Unit 22 Office Solutions Development Assignment

Program	Diploma in Business
Unit Number and Title	Unit 22 Office Solutions Development
QFC Level	Level 4

Introduction

The market competitions and business objectives can be achieved with the proper use of software and information in business process. The office development means to utilization of opportunities to enhance the productivity and performance in workplace. The Unit 22 Office Solutions Development Assignment will present the role of applications to support the business processes of World Wide Publishing which has service in publication of road maps and atlas. Various kinds of applications will be discussed to support the process in business. The importance of user requirements and business demands will be addressed. The report will also determine the ways to engage the users in development process of software. The developed system will be evaluated for the effectiveness and recommendations will be given to enhance the capabilities of software in next version.    

Task 1

1.1  How applications can support business processes

Application programs are used to accomplish certain function with the interface of operating system with computer hardware. In World Wide Publishing, application programs can support the business in following manner:

Management: Application programs in organization support the decision making as the information stored in applications can be used to generate analytical results about the sales and income in business operations. The easy transformation of information helps to generate the effective decision making results for strategies in business. The applications are also useful in problem solving with effective use of resources and information available in workplace.

Operational activities: The sales and purchasing operational activities can use the application programs to search the records and other details. Also the printing of invoice, distribution work and work allocation can be done with the help of applications. Applications are effective to generate the road atlases and maps in effective manner. Marketing of products can be simplified (Rainer.et.al.2013).

Supporting: The business process can be managed with use of applications as they offer the high accountability and support to accomplish the business functions related to distribution, information storage and reuse of resources to meet market benefits.

Efficiency: World Wide Publishing can enhance the productivity with applications as manual handling of business operations is time consuming and may generate the erroneous information in strategies. The productivity can be enhance with power of programming to format the data, check the validity and perform the large calculations within seconds.

Automation: The business process can be automatic with the help of applications. At the end of day, organization generates the list of invoices and products to send at warehouse. This process can be done in automatic manner (Turban.et.al.2011). Addition to it, data backup, salary distribution, report generate for weekly or monthly revenue etc can be done in automatic manner.

1.2  Use of different applications to supports in business process and user requirements

For the user prospective, the application software should offer high accessibility to information, usability in various business operations, clarity to understand the information and help to use the application and information in effective manner. At business point, the application should be capable to meet operational as well as strategic requirements. Following applications are useful in business process:

Spreadsheet: The application offers tabular structure to store the information in atomic manner so that it can be retrieved and stored in effective manner. Also the each cell in application can be formatted to store the specific kind of information. For instance various worksheets can be used to classify the work and cells can be formatted to store only number or date format. Excel is good product from Microsoft with large collections of libraries and functions to assist in business.

Word processing: The applications are used to generate the report on product specific details or to describe the summary of business operations (Da Xu, 2011). Word processing applications are effective to use with user requirements and demands for textual storage of information.

Database: It can be used to store the large amount of information with security and safety. The database application are more secure and consistence with information handling. They are enriched in features to facilitate the users to reuse the information and to enhance the accessibility. MySQL and Access are two popular database choices for users. Custom queries and authentication methods are useful functions in database applications to support the business.

Presentation: Presentation application are helpful to present the product and business strategy in effective manner before the employees. It is helpful to guide the many employees at once to under the business operations and objectives through their practices. The animation, audio-visuals and brief content are part of effective presentation. Power point is presentation application with a lot of capability to present the information (Chang, 2016).

1.3  Importance of addressing user and business requirements

It is necessary to implement the requirement of the user and business to meet the objectives in workplace. World Wide Publishing Ltd has the requirement of application program in their system to meet accessibility and productivity related objectives. The organization needs to enhance the management of invoice and orders in effective manner. Users of the organization are also not technically experts so they need an application which can handle their task with high accuracy and consistency during operations. Users are expecting the application with reliability and performance in work. It is necessary to address the requirements of user and business to implement the system according to requirements in business (Wiegers and Beatty, 2013).

Employees of the organization are the final user of the system so they must be consulted for their skills and expertise to handle the business operations with computer software. User must be addressed to aid the functions and features according to their demands so that standardization can be used to perform the work in effective manner. User requirements help to enhance the productivity with application software. Business requirements must be met in term of business plans and strategic data so that management can use the system to generate the reports and analytical data to plan the growth of business. The process of addressing requirements helps to understand the practicability, scope and investments with application software. Organization needs to determine the requirements to predict the acceptability of the application system in workplace (Kulak and Guiney, 2012). The requirement gathering process is helpful to control of the strategies and demands in market from the user prospective.

Task 3

3.1 End user engagement

In order to develop the system with desired functions and capabilities, it is necessary to engage the end users in system. There are following ways to engage the employees of World Wide Publishing in development of system:

Meeting: This is the effective way to introduce the general description of the product to be delivered in organization to meet the demands. Through meeting, development team can engage the normal employees in workplace to know their expectations in system. The meeting also helps employees to understand the need of the system and the functions those can be simplified with software. Meeting gives them equal chance to present their ideas and thoughts according to their skills and practices to develop the robust system. 

