Comprehensive Implementation Proposal For An Office Automation System

Background of The ABC Corporation

The information system is used by the organizations that have to handle a lot of data. The information system can be described as the software application that assist in handling the chunk of data and evaluate those data to generate information (Laudon and Laudon 2016). The purpose of the information system is to converting the raw data into significant information set that can allow the organization to run its business process and identify new business patterns. The office automation system or OAS are collection of network, hardware, software and human resources (Zeng and Xiao 2017). The office automation systems are implemented in the single location or multiple offices to facilitate the work of the internal staff. The project is defined as the way of showing the complete work of implementation along with the factors involved in implementation. The project management is the activity that allows the organization to control and direct the process of completing a project. The SDLC is a part of software development project. The SDLC is abbreviation of Software Development Lifecycle (Alshamrani and Bahattab 2015). The SDLC has many types and one of them is agile. The agile is the dynamic development lifecycle that allows developing the software dynamically.

The reports is created based on the case study of The ABC Corporation. The organization wants to implement an office automation system in its all the offices. The project of OAS implementation is done through the agile software development SDLC. Report shows why the selected system is the best solution for ABC Corporation. The report also provide a good description of post implementation activities along with the project and risk related factors.

The ABC Corporation is the non-profit organization that is expertized in system engineering. The organization is chartered in the public interest. The ABC Corporation was established in the 1970, for assisting the Air Force but at present it is helping a lot of civilian agencies. Moreover, the organization is partnered with several DoD agencies in the region of control and command system, information communication and technology system and the energy environmental region. The organization is mostly known for its information, generated by making use of the media reports, memos, briefings and paper in general. The organization is currently occupying more than thousand employees in headquarter only. The proposed project’s main focus in to implement the office automation system in the head office first and then gradually including other offices into the system. This will allow the organization to collect the risk and implementation issue related information fast and with time, these issues can be easily prevented for other office automation system implementation projects.

Problem and Opportunity

The proposed OAS or office automation system can be categorized into five sub systems such as the electronic publishing, electronic communication, electronic collaboration, image processing and office management. The local area network will be implemented in the core of these office automation system’s sub-systems. The LAN will be used for transmitting the data from one node in the network to other node. Therefore, the LAN becomes the communication medium in the system. As office automation is based on connecting different parts of the Corporation and then processing the data to complete a business process, the LAN becomes most important part.

The first automation was established in the organization in 1981 by implementing a centralized word processing framework. That automation framework could support the facility along with the administrative support center. In 1986, the system was migrated into the decentralized word processing framework. In 1990, the final fully connected automation system was developed. With the growth in the business, the organization’s need for employees has been increased. Now the organization has too many employees and data processing needs that the old automation system can handle. That is why the organization has chosen to implement a new information system, office automation system. The organization has decided to implement the OAS in each office separately. As the headquarter will have the server installed in, the first system will be implemented in headquarter. After the completion of OAS installation, the new systems will be connected to headquarter.

Internal: The system is designed for accounting the heterogeneous population for the users regarding the skills of data processing, skills of typing, nature of works that is being performed along the position of each person with the organization. The staff will communicate through the personalized web-mail and the portal. The system will process each of the inputted data and store those raw data and generated information into the distributed database. Each of the computers provided to the staff of The ABC Corporation will work like a node or input/output point for the system. The system will use the broadband data connection in the LAN infrastructure for gaining the required data transfer speed (Christopher and Jack 2016).

External: The system will implement the external applications of the office automation system into the client sites. Through implementing a collaborative framework, the organization can facilitate the works in external environments. The staff, working on the client sites, will access the extension of the system. All the client data and staff work progress will tracked. As these extensions will be connected to the system through open internet connection, the system will implement effective data and network security policies for eliminating the ICT attacks.

Data Management, Storage, Exchange and Workflow Design

Problems: The main problem for implementing a new system in the organization environment is resistance from the staff. The staff the organization are familiar with the old system and the work has been perfectly adopted by all the staff. Suddenly implementing a new system would result into change of the working pattern (Li and Li 2017). The staff may not accept this as a good sign as they have to work hard to adopt with the new working patterns. They have to redevelop their working efficiencies. Selecting the technology solution is another huge problem for the information system development. In order to implement the office automation system, the organization have to rely on the customized off-the-self application or the organization can choose to generate a new suite of software programs to organize the data management processes. There are a lot of third party organization from which the organization can chose or the organization can also form its own team to guide the project (Wang and Wang 2016). Selecting one of these options is a very critical task. The organization have to generate feasibility reports and other reports to decide one option. Another issue in the OAS implementation is implementation of shared data. In order to implement an OAS, the organization have to generate a data architecture that can handle all the data used in organization’s business processes.

