to reduce the changes of vehicle loss or theft, admin staff and managers should be able to track live location of each vehicle. Swifty has contract with a third party who have installed highly secure location trackers in all of their vehicles. The third party also maintains a web server which (on the back end) continuously communicates with each tracker to know live location of each car. SUMS should be able to interact with that web server to retrieve location data of any vehicle the staff want to see. The location should be displayed on a map in an easy to use user-interface.