Chapter 11 Information Systems

Examples of information sytems in .... Business.

Information Systems : Dominos Pizza

What does the organisation do?

Domino's Pizza is an international organisation that specialises in pizza delivery.

What human activity system within the organization does the IS support?

The human activity system within the organisation is in charge of handling data passed on by staff working at dominos. This unprocessed information consists of:

• Price/cost. The both the customer and sales department will have the price and cost distributed to them in a form of a receipt. The sales department will store this information into a database to be used for calculating the business income of the restaurant.
• Table number. The waiting staff will need to know the table number of the customer as they will need to know where the order will be held.
• Date and time. The restaurant office will be informed of when the order of each customer was taken place
• Payment. The method of payment will be passed onto the restaurant office to inform them how the transaction took place.

What data does Domino's Pizza IS gather?

Domino's information system is a highly complex one that must deal with high priority requests quickly and safely, ensuring that its messages reach its destination. An example would be orders for food. The information that the IS must gather in this use case is:

1. The food that was ordered, i.e pizza, drinks, sides
2. The address of the customer
3. The name of the customer
4. The customer's phone number
5. Payment details; have they paid by card already, or will they pay on delivery?

What else might they gather?

The information gathered above was needed for a branch of Domino's Pizza's day to day operations. But the IS also gathers data from all the branches within a sector and sends it to head office, allowing them to gather statistics, such as:

1. How many pizzas were sold?
2. Which types sold most?
3. When were they sold?
4. What were the total takings for the day?
5. What was the average number of items in an order?

And so on. This information is collected and sent automatically, and this allows head office to have an overview of their business at all times. This lets them calculate their best move in the highly competitive market: Should we begin a half price campaign? Where? Or should we develop a new type of pizza? Do we need to open a new branch here, or close that one there?

What processing is done by the IS to turn data into information?

The data that is transformed into information by the information consists of:

• Secretary. The secretary is in charge of overseeing all transactions and procedures of the business including calculating business income of the restaurant by using the data of all previous figures and processing it into comprehendible information i.e. monthly sales figures. The secretary also takes the customers' order and processes this information whilst passing it to the pizza makers for them to produce the pizzas.

What information does the Domino's restaurant IS distribute?

The information that our chosen system (Domino's restaurant ordering system) distributes is the:

• Customer order information: This information would be distributed between the cooking staff (so they can prepare the food) and this information would also be distributed to the waitering staff (so the correct food can be taken out to the customer).
• Price/cost of order: This information would be distributed to both the customer (in the form of a receipt) and the sales department (on a database to be stored for calculating the businesses income) of the restaurant.
• The table number: This information would be distributed to the kitchen however this information would only be useful to the waitering staff as they need to know where the order is going.
• Date and time of order: This information would be distributed to the restaurant office to inform them of when the order was placed.
• How the customer paid: This information would also be passed onto the restaurant office to inform them of how customers paid for their meals (i.e. cash or debit card).

Who uses the information that is produced?

The information produced can be used by many people throughout the organisations. It is used by the chefs to know all about what is to be cooked and the demand the public has for it.
It is used by the waiters so they know which customers have ordered what food, at what time and furthermore where they are sitting. The information could also be used by the manager and other high position staff for tasks such as ordering extra ingredients and stock for what is the most popular dishes (as well as which will need restocking and which dishes may need to be ordered less in future). Company managers may also look on the information systems for details on profits and whether the restaurant is as popular and busy as it needs to be in order to stay in profit.

Source : Dominal Pizza