Unit 22 Office Solution Development Assignment - World Wide Publishing

Introduction

Development in an office is been mainly referred to the planning of data and information management with respect to the organisation in such a way that it contributes in making effective decisions and evaluate the issues as well. The Unit 22 Office Solution Development Assignment World Wide Publishing will present the role of applications to support the business processes of World Wide Publishing. With respect to the given scenario, several software like outlook, excel, database, word projects and the presentation are proved to be useful for the data and information management (Mesirov, 2010). However, the present report is been carried out with the intention to collect relevant information about the software and extract better office development solutions. It would be offering an office development solution to the World Wide Publishing co. in order to improve the business processes and incur effective decision out of it. The World Wide Publishing co. is basically a bookshop which sells books to the wholesalers, retailers and the individuals. The organization makes use of the specialized accounts package to record the orders, maintain the invoices and record the customer accounts properly.  The orders of books are been accepted through fax, phone, email and maintains the invoices accordingly. Keeping these aspects into consideration, the report would discuss different ways in which the software applications could help the business and provide justification of the new application for the requirements of the users. Furthermore, it would help in designing a solution to address the needs of the users and evaluate the tools and techniques to execute the solution in the  World Wide  Publishing co.

Task 1  

1.1 Applications that supports business process of World Wide Publishing Co.

According to the case, World Wide Publishing Co is a large book publishing organization which sold their books to wholesalers or retailers or even directly to the customer. It has normally about 5-15 orders daily. It accepts the orders by phone, email or fax. The invoices are prepared according to the orders taken place by various forms. A Picking list report is sent with the invoices daily to the Oxford warehouse, which is a separate organization storing thousands of books of different authors (Fukuda-Parr and Lopes, 2013).  The Picking list includes the total number of each title dispatched by the company every day to the Oxford warehouse. Warehouse packs and dispatches the book every day by attaching the invoice with the books and also keeps one copy of invoice with them for the record. At the end of each month, World Wide Publishing Ltd receives an invoice by Oxford warehouse, covering the services based on the sales value of the dispatched books at that month. Today, in market there are many different computer software applications are available which can help the World Wide Publishing in their business process. Following are the available software that can be used:

Spreadsheet: Today, every business organisations uses spreadsheet to support the information management of their critical business processes. The World Wide Publishing should try this software application which would help in gathering the data and proper maintenance of records of everyday activities.  The spreadsheet is also be used for the problems related to missing of data as it is helpful in recovering the lost data. Preparing invoices, picking list and salary can also be draft using the spreadsheets (Lemonik.et.al, 2011). Spreadsheets can also be used for What-If analysis of data which would be helpful further in making the correct decision for the account of growth and benefit of the  organization structure.  This also allows showing or presenting the data in form of text, graphic or in numerical form. For long, complicated, statistical and scientific calculations, spreadsheet provides formulas which enable user to find the desired outcome in less time and accurately.

                                                     Figure 1: Spreadsheet function

Word Processor: Word processor is also an electronic computer software application which helps the World Wide Publishing in saving and securing its important documents. This software application is very useful in editing, formatting, storing and updating of the documents easily when where the organization has to makes changes frequently in its documents. With this software the World Wide Publishing can generate its invoices and packing lists easily with the help of Templates which is the effective function of word process (Nelis.et.al, 2015). There is also the availability of function called Mail Merge which would help the organisation to send the mail at a time to many different clients simultaneously. The Mail Merge facilitates World Wide Publishing in selling their books directly to their customers through mail in a less amount of time. It also facilitates simple text or graphical documents with multimedia options.

                                       Figure 2: Word processor functions

1.2 Use of different application software that supports business processes of World Wide Publishing

The available types of different application software are beneficial in a varying form in various business processes of the World Wide Publishing. The invention of these software applications plays a vital role in a variety of operations of the World Wide Publishing. Like, according to the case, World Wide Publishing is having some issues or problem related to the Picking list. They prepared the picking list by adding up the total quantity of each book from invoices. The figures so obtained by adding are entered then on to a photocopied form. A recommendation is made to the management of world Wide Publishing for making changes in the application software because the representation of the data in proposed manner becomes the major issue for the World Wide Publishing (Fleischmann.et.al, 2014). The changes are demanded with the purpose to have improvements in data gathering and developing of pricing lists. It is found that there is no permanent method in the World Wide Publishing for preparing the report. Like, for example, the sales clerk of World Wide Publishing sometimes makes use of spreadsheet in order to check whether the addition made is correct or not. The use of spreadsheets and word processor would support World Wide Publishing in achieving the various operations or activities in business process. The implementation of these software applications would help the organization in the following ways:

