Mr. Shailendra Pawaskar Shailendrapawaskar@gmail.

com

Case Study - Information System in Restaurant

A waiter takes an order at a table, and then enters it online via one of the six terminals located in the restaurant dining room. The order is routed to a printer in the appropriate preparation area: the cold-item printer if it is a salad, the hot-item printer if it is a hot sandwich or the bar printer if it is a drink. A customers meal check-listing (bill) the items ordered and the respective prices are automatically generated. This ordering system eliminates the old three-carbon-copy guest check system as well as any problems caused by a waiters handwriting. When the kitchen runs out of a food item, the cooks send out an out of stock message, which will be displayed on the dining room terminals when waiters try to order that item. This gives the waiters faster feedback, enabling them to give better service to the customers. Other system features aid management in the planning and control of their restaurant business. The system provides up-to-the-minute information on the food items ordered and breaks out percentages showing sales of each item versus total sales. This helps management plan menus according to customers tastes. The system also compares the weekly sales totals versus food costs, allowing planning for tighter cost controls. In addition, whenever an order is voided, the reasons for the void are keyed in. This may help later in management decisions, especially if the voids consistently related to food or service. Acceptance of the system by the users is exceptionally high since the waiters and waitresses were involved in the selection and design process. All potential users were asked to give their impressions and ideas about the various systems available before one was chosen.
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Case Study - Information System in Restaurant

a. In the light of the system, describe the decisions to be made in the area of strategic planning, managerial control and operational control? What information would you require to make such decisions?

b. What would make the system a more complete MIS rather than just doing transaction processing? c. Explain the probable effects that making the system more formal would have on the customers and the management.

Class work

The case study Dell.com's IT architecture' discusses the hardware and software infrastructure of DELL's website. It also shows how the website benefited DELL's customers and suppliers and brought considerable cost savings for the company.

Issues: Need for the development of an e-commerce-enabled website. Architecture of an e-commerce-enabled website and the problems faced by Dell.
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DELL had started its Internet initiative in the late 1980s to provide customer support. Whenever DELL received a call from its customers for support, DELL customer-care executives advised them to obtain a new disk driver or some other software update available at DELL. The customer had the choice of receiving the software on a diskette, which was expensive, or to download the software. Initially, these software downloads were made available from a DELL Bulletin Board site on CompuServe1.

Background Note

DELL Computer Corporation's (DELL) founder, Michael Dell (Dell) is often credited with bringing about a revolution in the personal computer industry.
After a late entry into the PC business in 1984, Dell put in place a new business paradigm. In DELL's direct model there were no retailers or resellers. By eliminating intermediaries and managing its inventory and distribution process efficiently, DELL offered its customers more powerful and customized computers at prices much lower than its competitors. The company could incorporate the latest technology in its product lines much before its competitors did, as it kept only a maximum of six days of inventory while most of its competitors stocked inventory for about 40 days.
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CompuServe,
a wholly owned subsidiary of America Online, provides Internet services. The company started its operations by offering electronic mail services and technical support to personal computer users, and expanded its services by providing wide-area networking capabilities to corporate clients, programming, portal content and an Internet service provider.

The Technology Dell.com's hardware infrastructure consisted of its own PowerEdge servers and PowerVault Storage systems... Taking Care of Customers Over the years, DELL introduced several value-added features at Dell.com in order to enhance customer convenience. Customers could log onto the website to check the status of the order placed through the DELL Order Maintenance System. Customers, who chose not to check the status frequently, could use Order Watch. They could enter the order number and e-mail address and the system would automatically send an e-mail notification to the customer once the machine had been actually shipped...

Taking Care of Suppliers In mid 1998, DELL launched Valuechain.dell.com, a site which offered the same services for suppliers that Premier Pages offered for customers... The Future In late 2000, DELL began efforts to link Premier Pages and valuechain@dell.com. This would enable DELL's suppliers to view an order as soon as it was placed and ship the inventory in even less time compared to the earlier process.

According to analysts, the success of DELL's Internet initiatives was largely because it saw these, not as a move from the brickand-mortar business to a virtual business, but as a logical extension of the company's direct business model...

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Mr. Shailendra Pawaskar Shailendrapawaskar@gmail.com

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