DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ONLINE PARCEL DELIVERY MESSAGING SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE

1.Introduction 

Easy Coach Limited is a transport and courier service company that operates in Kenya and Uganda, with its head offices being in Nairobi. In offering its services to the customers it has opened numerous branches with an extensive branch network in Western and Nyanza provinces and outside the country (Uganda). Its mission is to be the Best Road Passenger Transport in East Africa.

1.1.Problem statement

Easy Coach Limited courier service involves delivering of parcels to various location in the country for its clients. The system in operation allows entry and processing of parcel details manually. This makes it cumbersome and time consuming when dealing with daily activities of receiving and sending of parcels. Since these activities involve entry of records in paper files, storage is also another issue that is pressing the company.  Security is another point of concern as far as the current system is concerned. This is because there is no controlled access to the details of the parcel. Also with the current system the management has to travel visiting each and every station to view report. This is an expensive exercise to the company as the manager has to incur travelling expenses.

1.2.Proposed solution

Having identified some of the key problems being faced by my client, I hereby propose to employ the following measures to help mitigate the problems. To arrest the problems of the existing system, the proposed system will:

i.Automate entry of parcel details hence saving on time

ii.Send alert messages to both the sender and recipient of the parcel 

iii.Deal with storage issue by creating a Computer based database to store information of all its daily activities.

iv.Ensure security by granting access only to authorized people to interact with the system.

v.Speed up generation of reports on parcel, senders, recipients and the staff in all stations.

vi.Enable the manger to log into the system in any location and get to view reports. This will reduce on organizations expenses.

According to the findings of the investigation the benefits outweigh the cost since the current system is inefficient, insecure, and slow and the company is capable (economically and technically) to undertake the development of the system

1.3.Project justification

With the development and implementation of the proposed system the organization will be able to realize the benefits which includes:

i).To automate the process of sending and receiving parcels in the organization.

ii).To increase the productivity of the staff working in the company by helping save time through making activity such as generating reports easy.

iii).Flexibility as the manager will be able to monitor the activities in each station remotely.

iv).Through adoption of the proposed system the company will have a competitive advantage over its competitors.

v).Standardization of the company's operations in line with vision 2030 of integrating ICT in places of work.

1.4.The objectives

In developing Online Parcel Information System, the following objectives will be met at the end of the project.

i).Real time message alert to both sender and the recipient of the parcel.

ii).Implement security on data through password and password encryption.

iii).Effective arrangement of parcel data in the database.