• Book-Keeping: The computer software application such as tally and spreadsheets helps the organization World Wide Publishing in variety of accounting functions (Davenport, 2013). This would help in preparing the employees payroll, creating cash-flow analysing, tracking of vendor and customer payments, etc. The ERP 9 software application can also used for the purpose of book keeping.
• Inventory control:  Computer systems  software applications can also be used in World Wide Publishing with the purpose of inventory control. This can be used in tracking the orders, warehousing, receiving and distribution activities.
• Decision-Making: By implementing the proposed software application, World Wide Publishing would have improvements in their decision making. This would help the organization in tallying the information of each day, week and month sales with that to invoices generated by the Oxford warehouse.
• Sales analysis: Using spreadsheets, World Wide Publishing can keep the records of all types of expenses that an organization bears (Wiegers and Beatty, 2013). The top management, by analysing the spreadsheet would able to find out the potential areas of improvements in the organization. Like, auto generated would help in evaluating their key clients and demand of a particular book.

1.3 Importance of addressing user and business requirements of World Wide Publishing Co.

The proper and appropriate implementation of the software application in World Wide Publishing requires a proper analysis and consideration of the requirements of its user and business. This analyze would help in gaining the effectiveness of the implemented software application. If the software application implemented not according to the requirements then it will lead to unnecessary wastage of cost and time of the organization. The developed software must be user-friendly and beneficial to its user up to the maximum level (Chung.et.al, 2012). The software application must be capable of reaching the requirements related to the operational activities of World Wide Publishing. With the respect to the given case, the requirements of user and World Wide Publishing are as follows:

• Automatic producing of picking list from the calculations.
• Producing monthly sales summary
• System must be robust and easy to use
• Sales and purchase planning: The software application so developed must be capable and help in proper planning of the sales and purchase of the items in the organization. It should able to handle proper control of inventory. The sale and purchase activity of the organization should be such that it would satisfy the customer and facilitates appropriate availability of the stock (Hill, 2013).
• Monitoring of invoices: The developed software application must also be capable of automatic monitoring of the invoices generated. The proper monitoring of these would help the organization to track the inflow and outflow of the cash taken place in the organization.
• Clarity and accuracy: This requirement is of both, the user and business that the information so produced or generated by the application software must be clear, validate and accurate up to the mark. The validation and accuracy will help further the organization in making any plans and strategies for the growth and increased sale of the organisation (Rao, 2012).

All these requirements must be in written format with proper details of the needs and requirements of both user and business, required while developing the appropriate software application.  The development and implementation of the proposed software application follows a particular life cycle, which is basically known as system development life cycle (SDLC).

                          Figure 3: Software development life cycle

Task 2 

2.1 Designing a solution to address a business or user needs of World Wide Publishing

To deal with the problems related to the business process, the organization, World Wide Publishing must make some required changes in its business processes. For maintaining the flow of business, organization should find out and analyze the requirements of business and needs of tools and software in various operational activities. After analyzing the problems related to generating invoices, developing weekly and monthly sales report and maintaining picking list report, the two main software applications are identified that can be used as the solution of these problems (Chen and Zhang, 2014). Word processor and spreadsheet are the two application software which helps World Wide Publishing in achieving the requirements of its user and business. The organization can implement either word processor or spreadsheet for meeting the requirements. The organization can use word processor for increasing the effectiveness of the work. Word processor would help the organization in designing and generating invoices. The different departments of organisation will also be able to make any changes easily in documents using appropriate layouts, multimedia options, autocorrect function and use of macros for doing any repetitive tasks. The mail merge function of word processor enables World Wide Publishing to send the mails regarding sell of books to all its customers collectively.

On the other side, spreadsheets are also very useful because it helps in performing various analyzes like what-If analyze and cost-benefit analysis for comparing and making the right and appropriate decisions about the business (Fischer.et.al, 2012). It also facilitates recording of data from the invoices quickly and accurately and also calculates totals and obtain picking list from this automatically. The spreadsheet software also provides the organization to restore the lost  data analysis  and preparing and sharing the sheet for salary, invoice and customer information. Using spreadsheet, organization can design the worksheet based on “Product workbook” containing details of all the products and template, containing a number of worksheets for data entry, reports and summaries. These two solutions suggested not only improve the quality of work performed but also saves money, manpower and time.

