Aalsmeer Flower Auction (Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer) is a flower auction, located in Aalsmeer, the Netherlands.
It is the largest flower auction in the world. The auction building of the flower auction in Aalsmeer is the second largest building in the world, in terms of floorspace, covering 990,000 m² (10.6 million sq ft).[1] Flowers from all over the world (Europe, Colombia, Ethiopia, etc) are traded on a daily basis at the Aalsmeer facilities.
Task 1
Information system
Definition A Management Information System (MIS) converts data from Internal and External Sources into information in an APPROPRIATE FORM to managers at different levels in an organization to enable them to make effective DECISIONS or to monitor/control the performance of their employees. (Nuseibeh, B. and Easterbrook, S. 2000, 11-45)
In Aalsmeer Flower Auction Information will come from internal and external sources. Internal information includes data from transaction processing. External information includes market research, intelligence gathering about the activities of competitors, information about social trends, economic factors, government legislation, and so on. This information can be obtained by "interpersonal networking", the media or by industrial espionage. In some large organisations, a whole department can exist to gather external information. An important feature of the MIS will be to put this information into a form that is useable by the managers. The traditional information flow in an organisation is through notice boards, newsletters and memos. Technological systems include Email, Intranets, collaboration software e.g. Lotus Notes and computer databases. (Nuseibeh, B. and Easterbrook, S. 2000, 11-45)
Core Competencies and time scale
Every market leading enterprise will have at least one core competency - that is, a function they perform better than their competition. By building an exceptional management information system into the enterprise it is possible to push out ahead of the competition. MIS systems provide the tools necessary to gain a better understanding of the market as well as a better understanding of the enterprise itself. As far a time estimation is concerned, every MIS is designed and developed by considering it is size and complications. An average or medium size information system can be develop in a month or more
Requirements
The end users for the service of Aalsmeer Flower Auction need to be able to submit search expressions of varying complexity, with a number of options, via a number of user-friendly forms interfaces. The information system for Aalsmeer Flower Auction must support full Boolean logic, and provide the ability for the user to optionally select (from a subset that can be configured by the Project Team) which parts of the records in the database are ...