Important for UK Computing Course Degree level NQF 6 & 7.

1. 1
Table of Contents
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................3
1.1. Human Resource.............................................................................................................3
1.2. Procurement.....................................................................................................................4
1.3. Customer Service............................................................................................................4
Task 2...............................................................................................................................................5
2.1. OAS - Office Automation Systems................................................................................5
2.2. TPS - Transaction processing system .........................................................................6
2.3. DSS - Decision Support Systems .................................................................................7
2.4. EIS - Executive Information Systems...........................................................................7
Task 3...............................................................................................................................................8
3.1. Archival Records..............................................................................................................8
3.2. An online patient diagnosis and advice system for out of hours health support ...9
Task 4............................................................................................................................................ 10
4.1. Created table with following columns ........................................................................ 10
4.2. Add Given Data to Table ............................................................................................. 11
4.3. Create Two Queries..................................................................................................... 11
4.3.1. Customer names and address who lives in Bradford.......................................... 11
4.3.2. A list of female customers’ first and last name and email .................................. 12
Task 5............................................................................................................................................ 13
5.1. Operations ..................................................................................................................... 13
5.2. Marketing ....................................................................................................................... 14
Task 6............................................................................................................................................ 14
6.1. Alternative to MS Access ............................................................................................ 14

2. 2
6.2. Disadvantages of working in this way ....................................................................... 18
Evidence
checklist
Summary of evidence required by student
Evidence
presented
Task 1 The introductory section of your report evaluating the information
needs of different function areas of Bradford Health Products.
4,6
Task 2 The second section of your report describing the different types
of information systems.
6,7,8,9
Task 3 The third section of your report investigating the current trends in
using information systems to solve business problems.
9,11
Task 4 The fourth section of your report will consist of two Microsoft
Access reports that show valid, accurate information presented
in a professional manner in accordance with the specification
provided.
11,14
Task 5 The fifth section of your report evaluating the suitability of
information systems for different functional areas of Bradford
Health Products.
14,15
Task 6 The sixth section of your report evaluating alternative methods of
solving the problem.
15-19

3. 3
Task 1 - For each of the following business functions, list some typical data that they
would receive, the processing it would go through and the information that would be
produced. Say what decisions could be made by management using the resultant
information.
 Human resources
 Procurement
 Customer service
1.1. Human Resource
If we take into account the current scenario of Bradford Health Products, it’s quite
obvious that a number of employees will be working with the organization. It is of the
utmost importance for the HR Department to gather the data given below for manage
their work efficiently (Caliskan, 2010).
 Number of employees
 Categories of employees
 Salaries of employees
 Working Shifts
 Leaves and absence
 Staff training
 Public Holidays
 Tenure of employment contract
Using the above data, following decisions can be made by HR department:
 Reduce managerial expenses and decrease errors by using policy automation.
 Scheduling and managing leave plans for different key employees in different
categories.
 Set up flexible work activities for new projects at cost effective level of skills
utilizing permanent, short-contract and temporary workers.
 Assess and examine employee performance regarding personal tasks and
corporate goals.

4. 4
 Encourage the employees and improve performance through motivation in form
of target oriented compensation, fringe benefits, non-cash appraisals and
bonuses.
 Make sure timely and accurate transactions and excluding excessive process
steps.
 Achieve staffing, hiring and positioning to make sure that appropriate talent is
hired.
(Oracle, 2006; Brewster, et al., 2007)
1.2. Procurement
The process of buying goods or services is called procurement. Procurement includes
organizing and processing of demand as well as the end receipt and payment approval.
Since we are dealing with the situation where Bradford Health Products has
procurement department so it has to buy products and goods and in order to do so in a
reasonable manner, proper evaluation is necessary for attaining the best possible
outcomes (Kakwezi & Nyeko, 2006).
Following decisions can be made by management:
 Planning the purchase
 Determination of Standards
 Development of Specifications
 Research and selection of Supplier
 Analysis of Value
 Financing
 Negotiation of Price
 Control of Inventory and stores
 Disposal and other related factors
(Kattel & Lember, 2010)
1.3. Customer Service
Customers are the lifeblood of any organization. In this case of Bradford Health
Products, the customers are patients mostly. The best way to treat the customer is by

