The purpose of this assignment is to propose the use Information Systems (IS) in improving service quality in two areas at Thumbkin Hose Resturant (THR) namely: 1. To tract food items stock level so that there will never be “out of stock problems and 2. To adopt online ordering to reach more customers to THR.

1. Introduction
The purpose of this assignment is to propose the use Information Systems (IS) in improving
service quality in two areas at Thumbkin Hose Resturant (THR) namely: 1. To tract food
items stock level so that there will never be “out of stock problems and 2. To adopt online
ordering to reach more customers to THR. The assignment requires discussion on how IS
could be used to improve service quality of the restaurant.
Background of Thumbkin House Restaurant (THR)
THR is located in Kuala Lumpur. This restaurant serves a variety of eastern and western
cuisines and drinks. THR is already using Information System (IS) in
handling data for processing food orders on daily operation. It has provided
faster response to customers. But management want IS functions to be
expanded to track food items stock level so that there will never be "out-of-
stock" problems. THR also wants to adopt online ordering to reach more
customers via food delivery service. In order to implement these goals,
appropriate IS Strategic Planning has to be carried out.
Overview of the assignment content
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
An information system is a computer system that provides management and other personnel
within THR with up-to-date information regarding the organization's performance that
involves only food orders. THR need to upgrade the system so that THR would be able to
include current inventory and sales.. It is and need to be designed to capture, transmit, store,
retrieve, manipulate, and or display information used in one or more business processes.

2. These systems output information would be useable at all levels of the organization: strategic,
tactical, and operational.
Organizations use different types of MIS for different needs and scenarios. At a given point
of time an organization might be using several types in isolation and in combination. THR
need to use transaction processing system (TPS) to tabulate all its recurring transactions like
inventory and customer orders. The operations information system, (OIS), is used by
managers to plan out their production and schedule activities. The decision support systems (
DSS) is used by the top management to find feasible solutions and options to different
scenarios.
The uses of MIS in THR Management would help in:
1. transaction processing such as answering the questions, status of a particular record and
variety of documents.
2.It gives operational data for planning, scheduling and control.
3.It helps in decision making and to correct an out of control situation.
4.It helps middle management in short term planning, target setting and control the business
functions.
5.It helps top management in goal setting, planning business planes and its implementations.
6.It helps in generating information, communicating of the generated information, problem
identification and helps in the process of decision making.
How IS can be used to track food items stock level,
1. The inputs involved
a. What arears need to be changed? Changes would involve new computers , software to
accomadate the new requirement of stock inventory

3. b. Who would be involved in the changes? The IT personnel would be the foremost
person to be involved, the serving staff, the teller machine staff, the chef, the store
person. These are people who are directly involved in the use of the new system
c. How much would it cost? Costing involve new purchase of internet facilities,
computers, teller machines,training of staff if necessary to man the system
2. The process involved in carrying out the above function through IS requires the folowing
steps:
Step 1;Start from scratch. Perform this initial count of inventory .
Step 2;Set up a software-based inventory control system that has automatic calculation
feature, and with software that can be pre-set orders to be triggered at certain inventory
levels.
Step 3;Establish company policies for inventory control. Make sure that accurate inventory
records are kept and that at least one party is specifically responsible for inventory
management on a daily or even near-real-time basis.
Step 4;Set up your inventory control procedure to involve two people if possible. Not only do
two sets of eyes make it less likely that anything will be missed during the inventory count, it
is also a good general safety and anti-loss measure.
Step 5;Confirm expected usage and investigate significant variances. Restaurants can track
the exact numbers of each item on the menu sold each day, and have good idea of what
ingredients are used and how that should be reflected in inventory. THR need to keep in mind
that Inventory variances are part of the restaurant business. Sometimes an employee
accidentally ruins a large batch of food, or spoilage occurs due to a banquet cancellation or
another expected demand that does not materialize, or sometimes employees simply have to

