Case Problem Background -- Overview

BookPlace, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of a major U.S. conglomerate that also operates companies in publishing, consumer products, and entertainment. The three divisions of BookPlace are Popular Books, Textbooks, and Rare Books. Our interest is the Rare Books division, which buys and sells rare books and manuscripts, interacting with collectors throughout the world. Within the Rare Books (RB) division is the acquisitions and sales (A/S) department, which is managed by Reed A. Tome. Acquisitions/Sales must perform several activities: maintaining records of clients, client contacts, processing acquisitions and sales, maintaining current book inventory, and generating management reports.

Automating Rare Books.

Currently, the Rare Books division of BookPlace is a computer-free zone, that is, all processing is performed manually and all data are maintained as paper records. As you can imagine, maintaining all these paper records and processing sales and acquisitions using them are labor-intensive, time-consuming, error-prone processes. Today processing a single order for just one book consumes approximately two hours of staff time. Reed A. Tome wants this reduced to 15 minutes or less. Reed A. Tome believes that, with better information, he will be able to double the number of sales processed and the sales revenue within one year. Reed A. Tome has requested funding to develop an information system to support sales and acquisition processing. Annie Lyst, the president of BookPlace, has allocated eight months and $250,000 to the project and has hired a team of 3 consultants to perform the analysis, design, and implementation of a sales and acquisitions processing system. The A/S clerks have no computer experience and consider their work to be highly specialized and not conducive to automation because personal relationships with buyers and sellers are so important. President Annie Lyst has specified that the consultants must deliver a system that can be maintained easily by the corporate information systems staff of BookPlace and that the A/S clerks should be well trained on the system before the consulting engagement ends in 8 months. (The other 2 divisions at BookPlace have been automated for 2 decades.)

Current Rare Book Sales Processing -- Detail View from Interview with Reed A. Tome

Processing a sale requires the following activities. When a client submits an Intent-to-Purchase, one of my clerks receives the order and first compares the clients address on the Intent to Purchase against the clients record (if any) in the client file cabinet; and updates it if necessary. Then the clerk creates an invoice form in triplicate; with the current address entered on the sales invoice form as well as the ordered book information (e.g., title, quantity). Looking up in today's order clipboard - both the date and the next sequential unused order number are assigned to the new invoice. Next, data about each book -- including book code, author, title, publication date, edition, and selling price -- are entered by accessing the appropriate book records from the book card catalog records. Next, the invoice subtotal, applicable states sales tax, and total are calculated. All three copies of the invoice are then forwarded to Accounting. One of the clerks in Accounting sends the white copy of the invoice to the client and files the yellow and pink copies in Accountings accounts receivable folder. When the client submits payment along with the white invoice copy, Accounting retrieves the pink and yellow copies from the accounts receivable file and marks all three copies Paid. Accounting files the yellow invoice copy in its payments folder and forwards the pink and white copies to A/S. An A/S clerk retrieves the book-sold card catalog; creates a card if it is a new customer (or for existing customers just annotates updates their card) with the sales date and the name of the client who purchased the book. The annotated notecard is then filed in the books-sold card catalog drawers. Finally, the clerk ships the white invoice copy and books to the client and files the pink copy in the sales invoice folder. Reed A. Tome states, For the new process, Id like to drop Accounting out of the loop.

Please Draw a simple workflow diagram for how customer requests are handled for Rare Books as it currently exists as described by Reed A. Tome.