Questionnaire: It is possible that users of the organizations may not be capable to put their own thoughts or they may need the support to clarify their requirements. For that, questionnaire is helpful way to engage the users and to encourage them to ask the questions about the system for their requirements. Questionnaire is effective way to present the capabilities and features of software to assist in business enviroment (Geelen.et.al.2013).

Interview: Individual employees can be interviewed to understand the requirements of users. Interview can be used to know the expectations of management for the assistance in business operations and employee requirements can be clarified with cross questioning. It is helpful to know the prospective of users towards the development of system but the data collected from the interview may be biased for requirements and may not practically possible to use in development work.

Prototyping: The system can be presented before the development in prototype format so that user can visualise the basic functions and processing of the software. It is effective way to engage the non-technical staff into development of system. Prototype can be used to illustrate the functions and requirements of users in software (Attfield.et.al.2011).

3.2 Evidence of improvements in business process

The development of application in Excel software has enhanced the business process of World Wide Publishing. The organization has achieved the following improvements in business with the implementation of application:

Efficiency: The efficiency has enhanced because the employees are using capabilities of application to calculate the total sales, revenue and investment in business. Also the effort is reduced to manage the accuracy and consistency of the information regarding the recipients of products and their order summery. High accuracy is achieved along with performance benefits. The Excel based system is effective to perform the business operations in quick and standard manner..

User friendly: Users also need not to take knowledge and training of database related operations as Excel is effective to offer the forms and reports to manage the operations. Users have forms to insert the order, order the products from preferred suppliers and to distribute the invoice with Oxford warehouse. The forms offer high user friend system to deal with information (Jeston and Nelis, 2014). The buttons and dropdowns are familiar for users and they need not to insert the most of information in manual manner.

Improved management: Previous system in organization was not capable to perform the operations related to picking list and product management but Excel based application is designed to meet all the requirements of employees. The picking list and products are linked to each other so only the valid information can be used to generate the picking list for products. The overall management of information has improved. The printing, reformatting of information for business purpose, report making, storage and sharing has achieved in effective manner (Highsmith, 2013).

3.3 Further possible improvements in system

The developed system is effective to meet the present requirements of the business but there are some of the improvements are expected in future modification of system. The system is flexible for customization and rearrangement of information. In favour of business process and user demands, following changes are expect to cover in next version of software:

Speed: At initial state, the system was fast to generate the results but later addition of larger records has reduced the performance. The system takes some more time to fetch the desired record from the Excel sheet. It is also being difficult to merge the data from various sheets in a single form. The speed needs to enhance according to the future demand of data storage and processing. Better speed will enhance the productivity and performance in workplace.

Compatibility: Excel is goof platform to import and export the information in various formats but issues are appearing to aid the services from the third party add-ons. The capabilities of Excel are limited to store the information and to present the information (Laguna and Marklund, 2013). Many times, it is required to set the separate authentication system for sheets in Excel and to make the system compatible with other applications to use the data. The system is lacking the compatibility with custom applications to use and share the information.

Sharing: At a time, only single user can work on Excel sheet stored in hard disk. There is no facility to perform the concurrent operations on sheets and information so that future changes can be made to bring the excel sheet on internet platform so that information can be used in time and with high security during sharing. The online sharing of Excel application will help to perform the concurrent operations on information via the authorized access from employees (Berners-Lee.et.al.2010).

Conclusion

Office Solutions Development Assignment has been discussed the importance of applications to support the business process. Various applications have been discussed to use in workplace. The importance to address the user requirements and business needs has been discussed. The report has been determined the various ways to engage the users in development of system. The report has examined the system for enhancements and effectiveness.

References

Books and Journals

Attfield, S., Kazai, G., Lalmas, M. and Piwowarski, B., 2011, February. Towards a science of user engagement (position paper). In WSDM Workshop on User Modelling for Web Applications.
Berners-Lee, T., Cailliau, R., Groff, J.F. and Pollermann, B., 2010. World-Wide Web: the information universe. Internet Research, 20(4), pp.461-471.
Chang, J.F., 2016. Business process management systems: strategy and implementation. CRC Press.
Da Xu, L., 2011. Enterprise systems: state-of-the-art and future trends. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 7(4), pp.630-640.
Geelen, D., Reinders, A. and Keyson, D., 2013. Empowering the end-user in smart grids: Recommendations for the design of products and services. Energy Policy, 61, pp.151-161.
Highsmith, J., 2013. Adaptive software development: a collaborative approach to managing complex systems. Addison-Wesley.
Jeston, J. and Nelis, J., 2014. Business process management. Routledge.
Kulak, D. and Guiney, E., 2012. Use cases: requirements in context. Addison-Wesley.
Laguna, M. and Marklund, J., 2013. Business process modeling, simulation and design. CRC Press.
Rainer, R.K., Cegielski, C.G., Splettstoesser-Hogeterp, I. and Sanchez-Rodriguez, C., 2013. Introduction to information communications systems: Supporting and transforming business. John Wiley & Sons.