Having to create an ERD diagram from the following scenarion any help will be much appreciated
Appendix 1 Case Study: Scenario - Global Trading PLC
Global Trading PLC is a mail order company that operates a number of different catalogues. Each catalogue addresses a specific market segment and the company is noticing a drop of in the sales through its higher end products and socio - economic customer group, typified by its 'life style' catalogue offerings.
Research has shown that this is because these groupings are now typically buying from companies offering similar services and products on the World Wide Web.
Whilst Global recognise the need to maintain its more traditional agent based catalogue business, they have now decided that they need to embrace e-commerce and develop a Web based service. The Finance Director has a PC at home and has recently bought Dreamweaver.
The existing database system, which has built up piecemeal over a number of years, has been poorly designed and is inadequate. This new development gives the company the opportunity to redesign their system.
It must be recognised that the 'traditional' business will continue for some years and that data stored for that may differ from that needed by the web based business. For example, the agent based catalogue customers must buy through the agent. Indeed, they are identified by a combination of their customer number and the agent ID. This style of catalogue maintains the traditional periodic payments system, so customer records need to include credit rating and transaction history data. By contrast, the 'life style' catalogue customers mostly pay by using credit cards, a system which is used by the vast majority of e-commerce transactions.
Information is maintained for customers so that marketing mailing can be targeted. It has been recognised that an individual could be both a credit card customer AND an agent supported customer. This currently leads to duplication of data storage and mailing, some of which can be contradictory and confusing.
The company headquarters are in Leeds with depots in strategic regional locations from where the company’s own fleet of delivery vans operate. Large regions can have more than one depot. There is a central depot near Birmingham that supplies the regional depots.
The structure of the Agents Organisation is as follows:
General Sales Manager
Midland Northern Southern Scottish
Division Division Division Division
Each division is split into a number of regions.
Each region has a number of agents, working on commission based on sales to their customers, who promote goods and take customer orders. A monthly report of the orders taken by product, with summaries at all levels of the Sales Organisation is produced for management. Sales statistics are required for each product category to monitor the effectiveness of different discount strategies.
Orders are received form their customers by agents, summarised and posted to head office over night. The orders are then validated, priced and checked centrally for availability at the appropriate depots. Each depot services customers according to their Agents ID. Stocks may be transferred between depots to satisfy incoming orders – this practice, however, is not approved of by the accounts department, but is carried out so that part orders can be shipped, so that customer deliveries are not delayed.
Each week, estimates produced by the Head Office are used to update a three-month sales forecast, which shows expected sales of each product in each of the following thirteen weeks. The forecast is used as the basis for ordering stock which may be ordered from a number of possible suppliers, each having quoted a unique lead time and price. A purchase order sent to a supplier may be for several different products, each due for delivery in a different week. Price and lead-time quotations are updated from time to time from suppliers’ revised quotes. Purchase orders are placed at the price prevailing at the time of order.
Pricing and Availability consists of:
Identifying/validating customer codes,
Identifying/validating product numbers,
Placing sales orders and order items on files,
Pricing each order item,
Checking product stock at depots and allocating if available. This process is confused by the fact that, for historical reasons, each depot maintains its own stock location codes, which means that these can be duplicated.
Discount structures are based on the product categories, examples of which are :-
Clothing - Male
Clothing - Female
Household electrical
Toys
Communications
The discount categories are used as follows
A : Discount given to agents
B : Additional discount given to agents who achieve sales thresholds. These thresholds vary.
C : Used for targeted discounting for old stock
D : Used for targeted discounting for regional promotions.
Invoices are produced daily for from the details of consignments shipped. They are posted to the Invoice History file and copies are sent to the customers. When payments are received these are also posted to the above file. Customer balances are maintained. Credit notes for faulty goods or short deliveries are generated where necessary and sent to the customer.
The company’s current order processing system operates on a centralised computer. In the two years since purchasing this machine several new systems have been designed and implemented. These include a monthly and industrial payroll system, several accounting systems, and a sophisticated sales product costing system.
Volumes and Frequencies (statistics are only currently known for traditional business)
• Customers 125,000
• New Customers 150 per month
• Deleted Customers 140 per month
• Products 1,000
• Orders 5,000 per day ave.
(80% are for 20% of product codes)
• Items per Agent order 10 ave.
(10% less then 10,
10% more then 10)
• Invoices/credit notes 5,125 per day avg.
• Cash items daily 2,000 ave.
• Products that have pending orders 10% ave.
At any time (ALL depots will have Pending orders)
Current Head Office enquiry screens include:
Customer order
Customer