5. 5
offering a good customer service and considering them as the honorable guests.
Following is the typical data that is used for customer service review (Rogelberg,
Barnes-Farrell, & Creamer, 1999).
 Number of customers
 The dollar amount spent per customer per transaction
 The frequency of customer visits
These decisions can be made by the management:
 Help the customers in better way
 Improve customer service by overcoming the complaints
 Oversee employee’s attitude towards customers
 Ability to read customers
(Jahanshahi, Gashti, & Seyed Abbas Mirdamadi, 2011)
Task 2 - The following is a list of information systems employed by Bradford Health
Products. For each one, explain what its purpose is, who in the organization would use
it and how it would support decision making.
 OAS - Office Automation Systems
 TPS - Transaction processing system
 DSS - Decision Support Systems
 EIS - Executive Information Systems
2.1. OAS - Office Automation Systems
Purpose:
Office automation system gathers methods, collects and transfers information and data
in electronic form of an office communication. In simple words, OAS can be deemed as
computer-oriented information system that assembles, process, record and finally
circulate electronic messages, documentation and other forms of communication within
the organization. OAS also facilitates in elevating or systematizing prevailing office
procedures (Cardoso, 2006).
User:

6. 6
OAS is used mostly by lower management to enter data of the operations that are
happening within the organization.
Support in Decision Making:
OAS can be used by all departments in an organization, it helps in the following matters
of decision making:
Multiple tasks can be realized easily by Office automation
 The need of larger staff is eliminated.
 Less storage needed to store large data.
 Ease of multiple access in a system
(Cardoso, 2006)
2.2. TPS - Transaction processing system
Purpose:
In this style, work is divided into small operations known as transactions. A system to
process these transactions can be a software, or combination of software/hardware
which supports processing these transactions. (Rahmatian, 2003)
User:
This informations system is supervised and utilized commonly by middle management.
(Rahmatian, 2003)
Support in Decision Making:
The features of TPS are performance, continuous availability of data, data integrity,
ease of use and modular growth.
A TPS allows middle level management to get the details of transaction management
and helping them to:
 Manage simultaneous transaction processing.
 Enable data sharing.
 Ensure data integrity

7. 7
 Prioritization of transaction execution in order of precedence.
(IBM, 2012; Kohler, Hsu, Rogers, & H.Bahaa-El-Din, 1991)
2.3. DSS - Decision Support Systems
Purpose:
Decision Support System is a computerized system that maintains corporate decision-
making activities. The Data used in this system can be Warehouse data and inventories
of information assets, sales and numbers comparisons between two periods and
anticipated profit figures on basis of sale expectations (Bhargava & J.Power, 2001).
User:
DSSs assist mid-level and higher management in operations and planning and support
decision making (Bhargava & J.Power, 2001).
Support in Decision Making:
 Benefits of DSS can be as follows:
 Personal efficiency is improved
 Decision making process gets faster
 Organizational control is increased
 Problem solving abilities are sharpened
 Interpersonal communication is facilitated
 Training and learning are promoted
 Supports decisions by generating new evidence
 Increase the market value among the competitors
 Broadens the visions to approach problems
(Dlodlo, Hunter, Cele, Botha, & Metelerkamp, 2009)
2.4. EIS - Executive Information Systems
Purpose:
In EIS, the emphasis is placed on graphical representation of data in user friendly
interfaces. It provides extensive reporting experiences. Generally EIS are corporate-

8. 8
wide DSS which aid top-management to examine, compare, and underline
developments in critical areas in a manner that they can scrutinize performance and
isolate opportunities and threats. (Kaniclides & Kimble, 1994)
User:
Executive information system facilitates senior executive management in decision
making by providing ease of access to internal and external data and information
related to organizational goals and objectives. (Power, 2002)
Support in decision making:
Following are some advantages of using the data from EIS:
 Best way for top-executives to make decisions.
 Offers timely information of company summary.
 Information that is provided is better understood.
 Information tracking is improved.
 Provides efficient decision making.
(Arnott, Jirachiefpattana, & O’Donnell, 2004)
Task 3 - For each of the following list of business areas, choose a type of information
system that you consider would be suitable. Explain how the information system works
and what advantages it offers.
 Archival of business records
 An online patient diagnosis and advice system for out of hours health support
3.1. Archival Records
Archival Records:
The business archives record and store the daily activities of business activities and its
operations. Managing these archives is the key to successful business because these
are the critical indications about the business path to reach its goals. In my opinion
Decision Supportive System is best for using in Archival records. It’ll work in the
following manner (Myburgh, 2005)
 DSS focusses on problems that are vital for decision making.