4. "comp" a lot of dishes in a given week because of a new cook learning the ropes. Significant
variances from expected usage could, however, represent theft, and should be investigated.
Output
The use of Information Technology (IT) helps restaurant in making their services much better
and makes work easier. The application of IT could be in the form of using the internet to
advertise a firm’s services, managing data with technology, online ordering and
communicating with customers through the internet among other services. Applying IT to
restaurants could also improve their service quality. Use of IT to manage its data has the
potential to improve service quality as well as its decision making processes. THt which
maintains a database of all orders that its customers make, are better informed about the
meals that customers order most. By addin a new software in the system it would help the
restaurant’s management to keep track of its supplies and inventory, and know what extra
items management needs to buy and would be able to achieve the “ no stock” . The Point of
Sale (POS) System for managing sales would be easy to collect information on sales and
orders made.
THR could use the following strategies:
Chase strategy where stock produce are only to meet or the demand for goods, that is to
produces meals only when a customer orders therefore matching the actual production with
customer demand. The chase strategy keeps inventories low, which frees up cash that can be
used to buy raw materials or components, and reduces inventory carrying costs that are
associated with holding inventory in stock. Cost of capital, warehousing, reduction,
insurance, taxes, obsolescence and shrinkage are all inventory carrying costs.

5. The second strategy is Make-to-stock whera goods are produced before customers place
orders. The make-to-stock strategy typically allows manufacturers to produce goods in long
production runs, taking advantage of production efficiencies. Because the make-to-stock
environment produces goods on a consistent basis, a master production schedule determines
the exact number of units to produce for each production run. Thus this strategy allows the
“no stock” available.
The third approach is Make-to-order strategy where THR produce goods after receiving an
order from the customer. Most often a company that uses the make-to-order strategy produces
one-of-a-kind goods. This is not a good strategy for THR since they serve both western and
easten cusine and drinks. Unless they keep track of popular dishes and drinks and have fix
menu
.
1aii) Illustration of relevant IS input-transformation-output flow diagram for function 1ai.
1bi) Discussion of how the IS can be used to support online ordering for food delivery service, by focusing on
the following details:
On lineRestaurantMarketing Strategies
On Line food ordering services are websites that feature interactive menus allowing
customers to place order to THR. Customer would choose from available items, choose
delivery or pick up. Payment can be by credit card or cash.
On line marketing strategy opens to virtual ways of promotions by attracting new customers
with functional website establishing communication with customers, promoting the
restaurant, give information about daily deals, menu changes, and any events in the
restaurant.
The website must be regularly supplemented with new content and optimized for internet
browsers. High quality POS software offer the ability to update menus offers and changes in
the price.

6. Advantages for online ordering.
Customer can order at will when they have time to. They can customised their order the way
they want to without errors in communication. The restaurant can take more orders with less
staff.
There would be disadvantage too. Customer may not pick up the order and there would be
waste of food an loss of profit.
 The inputs involved
 The process/ methods (step 1, step 2, etc.) involved in carrying out the above function
through IS
The output produced
IS Strategic Planning to achieve the two new objectives of THR
1. Suitability of IS With THR
To be able to achieve the two objectives of THR, strategic planning to suit the goals needs to
be carried out by THR. To come up with two changes, THR has to strategically plan on
changes involving resources used to attain these deals, and on the policies that are to govern
the acquisition, use and disposition of these resources.
Thus strategic planning is a process involving acquisition and disposition of facilities,
divisions, or subsidiaries, the markets to be served and distribution channels for serving them;
the organization-structure ; research and development of new product lines .
Strategic Planning decisions affect the physical, financial, and organizational
framework within which operations are carried on. There are several steps in
strategic planning process that THR need to follow the following steps namely:
1. The first step is to establish objectives, the results expected, what is to be
done and where the primary emphasis is to be placed.

7. 2. The second step is to establish planning premises, i.e. assumptions about the
anticipated internal and external environment that involve additional
technology, and social and ethical condition, qualitative and quantitative and
controllable, non controllable. the product market; and the factor market,
(location of factory, labor, and materials etc). Internal premises include capital
investment, sales forecast and organization structure. Some premises can be
quantified while others may be qualitative. Some premises are controllable,
such as expansion into a new market, adoption of a research program or a new
site for the headquarters. Non-controllable premises include population growth,
price levels, tax rates, business cycles etc. The semi controllable premises are
the firm’s assumptions about its share of the market, labor turnover, labor
efficiency, and the company’s pricing policy.
3. The third step in planning is to identify alternative courses of action.
4. The fourth step is to evaluate them by weighing the various factors in the
light of premises and goals.
5. The fifth step is adopting the plan.
6. The final step is to give meaning to plans by preparing budgets.
The information technology architecture needed for THR
Information technology architecture is the process of development of methodical information
technology specifications, models and guidelines, using a variety of Information Technology
notations, within a coherent Information Technology architecture framework, following
formal and informal Information
The IT Architecture is guided by the following objectives, which help make decisions for
establishing standards that serves: the Department's mission, and heterogeneous
environments. IT architecture should should identify areas of stability without impeding
essential innovation, should describe the tangible results of conformance and non-

