Applied GCSE ICT Unit 2 (a) and (b) coursework Assignment
...s ideally suited to computerisation because the same calculations have to be made hundreds or thousands of times in a company with a large number of employees. Accuracy is essential and many different types of output are required, such as payslips and end of year reports for the inland revenue. Most companies with more than a handful of employees use special payroll program to calculate the monthly payroll and print out payslips. Sales Ict is used to record and analyse sales. The EPOS terminal in the store capture sale information when the product are scanned. They record the amount of each item that is sold so that it can be deducted from the stock in the computer. This is important, as without this the store computer couldn’t automatically priorities ordering goods near minimum levels. Using Ict at the checkouts speeds up customers throughput, since the operator does not need to remember the prices of item. It also means that special deals such as second item half price can be offered to customers. Sales information collected from the EPOS terminals is stored at the mainframe computer at stokley Park for six weeks so that the analysts and statisticians can calculate what is selling quickly and what products are not selling well. This information is needed to update stock levels held at the distribution centres and-if necessary- generate or5ders for products which are selling well. If the analysts identify and products which are not selling as well as expected, action can be taken to address this. For example, by reducing the price or moving them to another store where they are more popular. Customers can use credit cards to pay for goods. Magnetic stripe readers at the terminals read information from the credit card and get authorisation from the customers bank to accept the payment. Customers can also use the website to purchase products from home. Orders from the website are recorded at the mainframe computer. Credit card payment over the internet are authorised by using the same methods as the EPOS terminals, or those delivering the goods will have a record of outstanding payments so that the person can pay upon delivery. Purchasing Ict is used for purchasing stock from suppliers. It is essential that the company does not run out of goods sell. If it does then customers will go elsewhere to find what they want. Some of the goods needed by the store will already be available at the distribution centre, others will need to be ordered from suppliers. ICT is used it work out what can be supplied directly from the distribution centre and what needs to be ordered in. orders from the website are added to orders from the stores to be orders to suppliers. Orders are then relayed via EDI to the suppliers, who can quickly dispatch the goods to the nearest distribution centre. The system records incoming stock deliveries and generates payments to suppliers. ICT makes it possible to order goods just in time. This cut on wastage especially food items with a limited shelf life. Operation Suppliers send their goods to the distribution centres, where Ict is used to organise them into separate orders for each store and to work out the loading sequence and route for each truck. At the distribution centres, the internet ordered products are added to the products heading to the nearest store. Trucks carry the goods to the store that need them. To ensure maximum efficiency, the delivery trucks are monitored on their journey from the distribution centre to the store using Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) software. This means that supervisors know where they are and can ensure that they don’t waste time, because time= money. Using Ict to organise delivery routes means that best use is made of the fleet of trucks and avoids trucks going out to the stores half-empty. This is also better for the environment. Communication Methods All organisation need to ensure that people in different departments can communicate with each other. Internal communication can take many forms, both formal and informal a company-wide newsletter to a lunch time chat. Some methods of internal communication which use Ict are: Newsletter. Marks and Spencer’s produce newsletters for their employees. These can be used to give news of forthcoming developments, events such as trade shows that the company is participating in and new policies as well as informal news such as who won the company golf tournament. Videoconferencing This technique allows people to communicate face to face over long distances. At each end, participants sit in a room equipped with several video cameras, microphones and television monitors or Pcs. Formal documents Information about routine business activities also needs to be communicated between departments. Invoices, purchase orders, payroll slips, stock reports and many other documents will be produced by computer and sent from one department to another. These documents will be considered separately in later chapters. All organisations need to communicate with people in the outside world. They need to communicate with, customers, suppliers, thee bank and the inland revenue. Some of the communication will be routine. Consider the example of a mail-order company selling a range of clothes. A customers may use the telephone to order some goods. The sales departments will use the computer to enter the order and produce an invoice as well as others documents. The invoice will be sent with the goods to the customer. Voicemail Many medium-sized and large companies use voicemail system. When you telephone the company, you will be connected To a voice menu and asked to press a number depending on the service or department you want. You may end up talking to a real person, or you may be asked to leave a message. Fax (Facsimile transmission) Very few offices could manage without a fax machine. If you look at any office stationary or business card, you will normally see a telephone number, a fax is a fast and efficient way of transmitting printed or hand-drawn documents and drawings. The sending fax machine scans the document and converts the image into a series of electric pulses. These are sent over the phone line to a recipient’s fax machine, where a copy of the page is printed. E-mail E-mail is an enormously convenient methods of communication. Here are some of its advantages over regular mail. An e-mail message arrives almost instantaneously anywhere in the world. It is very quick and easy to reply to an e-mail, simply by pressing reply button on the writing message. The same message can be sent to several people at once. Long document or photographs can be sent as attachments A message can easily be forwarded to another. Hardware/Software/ M&S have around 650 staff ( two- thirds in house. One third outsourced). Their computers posses a combined power of 1700 MIPS, with a storage capacity of 8.7 terabytes. The company is dependant on the data they collect, so mirror all their data to ensure full disaster recovery. Their core is an IBM OS/390 mainframe; their desktops and portables are standardised on Windows NT. Key features of these: The environment are converging: mainframes are great for processing data but have a lousy user interface, while NT is the other way around . Component-based development is crucial: buying large chunks of functionality from commercial suppliers and plugging them together. Server- centric, browser-based application: PCs completely standardised so that they can be updated quickly ( but they are not interested in network computers). Intelligent/ Knowledgeable infrastructure is key - providing a global directory structure, supplying knowledge as well as connection. Most software at M&S is bespoke, so component transition is hard: encapsulation is crucial. Hardware Input Input devices at the electronic point of sale (E.P.O.S) terminals are Barcode readers. These record...