HI5019 Debugging Distributed Systems Assignment Sample

• Subject Code : HI5019
• University : Holmes Institute My Assignment Services is not sponsored or endorsed by this college or university.
• Subject Name : Management

Strategic Information System

Table of Contents

Executive Summary.

Introduction..

Six strengths in HARDA’s system for controlling sales transactions.

Problems HARDA Fashion has avoided by the strengths.

Situational pressures that would increase the likelihood of fraud.

Reasons behind choosing a distributed computer system rather than a centralised one

Conclusion.

References.

Executive Summary of Debugging Distributed Systems

In the report, the strengths of the HARDA’s system have been identified and also the problems that can be avoided with the help of that system. The major strength is that the company can easily identify the economic order quantity by evaluating the rate of sales of different type of clothes. HARDA’s system helps the management in preparing updated financial information. It has been found that the system used by HARDA helps in circumventing the issue of handling bulky data. It has been analysed that the distributed systems are considered to be faster than a single computer system. The advantage of a distributed database is that the queries can be effectively routed to the server with the specific information of the user instead of sending all the requests to a single machine that may get overloaded after some time.

Introduction to Debugging Distributed Systems

An accounting information system is defined as a structure that is used by the business organizations to gather, store, manage, process and report the financial information and data in order to be effectively used by the accountants, business analysts, chief financial officers, regulators, auditors, managers and tax agencies (Bumblauskas et al. 2017). Unsophisticated maintenance of cash registers plays a crucial role in recording sales, controlling transactions and balancing the accounts. Business organizations that offer several modes of sales comprising of cash and credit sales, apply cash registers in order to effectively manage the overall system. However, along with several benefits of cash registers, there are various threats being posed by them. In this report, the strengths and the problems will be discussed that are in connection with cash register being adopted by HARDA Fashion. Moreover, the report will also outline the situational pressures that are attributable to the company that may increase the likelihood of fraud.

Six Strengths in HARDA’s System for Controlling Sales Transactions

1. The major strengths in the system of HARDA for controlling sales transactions are listed below -
   Outstanding inventory management system – One of the major strengths of HARDA’s system is concerned with inventory management system. The system enables the sales assistant to maintain the record of details of transactions including the quantity, unit price, clothes item number and proper description (Turner et al. 2020). With the availability of all such records, HARDA is able to manage its stock effectively in real time by gaining the idea regarding the number of clothes that are being available for the specific period of time. Moreover, the company can easily identify the economic order quantity by evaluating the rate of sales of different type of clothes. The system enables the management to identify the outflow of clothes from the store. This type of information helps the management in determining the type of clothes that are in high demand.
2. Consistent and customizable reports – The other strength of HARDA’s system is concerned with the availability of consistent and customizable reports. HARDA can effectively prepare the reports on daily basis based on the transactions recorded by the sales assistant and the cashier. The reports will discuss all the activities and the business operations in a specific period of time and therefore, helps in gaining understanding with regard to the performance of the company. Along with this, the company would be able to use such reports to undertake effective decision making process. For example – daily sales can be used to identify the sales volume that can be processed by it in one day and thus will help in making a reliable and relevant forecast.
3. Updated financial information – HARDA’s system helps the management in preparing updated financial information. Invoicing and sales records help the company in identifying the volume of sales which can be used in making the financial statements. This will help the company in getting appropriate information regarding every sales transaction at the end of the financial period. Also, accessibility to the up to date data, the financial reports of the company will fetch adequate and accurate position of the business operations.
4. Maintenance of track of customer transactions and speedy checkout time – HRDA’ s system allow the business enterprise to keep a track record of all the customer related transactions. The management can easily analyse the most preferable mode of payment by the customers by maintaining a copy of receipts. Therefore, the system provides adequate record keeping with regard to customer transactions.
5. Effective reconciliation approach – Another major strength of HARDA’s system is that it provides an updated and effective reconciliation approach. The total amount is duly reconciled from the bankcard, cash sales and credit card sales by the assistant manager. The accounts reconciliation is considered as the important aspect of all the business enterprises. With the maintenance of all the information related to cash and credit sales by the cashier, the assistant manager is not required to follow a complex process to reconcile the total amount of sales (Putra and Yati 2018).
6. Determination of omission and commission errors – The system used by HARDA enables the company in identifying the errors related to omission and commission while recording the sales transactions. Access to the sales book reports prepared by the sales assistant for every transaction, any error can be identified by the assistant manager. The assistant manger will get a clue on the error source in case the sales book records do not effectively reflect amounts on the records of cashier.

Problems HARDA Fashion Has Avoided by The Strengths

• Outstanding inventory management – The problem of regular stock outs and data entry errors can be avoided with this strength. HARDA’s system enables the company to identify the movement of every type of cloth, thus helps the management in avoiding stock outs. Moreover, the system helps the sales assistant to maintain a record of required information regarding the sold clothes which prevents the problems in spreadsheet data entry.
• Customizable and consistent reports – The system used by HARDA helps in circumventing the issue of handling bulky data. The handling of bulky data may lead to the loss of significant details of transactions (Al-Salim et al. 2017).
• Updated financial information – With this strength, the risk related to inadequate financial reporting is prevented by implementing the system that will fetch updated financial information and data. The financial reporting is considered as the essential requirement for the company; maintenance of proper cash register helps the company in preventing the issue of formulating an inadequate financial report (Sandell and Svensson 2016).
• Tracking of customer transactions and speeding checking out – The problems related to customer complaints and the exchange and return of products can be prevented by using the effective cash register. If any product is returned by the customer, the sales assistant will duly confirm its authenticity from sales book. Various problems related to return policy can also be prevented.
• Reconciliation approach – The fashion company can circumvent the problem of unauthorized financial transactions and falling victim to fraud by using the cash register (Kranacher and Riley 2019). The problems like fraud and unauthorized financial transactions may occur if the details of the transactions are not duly reconciled. The cash register helps the company to make sure that every transaction has been checked for reconciliation purpose.
• Determination of errors – The errors related to omission and commission are very common. These types of errors can adversely impact the financial reports maintained by the company in case, they are not detected at early stages. Such problems can be prevented by formulating a cash register that will help the assistant manager in identifying the errors.