8. conformance with the architecture. should provide sufficient documentation to assess the
compliance of a specific implementation.
What is the purpose of the IT Architecture?
The purpose of the IT Architecture is to guide the process of planning, acquiring, building,
modifying, interfacing and deploying IT resources throughout the restaurant. IT Architecture
should offer a means of stable evolution by identifying technologies that work together to
satisfy the needs of the Department users. The proposal put forth by IT architecture for THR
two new objectives have taken inti account of the above mention requirement.
To be able to succeed in the plan, THR need to understand the approaches that would
involve
1. Rational planning involves identifying and understanding gaps between
previously established goals and past performance, identifying the resources
needed to close these gaps, distributing those resources and monitoring their
use in moving the organization closer towards its goals. This approach assumes
the environment is predictable and the organization can be effectively
controlled. Since this is a straight forward business serving western and easterd
cusine, THR have chosen the correct approach.
2. Incrementalism means moving from one strategy to the next, depending
on the unfolding of events beyond the control of managers. Incrementalism
assumes that managers cannot forecast or enforce the developments essential to
developing a pre-ordained strategy and therefore must continually adjust.
Future developments are likely to be random so that there is little scope to
learn from past experiences. Thus, in contrast to rational planning which

9. emphasizes intended strategies, incrementalism is based on emergent
strategies.
3. Organizational learning also emphasizes the need for making continuous
adjustments. However, these adjustments need not be random. Rather,
managers must keep making incremental adjustments to rational plans as
they attempt to move the organization toward its goals. Though they may be
unable to foresee the future, managers must not allow their organization to
drift aimlessly. The role of top management is to encourage all employees to
continuously challenge the status quo, generate ideas for improving the
status quo, conduct experiments to see which of these ideas are most fruitful
and then try to disseminate knowledge gained from these experiments
throughout the organization.
Time and budget needed and functionality
Starting a restaurant is an ambitious undertaking in term of time and money. But since THR
has already started using IS for food orders budgeting would take into consideration of
existing facilities. The following budget needed to be taken into account are:
1.New equipment and technology cost and prioritizing the most important list, do research
price for example wifi price option
2. Salesand marketing
So as not to overbudgetandover spendthe followingneedtobe takenintoaction,
Leverage the Internet.
Signup forsocial mediasites.
Place low-costFacebookandTwitterads;consideradvertisingonothersocial mediasites.
Start a conversationusingyour website’sblogandsocial media

10. Hand out flyersatlocal businesses.
- CONCLUSION
TH Restaurant, need to apply MIS tools such as a Point of Sale system or a Post Order
System to their internal operations. This will help them have a system to calculate both their
orders and record inventory. The system will also help management keep track of and
monitor their stock. With this system it will be difficult for stealing to take place and delays
in providing what the customer wants. The system to monitor its inventory will help the
restaurant know exactly which items need to be bought ahead of time and avoid telling
customers to order another meal instead of their preferred choice. Inventory system helps
them record their inventory instead of doing it manually. The chasier would be able to
transfer order data from waiter to the computer. The inventory section stores information
about the item name, quantity available and the price at which it was bought. The data on
orders and inventory goes into a MySQL database which can be viewed by the administrator.
The admininstrator can also keep track of any data that has been entered and receipts can also
be issued. Other users can be created so that the staff in the kitchen can view the orders made
by customers. The inventory section helps the storekeeper record new items in inventory and
track inventory in order to alert management of the new items that need to be bought. Casual
dining restaurants that use MIS are able to improve upon their internal processes and
therefore able to do more with their external processes. Service quality is indeed important
and must not be ignored in a restaurant‟s operations. Thus, in order to gain a competitive
advantage in the food industry, it would be best for a restaurant to apply information
technology very well to its operations to achieve good service quality.