Institute of Engineering

Kathmandu Engineering College

KALIMATI, KATHMANDU
(Affiliated to TU)

A Case Study report on Information system of

Bhatbhateni Super Market

Submitted By
Manish Maharjan (65012) Nyaya Pratap KC (65017) Ojash Dahal (65018) Sanjaya Shrestha (65031) Sudip Adhikari (65037)

Submitted To
Er. Roshan Regmi

July 22, 2012

Acknowledgement
We would like to thank our teacher Er. Roshan Regmi for assigning us this case study, which aware us of the practical implementation of computerized Information System. We would also like to thank Department of Electronics and Computer specially Mr. Rajesh Dhakal, Er. Manish Aryal for making necessary arrangement for our study. We would like to thank Mr. Suman of Bhatbhateni Supermarket Maharajgunj branch for giving us the information about the company. Last but not the least we would also like to thank our dear classmates for their support and suggestions about choosing the proper place for case studies and preparing this report. Thank you all.

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Table of Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Introduction........................................................................................................................................... 1 IS in BBSM ............................................................................................................................................. 2 Technology in BBSM ........................................................................................................................... 3 Basic Component Diagram of IS (Maharajgunj branch only) .............................................................. 4 Staffing in BBSM ................................................................................................................................. 5 Supply of Goods in BBSM ................................................................................................................... 6 Security in BBSM ................................................................................................................................. 7 Customer benefits in BBSM ................................................................................................................. 8 Recommendations for BBSM ............................................................................................................... 9

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Introduction
Information System (abbreviated IS) is a must in every organization. Whether it is

the case of managing the Human Resource, of managing the goods, products, services, customer records or whatever other things that requires the involvement of data manipulation. The computerized IS however provides a far different and far better view for the IS. All the records can be much manipulated with speed and ease. The amazing processing power of computer makes the computerized IS a very effective tool for the evaluation of data. BhatBhateni Supermarket and Departmental Store (abbreviated BBSM) is the most successful convenient store across all over Nepal. With over 30,000 satisfied customers each day buying from the 1,00,000+ different products, the company has become Nepals no. 1 retail sector tax payer. It has 5 branches inside the capital( Kathmandu) located in the major point of Kathmandu including Maharajgung, Koteswor, Krishna galli (pulchowk), Chuchepati (Bouddha) and Bhatbhateni(Naxal). It recently launched its 6th branch in Newroad, Pokhara.

2 IS in BBSM
This company incorporates the computerized IS which is built by IMS Himalayan Sangrila Pvt. Ltd.. The software provides all the MIS functionalities for all the departments of every branch. The service contract of the software is of 5 years which includes the maintenance and version upgrade cost. For any user defined system upgrade, separate cost is needed. The interdepartmental connection is provided by Subisu Cable net. The IS is basically divided into various categories such as Human Resource, Billing and Store Management etc. Within the human resource department, the IS used takes in the attendance and generates a monthly record about the employee which is then used to evaluate the salary record for individual staff. It also helps to track the performance of each staffs including the sales person. The store management takes in the entire good supply and puts a record about it on the database. The record generally is categorized according to the supplier and then by the product information. Each item in the store has to be labeled and recorded for it to be distributed to branches and to stores. The Inventory Control System uses the data received from all the branches and determines the demanding products. It also monitors the amount of stock and provides information accordingly. The billing system is another sensitive part of the Departmental IS. It has a centralized server in each branch and several Point of sales (abbreviated POS) throughout the entire building. The customers pay through the POS, and the information is directly stored to the server. The reports generated from these transactions are however transferred to the head office for further analysis. It also has a membership scheme in which any customer can be the member of the company and benefit from it. The benefits include discounts in certain products. All these separate IS run under a common platform as bundled. A single software handles entire database.