9. 9
 DSS efforts to associate traditional data and retrieval functions with systematic
techniques.
 DSS precisely concentrates on structures that can be used interactively by less
computer oriented people.
 DSS stresses flexibility and malleability to adapt changes in the environment and
the approach of decision making.
(Dlodlo, Hunter, Cele, Botha, & Metelerkamp, 2009)
Moreover, the advantages of using this system are:
 Solve semi-structured and unstructured problems
 Managers are supported at all levels
 Groups and individuals are facilitated
 Decisions are arranged orderly according to their interdependence
 Design, choice and intelligence are supported
 Malleable and compliant
 Process can also be Human controlled
 End user has the facility of development
 Demonstrating and analysis of data
 Standalone and web-based integration
 Support varieties of decision trees and processes
(Bhargava & J.Power, 2001)
3.2. An online patient diagnosis and advice system for out of hours health
support
Transaction Processing System is the best informations system, in my educational
judgment, to be used in this particular case. The reason for choosing this information
system is because of the fact that it supports batch processing, real-time processing,
time sharing and transaction processing with support for timely back-up
procedures(Alauddin, Amin, & Azad, 2012).
The advantages of using TPS are as follows:

10. 10
 The data generated by transactions can be processed
 Higher level of integrity and accuracy is maintained
 Produce timely documents and reports
 Labour efficiency is increased
 Help provide increased service
 Loyalty of customers can be build and maintained
 Competitive advantage can be achieved
(Kohler, Hsu, Rogers, & H.Bahaa-El-Din, 1991)
Task 4- Create a Microsoft Access database to hold and process data into information
for Bradford Health Products. Construct it using the following stages:
 Create a table to hold the following data about customers: first name, surname,
title, DOB, gender, address first line, address second line, town, county,
postcode, telephone number, email address. You must ensure that your
database only holds valid and accurate data.
 Enter 10 customer records using the data held in the Appendix located at the end
of the assignment brief.
 Create two queries to extract useful information from the database and present
them in a professional manner using two Microsoft Access reports inserted into
your Word report document, as follows:
o A list of the names and addresses of customers who live in Bradford,
sorted upon postcode in ascending order
o A list of female customers, their first names, surnames and email
addresses, sorted upon surname in ascending order
4.1. Created table with following columns
 First name
 Surname
 Title
 DOB
 Gender

11. 11
 Address first line
 Address second line
 Town
 County
 Postcode
 Telephone number
 Email address
To ensure valid data, proper data type is used for every column attribute as displayed in
Fig. 4.1
Fig. 4.1
4.2. Add Given Data to Table
4.3. Create Two Queries to extract useful information from the database and present
them in a professional manner using two Microsoft Access reports inserted into
your Word report document, as follows
4.3.1. Customer names and address who lives in Bradford sorted on postcode in
ascending order

12. 12
4.3.1.1. Query in SQL View
SELECT CustomerInfo.Firstname, CustomerInfo.Surname,
CustomerInfo.Address_firstLine, CustomerInfo.Address_secondLine,
CustomerInfo.Town, CustomerInfo.County, CustomerInfo.PostCode
FROM CustomerInfo
WHERE (((CustomerInfo.Town)='bradford'))
ORDER BY CustomerInfo.PostCode ASC;
4.3.1.2. Data Extracted with above Query
4.3.1.3. Data Extracted from query and Displayed in Report Format
4.3.2. A list of female customers’ first and last name and email, sorted upon
surname in ascending order
4.3.2.1. Query in SQL View
SELECT CustomerInfo.Firstname, CustomerInfo.Surname, CustomerInfo.Email

13. 13
FROM CustomerInfo
WHERE (((CustomerInfo.Gender)='female'))
ORDER BY CustomerInfo.Surname ASC;
4.3.2.2. Data Extracted with above Query
4.3.2.3. Data Extracted from query and Displayed in Report Format
Task 5-List two different business functions in the organization that could make use of
the simple information system that you have built in Microsoft Access. What decisions
could be made using the information generated by the queries and what level of
decision making do you consider this to be at?
5.1. Operations
Operations is the function of a business that is responsible for cresting the goods and
services of a business. As from the query first it can been seen that more customer are
purchasing products from the Bradford, So, operation department can forecast the
demand of products. It can also help Customer Services department to assume that

14. 14
more service will be required for Bradford customer as ratio is higher. The operations
manager can make best decisions on the basis of this data.
5.2. Marketing
The basic data of location of customers can help the marketing department in focusing
on the areas where they’ve less sales. For Example, if customers are coming mostly
from Bradford, the marketing radius should be expanded to other cities also.Marketing
strategies are mostly set out by marketing team whose hierarchy is from middle
management to higher management, this data would be helpful for them.
Task 6-Microsoft Access is limited in the processing it can carry out and the features it
has for displaying information. What other Office application software could be used for
this purpose and how could I pass data over without having to rekey it? Now pass the
data to the application and process some information from it by calculating the ratio of
customers who live in each town and displaying the results in visual form, such as a
graph or chart. Obtain a screen print as evidence to prove that you have done this and
paste it into your report. What disadvantage is there from working with a snapshot of the
data in this way?
6.1. Alternative to MS Access
Microsoft Excel is another possible alternative to manage, display and process data and
present it in different formats. To manage data in the forms of table and extract
information from it, MS Excel is being used throughout worldwide.
It is very easy to pass data from MS Access to MS excel without re-entering or rekeying
it. Fig 6.1 shows how to pass data to Excel from Access

