Background
The British Insurance Company (BIC), is based in Coventry, and was originally setup in 2002 by David and Ellen Stewart, who had just completed their undergraduate degrees. The company has expanded recently and is currently servicing 4 main areas of the UK; these are shown as regions below.
A new information system is envisaged that would capture all of the current information and also provide for any future additions that the system might require.
BIC are offering a range of products Travel insurance, Life Insurance, Motor Insurance along with other types. These are sold to clients by an insurance advisor.
Further Information
The 4 Regions of the UK are indicated below with the number of advisors that are dedicated to that area:
Region Advisors
i) The South-East 4
ii) The South-West 2
iii) The Midlands 3
iv) The North 3
All of the Insurance Products offered by BIC are sourced (from major Insurance providers) by the Main Office, who then let the Insurance Advisors know which products can be sold on to their Customers, and these advisors also provide a range of Brochures (which describe the products) and Forms (to be completed and signed by the Customers).
There needs to be a HR component of the system would need to record all of the current employees of the company, along with the directors of the company. This would typically contain personal details of the employees (e.g. name, telephone, address, etc).
It is the job of the Insurance Advisors to visit Customers in their homes in order to ascertain their insurance requirements, and to help them fill in the Insurance Forms (some of which are quite complex) that must be completed in order to provide an accurate Insurance Quotation.
New Customers or Existing Customers: Typically will contact one of the Insurance Advisors for the Region, in which they live, this is to arrange such a visit when they need advice on other insurance products.
Each contact with a new or existing customer needs to be recorded into the system, especially details such as whether a follow-up is needed, or whether to send more information, along with information like time, date etc.
First thing every morning, each Insurance Advisor sends any Insurance Forms that they helped their Customers to complete the previous day back to the Head Office in Coventry.
BIC deal with a wide variety of insurance and will web search on behalf of their Customers in order to find the best deal on offer. Once an Insurance Quotation has been calculated it is sent by email directly to the Customer. Upon receipt of an Insurance Quotation, the Customer must then decide if they wish to go ahead with the insurance, in which case they must electronically sign an Acceptance Form and send this, together with their banking details for the full then they simply do nothing.
Upon receipt of a signed Acceptance Form, and accompanying payment, the Insurance Clerks send out the relevant Insurance Certificate to the Customer.
Problems?
BIC are having particular problems with the following areas of their business activity:
Standardising their forms and reports that the advisors use and relaying that information back to the Head Office
Reports at head office need to be generated on a monthly, 6 monthly and yearly basis to assess the success of the advisors, also how well each of the regions are performing.
Understand how well the products are performing in relevant regions. So better decisions can be made in regard to adopting new products and presenting these to customers.
Building up their customer base and accurately recording all the details concerning the customer, the products they have and any other contact information.
Supporting new and existing customers with information to help them decide on the right type of insurance to match their requirements.
The Company directors have requested that the new database be able to carry out the following transactions:
a. Enter the details of a new customer.
b. Enter the details of a new product.
c. Enter the details insurance quotations sent to customers.
d. Enter quotations made by advisors.
e. Record value web-search details of the product that have come to the market
Along with any other features which you deem necessary
Naturally NO CASE STUDY can capture all the details of the operations of the company; you are permitted to make any assumptions (provided you write these down).
Task 1
Business Case
Task 1A. Discuss why a relational database would be suitable for this organisation and provide (3) three reasons for this recommendation.
Task 1B.
Discuss using (3) three advantages that a database management system provides to an organisation (300 words).
Requirements Definition
Read the case study carefully, and decide what are the important (key) features of the system. Construct a basic prototype that will display the following:
Task 1C.
List typical reports that would be likely features of the database this requires you to assume the role of the user/manager and list three (3) likely reports he/she might need to do their job. Submit a hardcopy which shows the report, its main features, and then populate it with some likely test data. Submit a hardcopy that has a set of screen shots that illustrate the screen designs.
Note:
A suitable package to do the above task (A to D) would be Microsoft Word or any similar product.
Task 2
Development
Use database development strategy to decide the main elements of the database this will include nominating the:
Fields (also the primary keys and foreign keys)
Tables
Task 2A. Create a Data Dictionary which contains the following: table, field type, field size and field description
Note:
A suitable package to do Task 2B would be Microsoft Word or any similar product.
Database Design
Develop an initial prototype of this case study system, therefore in your design phase you and your team should create the following appropriate diagrams. Use the mysql Workbench (or equivalent tool set) to create the following:
Task 2B. An Entity - Relationship diagram.
Task 2C. Normalised Schema normalise to 3rd normal form. Provide a discussion that shows how you schema passes each of the normal forms.
Note:
A suitable package to do Task 2B would be EDraw, Microsoft Visio or any similar product.
Task 3
Implementation of a Relational Database
Task 3A.
Use the final normalised ER Diagram to create the physical database.
Use mysql server, Oracle Express or an equivalent relational database to create the system. Provide a screen shot of the final system that displays the entire set of tables.
Populate the Database
Task 3B. Enter six (6) records into the system that you can use to display to the client that the system can operate. Provide screenshots of the final system that displays (3) three of the tables with the mock data inserted.
User Help Guide
Task 3C. In order to complete the assignment, you need to provide a user manual that will describe how to use the system. Screenshots of the main menu and navigation between the sub-menus along with accurate descriptions is an important feature of this section of the assignment.
Note: You may use previous screenshots (forms, reports and data screens) to create this manual.
Improvement
Task 3D. Provide a lessons learned log that indicates what you found important and any improvements you wish to make for the next version of the database.
Note:
A suitable package to do Task 3A, Task 3B would be mysql server or any similar product.
A suitable package to do Task 3C, Task 3D would be Microsoft Word or any similar product.