Technology in BBSM
The server used in BBSM uses a RAID 5 technology server running on the Microsoft

Windows Server OS. And the sales records are backed up in an external hard drive every day after the end of sales time. The size of the data per day is about 30-40 MB. The intranet linking the internal department connection has a bandwidth 1Mbps upload and download, and the internet connection has a bandwidth of 512Kbps both upload and download. The networking is done through the fiber optics. The attendance system uses biometrics system. The finger print recognition allows the company to verify the presence of staffs. The customer members of the company get a benefit card which they used while shopping. This card uses a bar code to recognize the customers identity. Each branch has its own server and software, there is no any synchronization between branches or head office. However, the networking could provide a facility to remotely login into any branches server and check its status and data.

Basic Component Diagram of IS (Maharajgunj branch only)

Sales person & Staffs Customers

Central Database of branch

Point of Sales

Network and offline data

Goods Storage

Staffing in BBSM

This company has a small hierarchical level of staffing. There is a chairman or CEO in the company monitoring overall status of the company. Below him there are branch managers, below branch managers there are supervisors for each department and floors in the store, and finally there are regular staffs working under them such as sales person, security guard etc. All together there are about 1300 people directly working for the company. The payment is done monthly and is handled by the head office at Bhatbhateni, Naxal. The salary is deposited directly at the bank account of the staff. The Maharajgunj branchs salary is deposited in Laxmi bank, and rest of the branchs are deposited in Nepal investment bank. The recruitment process is as simple. The staffs are taken as a 1yr observation period. If they successfully complete that period then the staff are made permanent giving them the facilities such as provident fund. The staffs also get the special discount on the purchase from the store. The discount is +3% in grocery item and +5% in other items (+ denotes more than the regular customers discount rate). The staffs should however get the recommendation from the branch manager for every purchase.

Supply of Goods in BBSM

Being the largest departmental store, BBSM takes its goods from lots of suppliers and dealers. Currently there are about 1200 suppliers supplying goods to BBSM. 90% of the suppliers are local suppliers and the remaining deal outside from the country mainly UK. The payment method is sales and pay method which is the supplier gets their payment on certain interval of time as per his goods is sold in the store. The payment here is also done through the bank account on standard chartered bank. All those transactions are managed by the head office at bhatbhateni, Naxal.

Security in BBSM

A departmental stores main security problem is securing the theft of the goods. To prevent that, the company has installed CC cameras in every corner of the store which is closely monitored by the person who is specially appointed to monitor the CC camera footage. Beside this, Electromagnetic Scanner (ES) on every exiting door of every floor so that the machine beeps if any tagged goods is tried to take away before the billing process. However a major flaw in the system is that there is no provision of backing up the camera footage. The storage driving the CC Camera has capacity of recording about 15day of continuous footage of the entire camera, and after that, the footage is overwritten by the new footage. Another major flaw is that both the ES and CC camera are not controlled by the computer.

Customer benefits in BBSM

The store is typically made for the customer. Availability of huge number of variety of products under one roof and one store is always convenient for anyone. But besides, it also provides other facilities to the customers. The BBSM started the membership about 3years ago. A member of BBSM gets a card and on purchase of every NRs. 500 worth good, customer gets 1point in his account. 1point is equivalent to NRs.6. There are currently around 8000 active members of bhatbhateni supermarket. BBSM also has an online store, the payment methods could be cash on delivery and/or online payment is managed by e-Sewa. On purchase of goods above NRs. 15000 the BBSM provides a free home delivery to the customer. The BBSM has its own automobiles for that purpose which is financed by Nepal investment bank.

Recommendations for BBSM

We figured out that though the supermarket is thought to be computer operated, its not fully computer operated hence we purpose the following modifications to make the company more reliable. The billing system should be synchronized over all branches and be stored at the central server The sales record should have an online backup system so that no data will be lost. Currently the data is backed up in the sales ending time of the day only hence if system crashes anytime during the day, the record of that vanishes. The backup is made in an external hard drive, which is not an effective way of backup; it should rather be backed up in an optical disk. The CC camera footage also should be backed up in optical disk for security purpose. The online shopping interface is not much productive; some improvement must be done for that.