Online Sales and Inventory Essay

1.1BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY Auto supply or auto parts dealers are stores which sells variety of car parts. Some auto supply companies also offers services like car repairs or maintenance and even a car wash. Auto supply has a lot of product line to sell with; it’s either for the performance side (brake fluid, coolant, radiator, engine belts, oil filters, clutch disc, hoses) or the physical side (paintjob, tires, mugs, lights). Some stores are more into car accessories (car alarm system, central lock, sound systems, vinyl, etc.) or tires and mugs selling. Big scale companies tend to have all of these. JTU Auto Supply is a medium scaled company that sells car parts for performance and maintenance of the car. It has been running around 5 years since it was established January 2008. JTU Auto Supply’s name was derived from the initials of â€Å"Jessie T. Uy† who is the owner of the company. From the experience of its owner, Jessie T. Uy of being a taxi driver before, He got interested and came up lots of ideas about different car parts that make him successfully established JTU Auto Supply. JTU Auto Supply’s main colors are red and yellow because the colors are striking, attractive, and visible. The owner also likes the color red because he has Chinese blood. JTU Auto Supply is different compare to other medium scaled auto supply companies because they are keen on having a certain image. They are clean, organized, and has a good structure. An impression to the buyers in proving their tag line â€Å"Tapat sa Presyo†. JTU Auto supply has five physical branches around Cavite located at Pag-asa subdivision which is its main branch, Buhay na tubig, along Molino road near SM Molino, Along Aguinaldo Highway and Salitran. Each branch is dependent on their main branch at Pag-asa. They provide varieties of products and selling five main product lines. These are replacement parts, performance, accessories, fluids and chemicals, and tools. The uses of these for the vehicle are for maintenances or performances. Under replacement parts includes air conditioning, battery and accessories, belts and hoses, body, trim and mirrors, brakes, charging and starting, engine parts, cooling, heating, exhaust fuel, emission, ignition, transmission, wiper and lot more. Under performance includes body styling components, oil, sealers, and additives, tuners, safety equipment and more. If you go for accessories it includes chrome, dress up, exterior and interior and also for trucks. If you need tools they have for body repair, diagnostic tools, electrical, lift equipment, gloves, work wear, safety equipment, tapes, books and manuals too. Under fluids they have windshield wash, A/C chemicals, antifreeze, de-icers, cleaners, brakes, battery chemicals, fuel system, gasket markers, remover, sealers, grease, lubes, adhesives, paint, body repair, maintenance chemicals, leak detectors and oils. Mr. Jessie T. Uy mentioned that they have approximately 15,000 products all-in-all and over a thousand each product line that they have. The main goal of the JTU business is to give its customers a trust and confidence to buy its products and services. To prove to its customers that JTU Auto Supply is dependable, clean, consistent and honest. For the future, they wanted to be like a convenience store and to franchise its business. This impressions and trusts JTU Auto Supply gives customers an attraction to come back. The tagline â€Å"Bringing services to your doorstep† m eans offering to the customers, a great services in terms of delivery of products. They have free delivery fee and can deliver products within 13-15 kilometer radius from its branches for 10-20 minutes. They still offer free delivery beyond the said distance but JTU Auto Supply cannot guarantee the time of delivery. It comes to proponents interest that they never seen a medium scale auto supply have grown this fast yet still having some operational problems and transaction flaws. The problems of the company that they often encountered are mostly in the sales and inventory. JTU Auto Supply manually encodes large amount of items in their inventory. Manually generates sales reports from the receipts or sales invoices they have. They also manually checks and track the inventories in every branches through phone calls, texting or even visiting. This may cause inconvenience in their part especially now that the company starts to grow more. They store their data into Microsoft Excel and open source software such as Quickbook that may cause some security problems in terms to the employees working inside the company. There is a possibility to alter the reports and confidential data. A problem observed is that when it comes to compatibility and specification of the product is hard to find, having lots of possible models in just a single part. Mainly in there free delivery, customers will not be able to see the product itself and causes a lot of misunderstanding or mistakes on the products they ordered. 