Situational Pressures that Would Increase the Likelihood of Fraud

In a company like HARDA Fashion, two situational pressures that would increase the likelihood of fraud are as follows –

• When the sudden sickness has been confronted by an employee and he may require a huge amount of money for his treatment. In that case, an employee may get ready to commit any fraud to get treated early (Epstein and Ramamoorti 2016).
• Other situation can be when the employee has been threatened or blackmailed by anyone either personally or professionally then the employee may be forced to commit any fraudulent activity.

Reasons Behind Choosing a Distributed Computer System Rather than A Centralised One

Distributed systems are defined as the computer systems where the multiple computer systems work together effectively in the form of a single unit. Distributed systems are considered to be more resilient, speedier and more powerful than a single computer system (Beschastnikh et al. 2016). However, more carefulness and maintenance is required throughout the organization otherwise, it may cause a big problem. There are several advantages behind using a distributed system. One of the major advantages is concerned with resiliency and redundancy (Gomes et al. 2017). For instance, if the company is serving the website using distributed set of servers instead of single server then, it may continue to work if one of the servers get failed physically. If any particular data has been distributed between multiple disks or servers, the chances of losing the entire data will get reduced in case the storage device has stopped doing work.

Here are some advantages of a distributed system –

• Speed and content distribution – Distributed systems are considered to be faster than a single computer system. The advantage of a distributed database is that the queries can be effectively routed to the server with the specific information of the user instead of sending all the requests to a single machine that may get overloaded after some time. Moreover, requests may also be routed to servers that are physically closely related or on a speed connection of network to the person who requires the data that may mean less amount of time. The other available resources can be allocated to deal with bottlenecks and network traffic.
• Scaling and parallelism – After setting up of distributed systems for distributing data with the servers involved, they can be effectively scalable (Yang et al. 2017). If the distributed systems are designed properly, it become simple to operate like adding some new hardware and telling the network to add it to the distributed system. Moreover, they can also be effectively designed for parallelism. This is most common in mathematical operations for various things such as scientific computations, weather modelling, etc.

Conclusion on Debugging Distributed Systems

It can be concluded that unsophisticated maintenance of cash registers plays a crucial role in recording sales, controlling transactions and balancing the accounts. Business organizations that offer several modes of sales comprising of cash and credit sales, apply cash registers in order to effectively manage the overall system. The HARDA’s system enables the sales assistant to maintain the record of details of transactions including the quantity, unit price, clothes item number and proper description. HARDA can effectively prepare the reports on daily basis based on the transactions recorded by the sales assistant and the cashier. The reports will discuss all the activities and the business operations in a specific period of time. HRDA’ s system allows the business enterprise to keep a track record of all the customer related transactions. The system used by HARDA helps in circumventing the issue of handling bulky data. The handling of bulky data may lead to the loss of significant details of transactions. The problems related to customer complaints and the exchange and return of products can be prevented by using the effective cash register. Distributed systems are considered to be more resilient, speedier and more powerful than a single computer system. If the distributed systems are designed properly, it become simple to operate like adding some new hardware and telling the network to add it to the distributed system.

References for Debugging Distributed Systems

Al-Salim, A.M., Lawey, A.Q., El-Gorashi, T.E. and Elmirghani, J.M. 2017. Energy efficient big data networks: Impact of volume and variety. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, 15(1), pp.458-474.

Beschastnikh, I., Wang, P., Brun, Y. and Ernst, M.D. 2016. Debugging distributed systems. Queue, 14(2), pp.91-110.

Bumblauskas, D., Nold, H., Bumblauskas, P. and Igou, A. 2017. Big data analytics: transforming data to action. Business Process Management Journal.

Epstein, B.J. and Ramamoorti, S. 2016. Today's fraud risk models lack personality. The CPA Journal, 86(3), p.14.

Gomes, V.B., Kleppmann, M., Mulligan, D.P. and Beresford, A.R. 2017. Verifying strong eventual consistency in distributed systems. Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, 1(OOPSLA), pp.1-28.

Kranacher, M.J. and Riley, R. 2019. Forensic accounting and fraud examination. John Wiley & Sons.

Putra, Y.H.S. and Yati, S. 2018. Designing Accounting Information System for Trading SMEs: Empirical and Islamic Integration Approach. Airlangga International Journal of Islamic Economics and Finance, 1(1).

Sandell, N. and Svensson, P. 2016. The language of failure: The use of accounts in financial reports. International Journal of Business Communication, 53(1), pp.5-26.

Turner, L., Weickgenannt, A.B. and Copeland, M.K. 2020. Accounting information systems: controls and processes. John Wiley & Sons.

Yang, A., Troup, M. and Ho, J.W. 2017. Scalability and validation of big data bioinformatics software. Computational and structural biotechnology journal, 15, pp.379-386.

Remember, at the center of any academic work, lies clarity and evidence. Should you need further assistance, do look up to our Management Assignment Help