15. 15
Fig. 6.1.
By selecting Data tab in the excel and then selecting From Access as marked in the red
box on the top left corner in the will give an option pass data then data source can be
selected as below in fig 6.2 and in our case, CustomerInfo table was selected

16. 16
Fig. 6.2.
Then to display Ratio of customer lives in each in the chart Pivot Chart Option is
selected (Fig. 6.3) and then by considering total record as 100%, percentage of
customer from each town is displayed in bar chart in Fig. 6.4.
Fig. 6.3

17. 17
Fig. 6.4
Horizontal axis presents name of town and vertical axis to percentage of customer living
in them.
Fig. 6.5

18. 18
6.2. Disadvantages of working in this way
Though this method provide number of advantages. However, there are some
disadvantages as well. In above snap shots data was presented in excel so there could
be following limitation
 MS Excel has limited number of rows (65536) and column so very large data
cannot be passed to it.
 When passing large amount of data, file size will become very large and it require
more place in memory and file will run slow
 High level knowledge of excel is required to process and extract information from
complex data
(Evans, 2014)

19. 19
References
 Alauddin, M., Amin, M. B., & Azad, D. M. (2012). Business Transaction Processing System. International
Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 4, No. 5. Retrieved from CleanWeb.co.nz:
http://www.academia.edu/3812854/Business_Transaction_Processing_System
 Arnott, D., Jirachiefpattana, W., & O’Donnell, P. (2004). Executive information systems development in an
emerging economy. Elsevier B.V., 2078– 2084.
 Bhargava, H. K., & J.Power, D. (2001). Decision Support System and Web Technologies: A Status Report.
Retrieved
 Brewster, Chris, Croucher, Richard, Wood, Geoff, & Michael, B. (2007, July 01). Collective and individual
voice: convergence in Europe? The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 1246 - 1262.
Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585190701393582
 Caliskan, E. N. (2010). THE IMPACT OF STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT ON
ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE. Journal of Naval Science and Engineering, Vol. 6 , No.2, 100-116.
 Cardoso, J. (2006). OFFICE AUTOMATION SYSTEMS. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
 Dlodlo, N., Hunter, L., Cele, C., Botha, A. F., & Metelerkamp, R. (2009, June). A DECISION SUPPORT
SYSTEM FOR WOOL CLASSIFICATION. AUTEX Research Journal, Vol 9, no.2.
 Evans, K. (2014, March 18). The Disadvantages of Pivot Tables. Retrieved from Chron: Small Business:
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvantages-pivot-tables-46914.html
 IBM. (2012, November 12). Transaction processing. Retrieved from www.ibm.com:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/cicsts/v3r2/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.cics.ts.productoverview.do
c%2Fconcepts%2FTransactionProcessing.html
 Jahanshahi, A. A., Gashti, M. A., & Seyed Abbas Mirdamadi, K. N. (2011, June). International Journal of
Humanities and Social Science. Study the Effects of Customer Service and Product Quality on Customer
Satisfaction and Loyalty, Vol. 1 No. 7.
 Kakwezi, P., & Nyeko, S. (2006). PROCUREMENT PROCESSES AND PERFORMANCE: EFFICIENCY
AND EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PROCUREMENT FUNCTION.
 Kaniclides, T., & Kimble, C. (1994). Executive Information Systems: A framework for their development and
use. Journal of Information Management.
 Kattel, R., & Lember, V. (2010, May). PUBLIC PROCUREMENT AS AN INDUSTRIAL POLICY TOOL: AN
OPTION FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES? JOURNAL OF PUBLIC PROCUREMENT, VOLUME 10,
ISSUE 3, 368-404. Retrieved from www.cityoflondon.gov.uk.
 Kohler, W. H., Hsu, Y.-P., Rogers, T. K., & H.Bahaa-El-Din, W. (1991). Performance Evaluation of
Transaction Processing Systems. Digital Technical Journal, 3.
 Myburgh, S. (2005, March/April). Records Management and Archives: Finding Common Grounds. The
Information Management Journal.
 Oracle. (2006). ORACLE HUMAN RESOURCES - Oracle Datasheet. Oracle. Retrieved from Oracle:
www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/057305.pdf
 Power, D. J. (2002). In D. J. Power, Decision Support Systems: Concepts and Resources for Managers.
Greenwood/Quorum.
 Rahmatian, S. (2003). Transaction Processing Systems. California State University, Fresno.
 Rogelberg, S. G., Barnes-Farrell, J. L., & Creamer, V. (1999). JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND
PSYCHOLOGY. CUSTOMER SERVICE BEHAVIOR:THE INTERACTION OF SERVICE PREDISPOSITION
AND JOB CHARACTERISTICS, Volume 13, No. 3.