1.2STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM JTU Auto Supply has five physical stores, all of the branches including the main branch are manually tracking, and checking the remaining items and sold items on each branches’ inventory is by calling, texting, and visiting each branches. Mr. Jessie T. Uy always visit and call each branches (except if he has emergency appointments) just to check updates of sales and inventory such as its needs of every branches. This is very inconvenient for his part since he has also other businesses and works to do. JTU Auto Supply also manually adds, edit, and delete the large amount of items on the Microsoft Excel which is inconvenient. As of now, they already have approximately 15,000 items but as the company grow, JTU Auto Supply is having difficulty in maintaining their inventory. The data on their company such as inventory files, sales invoice files, reports, and a like are also not secured because any person or employee can add, edit, view, and delete it on the Microsoft Excel without the permission and not knowing of the owner. They also manually compute and generate the sales report that may lead to data inconsistencies and errors. They generate it using their copy of sales invoice. JTU Auto Supply has some problems in handling orders via telephone. In their operation they take orders what they can see physically and do not deduct it on the main inventory they have, this causes the items to run out of stocks. Example of this is when a customer calls to order a 5 pieces of 1 litre of brake fluids, the employee will accept the order and deduct on their store’s inventory but someone came to the store and buys exactly 5 pieces of 1 litre of brake fluids. The problem is that physically, an employee sees that there are still remaining item on the storeâ⠂¬â„¢s inventory without knowing that someone has already purchased it. 1.3RESEARCH OBJECTIVE 1.3.1 General Objectives The proposed JTU Auto Supply Online sales and inventory system aims to develop and provide JTU Auto Supply an Online Sales and Inventory system. 1.3.2 Specific Objectives 1.3.2.1 Conduct an interview to identify the problems and needs of the company. 1.3.2.2 Study existing system to define the company problems and needs. 1.3.2.3 Gather information that will be needed in developing proposed system. 1.3.2.4 Analyze gathered information to come up with solutions and in order to design a proposed system. 1.3.2.5 Create a system that will be functional and much help for the company. 1.3.2.6 Evaluate and test the system and help in maintaining the system. 1.4SIGNIFICANCE/JUSTIFICATION 1.4.1 To management. JTU Auto Supply will be able to use the online sales and inventory system because it will fix the problems encountered by the employees. These problems particularly are the manual checking and tracking of inventory from one branch to another and manual computation and encoding of sales in Microsoft Excel. The proposed JTU Auto Supply system also will advertise them further through the website to attract more customers. 1.4.2 To customers. The customers would benefit from the proposed system due to its ease in making transaction, creating orders and buying through online. It is convenient for the customers to buy online and deliver it to their doors hassle-free. Customers can check the availability and price of the item they wish to buy anytime without visiting JTU Auto Supply stores. 1.4.3 To proponents. The Proponents idea and knowledge in establishing a website will become broader. Techniques and programming skills will be developed and will understand more the programming language that will be used. The study will also help them to understand the process of transactions and real problems in real world business. 1.4.4 To future researchers. The study will be useful to the future researchers who will conduct a similar study to JTU Auto Supply Online Sales and Inventory System. The study can serve as the reference in creating the documentation of the future studies including its format and content. 1.5CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK InputProcessOutput 1.6SCOPE OF THE STUDY The scope of the JTU Auto Supply Online Sales and Inventory system are selling and tracking its products and services through online. It features different categories of the products and services, its prices, their descriptions and modes of payments. The mode of payment is cash-on-delivery basis only. The JTU Auto Supply Online Sales and Inventory system will also allow the customers to avail its products only if the user has an account to the website. The proposed will have a built-in shopping cart for the list of orders of the customers. Customers can confirm and cancel their orders through shopping cart. Once the order is confirmed, the item will be delivered. The coverage of its delivery is limited only 13-15 km radius of their branches. 15-20 minutes of delivery is guaranteed only if the location is covered in the 13-15km radius. Directions and contact information of JTU Auto Supply are also included for those customers who wish to visit and call directly the branches. Allowing and providing a customers’ corner will also be included for them to post their questions, inquiries, suggestions and other important concerns regarding the services and products of JTU Auto Supply. The JTU Auto Supply Online Sales and Inventory system will also include the tracking inventory and sold products on every JTU Auto Supply branches. The Pag-asa branch which is the main branch of JTU Auto Supply will be in-charge with the online ordering and delivery of the ordered items. The system will provide an account for administrators of the JTU Auto Supply to control and maintain the system process such as adding, editing, and deleting items on the inventory database. For the communication of each branch, the proposed system will also provide message box or e-mail for the administrator to administrator account from one branch to another.