Business Application Development Report for Food and Catering Company

This report details the development of a business application designed to enhance business-to-business communication for a small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) in the food and catering industry. The report begins with an introduction outlining the background, aim, and objectives of the project, emphasizing the importance of technology in improving customer relationships and operational efficiency. It then proceeds to a literature review, focusing on requirements elicitation, including functional requirements such as stakeholder analysis and software benchmarking, and structural requirements involving risk identification, personnel analysis, and system environment analysis. The report identifies key stakeholders, analyzes their needs, and assesses potential risks associated with application development. It also examines the use of a Gantt chart for project management, supportive evidence including industry information and business models. The objective is to create a mobile-based application to improve communication, reduce costs, and increase customer satisfaction within a six-month timeframe, supported by detailed analysis and planning. The project aims to identify the appropriate technologies and processes for developing an application that improves communication within the company and with its stakeholders, addressing functional, structural, and resource requirements.

Running head: BUSINESS APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
BUSINESS APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

Table of Contents
1. Introduction.............................................................................................................................3
1.1 Background:...........................................................................................................................3
1.2 Aim:.......................................................................................................................................4
1.3 Objectives:.............................................................................................................................4
2. Literature Review: The Requirements Elicitation Approach..................................................4
2.1 Functional Requirements for developing the application:.....................................................4
2.1.1 Analysis of the Stakeholders:..........................................................................................4
2.1.2 Software Benchmarking Analysis:..................................................................................5
2.2 Structural Requirements for developing the Application:.....................................................6
2.2.1 Risk Identification:..........................................................................................................6
2.2.2 Analysis of Personnel:.....................................................................................................6
2.2.3 System Environment Analysis:.......................................................................................6
References...................................................................................................................................8

1. Introduction
1.1 Background:
Technology have made enormous advancements in the past few years. New and more
efficient technologies are developed regularly in order to improve the operations of the system.
Not only that, new technologies are developed in order to bring about new opportunities in the
business sector and operations. Collaboration with the trading partners with proper utilization
internet technology have benefited the business sector and this technology has developed quite a
lot in the past two decades. The process of communicating electronically is often referred to as
Business to Business Communication. The business to business communication helps in the
process of Supply Chain Management, e-Procurement and Business to Business Electronic
Payment. With the advancement of the mobile based technology, the involvement of the mobile
based devices have increased in the work place as well which has resulted in the gaining a
significant role in the Business to Business communication for improving the customer
relationship in various sector.
The selected company X is SME in the food and catering services who is in the business
for a quite a long time. With the development of the technologies, there are a number of ways in
which the catering business and the customer relationship can be improved. And as an IT expert
working for the company, a business application has to be developed for the company which will
help in improving the business by enhancing efficient customer relationship within a tenure of 6
months. For an industry like the food and the catering services the main stakeholder is the
customer. The entire business depends upon the customer’s feedback and their satisfaction. In
order to improve that, developing an application is extremely beneficial. The business
application is capable of handling numerous things at once. This helps in the process of cost
reduction in the industry. Not only that, the working efficiency of the business increases with
leaps and bounds. The applications are now easily viable with the help of the mobile devices and
are thus handy. No more bulky computer systems are required for accessing application.
Moreover, with the improvement of the cloud based technologies, storing the data on the online
databases helps in easy availability of the data. Remote access of the data helps in any time and
all the time access of the information and the changes can be made to the system as per the
requirements of an individual over the internet. For making changes, one has to be authorized to
so. Moreover, an application in the field of the catering and food services helps keeping in touch
with the customer even on the go. In order to do so, a project management team is needed who
will involve the IT experts for the completion of the project. There are certain milestones that has
to be achieved in order to build an application. Not only that, for the successful completion of the
project, scheduling has to be performed as well with the stakeholder analysis, risk assessment,
Gantt Chart, and budgeting has to be performed as well. The purpose of the study is to identify
and analyze the main requirements of developing a business application for improving
communication process in the food and the catering process for the company.

1.2 Aim:
The aim of the study is to identify the technologies that can be used for creating an
application which will serve the business to business communication purpose for the Catering
and Food Service Company. The aim is to identify the functional requirements and the
stakeholders who will be affected with the development of the application.
1.3 Objectives:
The objectives of the paper is given in the section below:
1. To identify the primary fundamental requirement for development of the business
application.
2. To identify the risks associated with the development of the application.
3. To identify and analyze the time taken for the development of the application and its
effect on the stakeholders of the organization.
2. Literature Review: The Requirements Elicitation Approach
2.1 Functional Requirements for developing the application:
The functional requirements are the features of the products which are used by the
developers for developing an application. The functional requirements demonstrate the work or
the functioning of the software that will be developed. The behavior of the system under certain
conditions is described properly with the help of the fundamental requirement of the system. The
examples of the functional requirements includes, business rules, corrections in transaction,
cancellation, adjustments, administrative functions, authentications, levels of authorization,
tracking of audit, certification, historical data and many more. In this section of the study, the
analysis of the stakeholders and software specifications are explained in depth.
2.1.1 Analysis of the Stakeholders:
In any kind of project management, the management of the stakeholders plays an
essential role. The stakeholders of an organisation plays a significant role in every business. In
the customer centric business like the Food and Catering Services satisfying the clients, the
customers and the other stakeholders helps ensuring smooth operations in the organisation.
The stakeholders of project management includes, project managers, developers, security
experts, employees of the organisation and a few others. Each of the project have their own set of
stakeholders who are have completely different set of expectations from the new system or
software that is in process of development. In case of software application development, the
stakeholders includes, person, or a group of people or the organisation or anything that is
affected by the development of the software.
According to Hosseinichimeh et al. (2019), the process of identifying the stakeholders for
a client differs from that of the business of the organisation. With the help of the stakeholder
management and analysis techniques, the roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders of a

