Class Discussion 2

Case Study Questions

Read the following paragraphs and answer all questions.

Justin is the Operation Manager of Amazing Company which is a bookstore in Hong Kong. He found that there are several errors in the operation, e.g. wrong number of stock, wrong discount to customer, wrong price, etc. He was quite frustrated with the situation and would like to improve the case.

Kent is a business consultant and has studied Information Systems Management at university. Justin consulted Kent and reviewed the current business processes of the bookstore as follows.

a) Customer selected a book from bookshelf and approached cashier for payment.

b) Cashier input the prices of all books the customer has selected and received the payment from customer. When there was any special discount for the book, the cashier input the discount manually.

c) Cashier marked down the books which were sold in the log book.

d) One staff counted and checked the stocks of all books every week based on the log book.

Kent noticed the major errors are as follows:

e) Wrong input in price and discount

f) Marked wrong book titles

Justin worried about the above errors because these errors affected the operation and image of the company. He also noticed that there were many complaints about the discrepancy of the payment.

Question 1

Discuss how information system can help Amazing Company to improve the efficiency of the business process (b) identified. You are required to describe the information system you suggested and the functions of the information system briefly. (15 marks)

Marking Scheme

Different possible answers are acceptable. Marks are given as follows.

Reasonable, logical, and clear explanation (11-15 marks)

Reasonable explanation with minor mistakes (6-10 marks)

Demonstrates no or little understanding on the topic (0-5 marks)