Opportunity: The biggest opportunity that can ABC Corporation can have is streamlining IT communications. As discussed earlier, the LAN is the most important of the proposed office automation system. Therefore, by implementing an efficient and effective communication, the organization can achieve quick response to customer request and fast execution of business operations (Pati et al. 2016). The employees can communicate easily with each other without worrying about the safety of the data or the medium of communication. The OAS will integrate communication mediums that can handle all the communication processes. From video conference to email transmissions, all the communication can be done through organization’s own system. Another opportunity is the effective decision making. No matter which information system is installed, the system will always liable for supporting the management to make accurate decisions that has long lasting impact (Selvaraj and Chakrapani 2017). With all the data stored and processed within the OAS, the organization easily configure the system to generate various reports that can shows a structured summary of data. These reports will be the base of making effective decisions.

Proposed Office Automation System

Data Management: The office automation system can provide the benefit of effective data management to The ABC Corporation. The data management will allow the organization to simplify the procedure of data and information recording (Bhuyar and Ansari 2016). The reminder systems, program scheduling and task management will permit ABC to control office related tasks and client projects along with the monitoring of these activities.

Data Storage: The data storage is an essential part of the OAS as based on the stored data, the business make decisions and execute the business processes (Sahin and Topal 2016). The office automation system will have a data base management system that can store the data and also provide security to information.

Data Exchange: The office automation system also provide very good data exchange opportunities (Bhuyar and Ansari 2016). The office automation would include the framework that will enable information and manipulated data exchange in real time.

Easy Workflow Design: With the use the automation system, The ABC Corporation can easily understand the features required for designing the business processes in order to recognize the workflow of the staff and other internal members of The ABC Corporation.

Mobile Compatibility: Each end use of the system must be able to access the data. The organization has a lot of staff and it is not possible that every staff will access the system from the PC dedicated to the system. The Office Automation System will allow the staff to connect to the system from their mobile devices to communicate with each other or carryout small tasks.

Integration of Other Applications: The proposed OAS can support other tools within itself. Therefore, the organization does not have rely on everything that have created. Instead of focusing on small applications like calendar, spreadsheet and more (Sahin and Topal 2016). The organization can buy license from other organizations and integrate those tools into their system.

The system analyst will be responsible for collecting and then analyzing the system requirements. The designers of the system will be dedicated for developing the diagrams of the system based on the identified system requirements.

System Analysis: The system analyst will contact the staff of The ABC Corporation. From each position one participant will be selected for the interview. As the organization has a lot of employees, the system analyst will consider the questionnaire as a part of the information gathering methods applied in the project. After the system analyst complete the process of collecting the required data, the analyst will then start converting those data into system requirements (Safarani, Ahangar and Fayaz-Bakhsh 2018). The system requirements will be categorized into functional and non-functional requirements.

Office Automation Sub-Systems

The functional requirement of the system are authentication, authorization, email, progress update, reporting and many more. The authentication is an essential part of the system as the organization does not want any person but a verified one to access the system. The authorization is essential for deriving which user will access which data and functions.  The system will authenticate the users based on the login credentials provided to them. Each user’s login id will be different. The password may be same but have to follow certain pattern to be validated. The non-functional requirements are security, real-time data flow, availability, scalability and more.

System Design: The system design is concerned with all the aspects and subsystem of the OAS. The first step to the system design process will be identifying the use cases of the proposed system. After the use cases and the actors of the system are identified, the use case diagram will be developed (Torre et al. 2018). After that the class diagram of the OAS will be developed. The class diagram describes the static structure of the OAS and the Use Case describes the behavior of the system. After combining the information gathered from these two models, the sequence diagram is created. The sequence diagram shows how the internal objects of the system will communicate. This way the true static and dynamic nature of OAS can be identified. The class diagram also provide the basis of data model. The database schema and ERD are created. The database is designed by following various steps like identifying the data requirements (Doan and Gogolla 2018). Then all the schemas are converted into entities and attributes are defined. The normalization process is applied to eliminating the database anomalies.

The prototyping model has the following phases.

Requirement Gathering: This process is handled by the system analyst. The analyst make use of the mentioned information gathering methods for collecting the user and business requirement. The analysis of the requirements are done this this phase.