2.2 Advanced tools and techniques to implement a solution for World Wide Publishing Co.

Variety of tools and techniques are available now which are not only reliable, error handlings but also user friendly for implementing the solution for World Wide Publishing. E-commerce functions, websites and ERP system are some of the advanced tools which a management can apply to overcome from the problems of business processes. These tools come with an advanced feature like user interface, Share point, Access object, etc (Marshall.et.al, 2015). These advanced tools helps in maintaining the effectiveness in work and achieving objectives in less time and labour. The tools and techniques also form a basis for taking appropriate decision and formation of good documentation. The use of advanced tools and techniques laid down different methods available for office solution but among them the uses of pivot tables and visual basic are more beneficial. Pivot table enables World Wide Publishing to sums up large amounts of information in small amount of space and keeps data in more organised way. Pivot table also provide interactive data analysis and it can also be linked easily to any external data sources. The Visual basic is a powerful tool which helps in achieving simple and complex business requisites efficiently and effectively. It is user friendly and anyone can code, test and debug it easily (Tapscott, 2012). It also works with many types of databases such as ORDBMS and RDBMS. The editing, formatting and sharing of data becomes easier with visual basic software which facilitates World Wide Publishing in generating the accurate and clarity based invoices.

                                       Figure 4: Layout of pivot table

ERP is also effective and advanced tool for office development and solutions to various issues in World Wide Publishing Company. ERP means Enterprise Resource Planning is business process management software. This software allows organization to integrate all the aspects of operation including planning of product, development, manufacturing, sales and marketing. ERP system helps in conducting performance check (Akerkar, 2013). For example, any human error of taking or entering order manually, then the ERP software helps in identifying and correcting it according to the requirement.

                           Figure 5: ERP functions in an organization

2.3 Solutions against the expected results

It is assumed that the organization World Wide Publishing has implemented spreadsheet application to deal with its problems related to the business processes. It is found by evaluation that the implementation of this software application helps the organization in generating different sheets with different data like invoices, reports, summaries and sales and forecasting. The result so expected after the implementation of the software application is up to the mark (Geelen.et.al, 2013). The below table will provide the comparison of the expected and actual result obtained through implementation of new application software in the organization:

Table 1: Comparison of the expected and actual result

Requirements	Expected results	Actual results
Invoice generation	Good and fast response	Responding slow
Developing picking list	Better efficiency and clarity	Improvement in the efficiency
Sales analysis	High accuracy	Helpful in analyzing
Auto close and open	Integrated approach	Transformational of function is good
Auto insert name of product	Safes time and money	Working good

After evaluating the actual results so obtained, it is concluded that the spreadsheet application software so implemented is beneficial to the organization in many ways. The efficiency in work is achieved through this software. The time, money and labour are also saved to a greater extent after the implementation of spreadsheet in the World Wide Publishing. The problems related to packing list, invoice generation, etc are removed to the greater extent. Using spreadsheet application software, the information is managed well as well as the relationship with clients is also achieved. Other than all these advantages, it also meets completely with the requirements of its users and business. It also achieves the required performance indicators such as entering of each invoice within under 30 seconds, achieving 100% accuracy in picking list, producing monthly sales summary and charts, easy to use, facilitates adding of any number of titles at a future date as the company expands,  etc (Delen and Demirkan, 2013). This type of effectiveness is achieved by implementing spreadsheet application which ultimately helps the organization World Wide Publishing in achieving growth and increase in profits as well as sales with customer satisfaction.

Task 3

3.1 Ways in which the end user engagement takes place on the basis of World Wide publishing Co. Ltd.

In order to bring the desired improvements in the business operations of the organization it is very much important that the organization develop effective plan of engaging the end users of the software application. It has been found that it is important for World Wide Publishing Ltd to enhance the understanding and knowledge of the employees in different departments and levels such as human resources, sales and marketing, production, finance, etc. so that to make use of the proposed software effectively and fulfil the set objectives in more persuasive and proficient manners (Künzle.et.al, 2013).  The end user plays an important role in the effectiveness of the software application as enhanced understanding about the software would lead towards the augmentation in managing the time and diminish the errors effectively and efficiently. It has been found that to engage the end users the higher authorities of World Wide Publishing organization could make use of various activities like face to face interaction, meetings, trainings for particular tools and software, etc.

 With the help of these initiatives the organisation would be able to engage the end users and make them familiar with the software and would then increase the capabilities as well. As per Jacobs and Chase (2013), it has been recognised that the face to face interaction and the training method would be the most suitable initiative for World Wide Publishing and would ensure the engagement of the end users as well. For instance, with the help of the training method the end users would be provided with the proper using guidelines and instructions by the expertise of the proposed software application and would also resolve the issues and the doubts of the individuals related to the functional and handling understanding of the users. The training method would also influence the end users to make better use of the software as better understanding would encourage them and enhance their interests in the application. It would increase the efficiency of the performances levels of the end users in handling the documents with the help of the proposed software application. Moreover, executing new tools and techniques would affect the compatibility of the users initially but would overcome the same with the help of meeting and training methods and would engage the end users (Davis, 2013). In addition to this, survey method would also prove to be beneficial to engage the end users for the development and execution of the software applications effectively. By carrying out the survey regarding the utility and the services of the  resources development  tools, the management of World Wide Publishing would be able to lay an emphasis on the issues and would formulate and execute effective plan for selecting appropriate method of end users engagement.

