CHAPTER 6 DISCUSSION. This chapter contains several necessary things that need to be discussed and considered

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1 130 CHAPTER 6 DISCUSSION This chapter contains several necessary things that need to be discussed and considered after the system has been implemented by the company as its operational system. There are many benefits that the system can provide to the company including all the current system problems solving solutions. The author also has to consider the risk and cost to build this system. In this chapter, all the benefits, risk and cost will be briefly described. 6.1 Current System Problems Review Before the author describes benefits of the system, it is better to review all current system problems. The biggest problem of the current system is the lack of integrated components of the system. System components are separately operated in different software programs and some of them are developed manually using paper. Documents like invoice, shipment advice, packing list and purchase order are separately managed using Microsoft Excel (.xlxs), Acrobat Reader (.pdf), and Microsoft Word (doc.), but according to PT. Bloom Agro operational processes and procedures, all of these documents have a strong relationship to each other. Beyond that, there are still many paper works that has to be managed by the company, most of them related to farmer s information and inspection data. It would be very hard for them to find a data or search any particular information. In this situation, PT. Bloom Agro needs more energy and time to manage all of those data. In the end, they have to spend more money to control their management processes.

2 Proposed System Benefits (Function & Feature) The new or proposed system is not just solving the problems of the current system, but it is also providing new useful features for the company. The following points are the proposed system solutions and benefits: 1. Integrity Data or information are related to each other between one documents to another. The system provides an integrated system components that can connect every document and data that has related purposes. The user only has to click and type all the necessary information or documents that need to be processed. This system is an integrated system that works as one software program. 2. Efficiency & Effectiveness according to the system operational features, these benefits give very strong positive impact in managing company s data. It will save the time in producing necessary documents up to 90%. There is a lot of similar information stored in different documents (order fulfillment process, inspection process, etc). Besides that, there is a user management function so every user is able to control their own data (buyer, supplier, and staff). 3. Mobility since the system is built as a web database system, it can be accessed by using the internet. The user can access the database anytime and anywhere using a web browser. This mobility advantage creates the easiest way for every party (buyer, supplier, etc) to get access to the database application. All of those features take important part of the system to manage all the operational processes. All the current system problems will be solved by implementing this new

3 132 system because all features above cover all the solutions needed. Nevertheless, the new system provides something more than just solving the current problems; this system has many advantages to the company in the long-term period of time. There are some additional features that the system can provide such as: 1. The system can be used to trace all the product s origin producer and source. 2. The system can be used to make reports that will be used to support the decision making process. 3. The system records every data that can be retrieved to track the progress of some operational matters (farmer s production, supplier s production, buyer s track records) Another important part of the system is the interface. It is designed for the inexperienced user so he or she could use it very easily. There are many simple ways to operate the software. There are not many command buttons to be performed by the system. The system interface is very simple and it is very easy to be learned. There are also important intangible and tangible benefits of the new system. The author has already discussed about the tangible benefits by calculating the costbenefit analysis in the second chapter. 6.3 Tangible Benefits (Cost Benefit Analysis) Total development cost = $1500 Total annual operating cost = $1640 Total annual benefits = $3100

4 133 Refer to Table 3.8 in chapter 3; the payback period is only around 1.67 years that means all the cost (development and operational cost) would be covered during that period of time. With the same table the author also could calculate the ROI (Return of Investment), within five years period of time the return on investment is 62.15% which means that this investment is effective and profitable. 6.4 Intangible Benefits The system also provides some benefits that cannot be measured or estimated called intangible benefits. In some cases, the importance of the intangible benefits far exceeds the tangible benefits. The author considers that the intangible benefit is a very important aspect to be succeeded. These are some intangible benefits from the new system: 1. Increased level of service 2. Increased buyer and supplier satisfaction 3. Increased staff and farmer s morale These benefits are very important to be considered by the company. In the future, these intangible benefits can provide much more return to the company. 6.5 Risk The previous system has many problems and limitations, but the new system solves and provides solutions for it. Unfortunately, there is still a possibility for the new system to suffer bigger problem that need to be solved. This new system problem has not been occurred yet, that is why it is called risk. When those problems occur, these problems may cause bigger negative impact to the company. The author has to

5 134 make a good anticipation for those risks. There are some risk that has to be considered very well by the author and the company such as: 1. Security In outside world, there are many unauthorized users who try to access the system to steal some information. These users can be anyone including competitor, hacker, spy, etc. If they could get into the system, those unauthorized users would cause many disadvantages for the company. 2. Internet Service Since this new system is a web database system, the user must have a proper internet connection to access it. Not all internet service providers have enough bandwidth to access the system without any limitation. Sometimes the service is not good enough to access the database system so the user has to wait longer or may be the content cannot be retrieved at all. 3. Reliability The system reliability depends on the server itself. Sometimes the reliability of the system is not very good, so it will cause loss of data. To prevent this error, the user can make a back up recovery plan by copying or converting the content into another format and save it privately in different storage. 4. Availability The availability of the system is very important. The system sometimes could be down because many reasons, so the user has to anticipate the outcome of it. When the system is down, they must prepare to fix it and before it happen, they have to back-up all important documents or contents.