Quick Design: Based on the collected information, the system designs are created. These designs are not as accurate or effective as conventional SDLC design models. The design model include the use case that defines which user(s) will access this part of the system. The diagram also has the use case, means that why the actor will interact with the system (Alshamrani and Bahattab 2015). Now the class is designed to identify the preparing the initial data model. A simple DFD is prepared to show how the data will flow through the system.

Implementation Plan

Building Prototype: Now a prototype is developed by the designers in balsamiq, sketch or adobe XD. This prototype refers to the actual system to be developed. It has buttons, a realistic interface, links and it can perfectly replicate the actual system. The prototype is preferred because making changes in the prototype is very easy rather than editing codes.

Customer Evaluation: After the prototype is developed, the prototype is tested by the potential end users (Modi, Singh and Chauhan 2017). The end users just interact with the prototype like they would have interacted with actual system.  They provide a list of feedback.

Refine Requirements: The feedbacks of the end users ate considered as the new requirements. Based on these requirements, the system quick design phase is again performed. So the new prototype is again tested by the users and if they like the prototype is passed to the next phase.

Design: This phase is the real design phase of the organization. Here every aspect of the system is designed like from complete system architecture to ERD (Sahar et al. 2015). Each design is done to achieve accuracy. The SRS or system requirement specification document is created in this phase.

Coding: The coding is done based on the designs created. The codes will reflect both the static and dynamic nature of the system. In this phase, the real system is developed unit by unit. The database and network is also configured in this phase too.

Testing: Testing the done for identifying the errors and gaps in the current system. The main tests are white box, black box, unit test and many more (Alshamrani and Bahattab 2015). After the system’s test is successful, only then the system will be implemented in ABC’s environment.

Maintenance: The maintenance is done after the system test of complete. The maintenance is vital as a verified system may not also fulfill the requirements of the organization.

Post Implementation Review: After the system will be deployed, the project team will meet the staff and management of The ABC Corporation to identify whether the implementation successful or not.

Transition of Consultant:  A team of advisors will be employed in the implementation phase (Oseni et al. 2017). Once the system goes live, the organization will request the latest modified documentation.

Capturing the Knowledge: It is mandatory to document the new processes that have been incorporated in the new office automation system.

Post Implementation Process Review: The project’s implementation team will must work along with the end users of the OAS for ensuring that the configuration of the system is suitable to end-user expectations (Amrollahi 2016).

Post Implementation Activities

Table 1: Project Management Processes with Timeline

(Source: Created by Author) 

Identification: The main risks of the project are LAN incompatibility, lack of stakeholder support, employee resistance, delay in project completion, unavailability of resource, improper technology and many more.

Risk Prioritization: The risks are then prioritized as per their impact on the project and their frequency. Like the lack of stakeholder support can be felt many times in a project (Laudon and Laudon 2016). On the other hand, the LAN incompatibility can raise only once and it will be mitigated as soon as possible but the LAN incompatibility is a way worse situation than lack of stakeholder support.

Risk Mitigation: In this task, the solution to the identified risks are mentioned. This part of the risk management process tells how the project handles the risks.

Communication: The communication allows the organization management to communicate what is actually being done in this project (Chang 2016). This communication will include the internal benefits of system, support of system in competitive advantage gaining.

Stakeholder Analysis: This process defines how the stakeholders of ABC Corporation can be affected by the development of OAS. This evaluation allows the system to identify the level of involvement of each stakeholder in the project.

Conclusion:

From the above study it can be concluded that the solution was report was complete and provide all the information regarding the system implementation. The mentioned data was exact and right. The selected system is able to mitigate the current issues of the organization. As per the services provided by the ABC Corporation, it needs a powerful and scalable system that is capable of providing support to onsite and office staff. The assignment has provided a complete detail of how the system can be implemented by countering various issues and what opportunities it can bring to ABC Corporation. The assignment also provides a list of reasons for selecting an organization. The system analysis is the process of evaluating all the factors in the system and the assignment accurately shows that. The assignment does not include the designs of the system. Instead of providing general description, a set of diagrams explaining the structural and behavioral nature can explain it.

Alshamrani, A. and Bahattab, A., 2015. A comparison between three SDLC models waterfall model, spiral model, and Incremental/Iterative model. International Journal of Computer Science Issues (IJCSI), 12(1), p.106.

Alshamrani, A. and Bahattab, A., 2015. A comparison between three SDLC models waterfall model, spiral model, and Incremental/Iterative model. International Journal of Computer Science Issues (IJCSI), 12(1), p.106.

Project and Risk Factors

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