project or an organisation is identified with an ease. The process of identifying the stakeholders
of an organisation depends upon how the application is utilised by the end users. According to
the complete lifecycle of developing a software, the stakeholders includes, developers, users,
decision makers and the legislator. Once the stakeholders are identified, and their roles and
responsibilities are determined, a direct communication has to be initiated in order to understand
the requirement of the individual stakeholder. The software is then developed such that it can
meet all the majority of the expectations of each of the consumer, clients and other stakeholders.
After all the clarification regarding the requirements have been confirmed, a stakeholder matrix
has is obtained. Which shows the priorities stated by the stakeholders, the objective of the
individual stakeholders, and the contributions of the stakeholder according to which the
developer starts designing the software.
2.1.2 Software Benchmarking Analysis:
As mentioned by Vlachos et al. (2019) once the stakeholder analysis is done and the
matrix of priority is obtained, the software required for the development of the application are
determined. The requirements are sorted on the basis of the mentions done by the stakeholders
with the highest of priorities. The high priority of the stakeholders of the organization includes
the investors, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and groups in the industry, the
group of consumers, risk analysts, the policy makers, and many more.
As the company is mainly based on food and catering services, the aim is establishing a
positive customer satisfaction and review. The more is the customer satisfaction, the better it is
for the business. Apart from this, the suppliers has to be satisfied as well. Thus while developing
an application, the customer base and the supplier base has to be kept in mind at first. Then
comes the investors of the organisation. The investor of the organisation are the ones through
which profit can be incorporated within the company. Thus the application must have certain
features which will benefit or rather be more convenient for the investors as well.
The software specification approach follows the benchmarking of the software, which
includes some other sub-stages. The most important step of the software benchmarking process
is the collection of data. The data is collected using a qualitative approach, which includes
normal survey of the market and a few more.
Based on the data that has been gathered with the help of the surveys and other processes,
a benchmark evaluation is conducted. This process helps in the analysis of the benchmark data
for the comparison of gathered information such that the stakeholder objectives are identified
and final requirement of the Business to Business Communication application in the mobile
devices are met properly. The benchmarking process has certain issues like with the fast
technological advancement, the present specification of the software remains same. Thus
planning of the project has to be done in order to complete the process of designing, developing
and incorporating new software into the system.

2.2 Structural Requirements for developing the Application:
The structural requirement of an organisation mainly includes the basic requirement for
fulfilling the functional requirement satisfactorily. The structural requirement consists of the risk
analysis of the probable software that has to be prepared. Apart from the organisational risks, the
analysis of the members associated with the project or the organization is also part of the
structural requirement.
2.2.1 Risk Identification:
Every project has certain risks associated with itself. The risk may come from the existing
employees of the organization or the past employees. The risk may originate from the technical
malfunctioning in the system or due to certain hacker attacks or physical attacks, or budget risk
and time and quality risk may occur as well. Thus risk identification plays an important role. The
process of identification of the risks in the system along with all the other processes is known as
the risk management. Risk management is one of the most important part of the project
management. According to Kliem and Ludin, (2019) the risk management process is further
divided into risk identification, risk analysis, priority matrix, mitigation and contingency plan. To
improve the functionality of the Business to Business mobile application for the Company,
identifying the risk and finding the mitigation plan is very essential.
2.2.2 Analysis of Personnel:
The individual personnel working in the administration of the company or of the software
are mainly prone to the huge in number risks related to their job role. In case of development of
application, the problem persists as well. Analysing the role played by the employees of the
organization, along with the supplier, the developer and the others helps in the process of
identification of the structural requirements of the organisation. The analysis of the personnel
helps in identifying the talents of the employees such that they can be allotted job roles of their
choices. The staffs with less skills can thus be trained and prepared for the suitable job post after
performing the analysis. “Training time of developers and other staff in order to acquire
necessary skills can be quite intricate, so a systematic personnel analysis which compares
necessary tasks and roles with the human capital of the client reveals the exact personnel
requirements for the project.”
2.2.3 System Environment Analysis:
This is the way by which the ease of functioning in a system can be identified within an
IT environment. The functional requirements that has been identified in the system while
benchmarking the software is implemented in the system after proper stakeholder analysis and
identification of the risks in the system due to its implementation. It is not possible for the
business to understand the IT operations in depth. The system environment analysis helps in the
identification of the existing interfaces modules and system in the company. The identification of
the necessary system is also done in this phase of the analysis. With the help of the analysis, the

existing IT framework of the company along with all the other necessary details regarding the
necessary framework is gathered with the help of the system environment analysis. After
gathering the information, the IT experts of the system prepares a graphic of the previous and
afterwards phases of the Information technology infrastructure. These graphic designing helps in
getting better understanding of the areas which will be affected with the implementation of the
new technology in the system. All the necessary analysis performed during this phase lays the
foundation of the personnel analysis and the risk analysis for the proposed business mobile
application system for the X Company.

References:
Hosseinichimeh, N., Kim, H., Ebrahimvandi, A., Iams, J. and Andersen, D., 2019. Using a
stakeholder analysis to improve systems modelling of health issues: the impact of progesterone
therapy on infant mortality in Ohio. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 36(4), pp.476-
493.
Vlachos, C., Burny, C., Pelizzola, M., Borges, R., Futschik, A., Kofler, R. and Schlötterer, C.,
2019. Benchmarking software tools for detecting and quantifying selection in evolve and
resequencing studies. Genome biology, 20(1), p.169.
Kliem, R.L. and Ludin, I.S., 2019. Reducing project risk. Routledge.