3.2 Evidence of business process improvement for World Wide Publishing

The management of organization is looking for improvement in the business process using the software. For the improvement in the invoice generation and planning of business in the different sectors management has implemented spreadsheet software. This software is providing the facility of developing the auto invoice that will have the option of insert, delete modify the name of products and develop the picking list. Moreover, the software will help to determine the salary and sales of organization with specific categorization. World Wide Publishing will keep the auto generated record of sales of day, week and month that will helps to evaluate the demand and effectiveness of particular books and key client (Fleischmann.et.al, 2014). World Wide Publishing co. was having the issues in accounting that affecting the decision making. Through implementing the new software organization has crafted improvement in the business functions. By considering the outcome of organization in accounting this is been considered decision making, formatting, editing and sharing of data is enhanced. The top management of organization has improved decision making by using the analysis function of spreadsheet that consume less time and cost by using the specific formulas and creating different sheets for individual clients as well the supplier. In addition to this the forecasting of, organization has been improved by using the software as sales department is analyzing the past sales and demand of market which helping to make balance between production and supply. For instance, World Wide publishing organization analyzing the data of sales weekly and monthly as well orders that have been taken from online sources or manually. By having in-sight of information about the sales and purchasing, organization is making decision for developing picking list and summarising the data according to future needs. According to analysis, these are the major benefits of using the software and managing the work more professional manners by having the knowledge about the issues and activities performed at workplace (Mesirov, 2010). In addition to this, it is been also identified that decision making of management also getting effective as the data about the requirement and production is calculated with accuracy which helping to encourage the accounting operations and planning of activities through visual basics and data presentation. In addition to this, development of salary sheet is helping organization to gain knowledge about the expenses by evaluating the one sheet that will have details information about each department.

3.3 Future development for enhancing the system of World Wide publishing

There are different types of system and software is available for managing the information and organizational activities that would help to improve the effectiveness and efficiency. In order to sustain the position and make valuable changes in the business function of World Wide Publishing co. The management would analyze alternative systems. For further development and enhance the system of company for producing report, editing the data as well representation, management has to improve the monitoring and offer proper training to end users. Use of spreadsheet will help organization to achieve the desired results as well minimize the cost of operations (Lemonik.et.al, 2011). If organization wants to improve the business process to meet the objectives implementation of ERP system along with spreadsheet will encourage the services. It will help organization to develop the competitive environment where staff members have understanding of using the software as well able to take initiatives to craft improvement. ERP system is one of the most preferred system software that is being used for managing the business operations and cost.

Moreover, the software will help to determine the salary and sales of organization with specific categorization. World Wide Publishing will keep the auto generated record of sales of day, week and month that will helps to evaluate the demand and effectiveness of particular books and key client. ERP system will help World Wide publishing organization to auto generate the invoice as the order prior approval of sales department. This system will improve the monitoring of the flow of information World Wide Publishing co. was having the issues in accounting that affecting the decision making (Wiegers and Beatty, 2013). Through implementing the new software organization has crafted improvement in the business functions. Moreover, the training will influence efficiency and improve knowledge of end users for utilizing the functions handling of documents. This kind of approach will enhance the decision making of organization as well help to meet the organizational goals and objectives. In spite of that, implementation of new tools and techniques affect the compatibility of individual at initial stage that will be mitigate by using the training and meetings methods for engaging users.

Conclusion

With the help of above Unit 22 Office Solution Development Assignment World Wide Publishing is has been concluded that office development is an important aspects as it is essential to implement modern concepts in order to meet the levels of the fast moving industries. The report thus had revealed that organisations in the present times are looking forwards to implement effective tools and software which would assist them in developing modifies approaches and fulfils the desired objectives. It has been identified that to maintain the flow of business, organization should find out the requirements of tools and software to be implemented in the business for various operational activities. The report had also revealed that word processor and spreadsheet are the two application software which would help World Wide Publishing in achieving the requirements of its users and business effectively. Even it has been found that the E-commerce functions, websites and ERP system are found to be some of the advanced tools which could be applied by the organization and overcome the problems of business processes. It has been also identified that with the help of face to face interaction and meeting in the office the end users could be engaged and prepared to deliver the best effective performances.