BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
PROGRAMMING PROJECT: BIT 3205
COOPERATIVE SOCIETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR
ZEMA COOPERATIVE SOCIETY
BY
CHIRCHIR BENARD KIPKEMOI
PROJECT PROPOSAL DOCUMENTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL
FULFILMENT FOR THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF A DEGREE
IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
PRESENTED TO: DR. LUCY MBURU
Declaration
I declare that this project is my original work and has not been presented in any other college or
University for the award of a Diploma or Degree.
Student
Name……………………………………………. Date……………………….
Signature………………………………………..
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION ....................................................................................................................... II
TABLE OF CONTENTS ..........................................................................................................III
1. BACKGROUND .................................................................................................................1
1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT....................................................................................................2
1.2 LITERATURE REVIEW ......................................................................................................3
1.3 PROPOSED SYSTEM..........................................................................................................5
1.4 JUSTIFICATION OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM...............................................................5
1.5 OBJECTIVES OF PROJECT ................................................................................................6
1.6 METHODOLOGY................................................................................................................8
1.7 RESOURCES .......................................................................................................................9
1.8 CONSTRAINTS ...................................................................................................................9
1.9 REPORT TO.......................................................................................................................10
2.0 PROJECT SCHEDULE ......................................................................................................10
3.0 CONCLUSION...................................................................................................................10
4.0 REFERENCES....................................................................................................................11
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1. BACKGROUND
The success of today’s organization depends on its ability to acquire accurate and timely data for
its operations, to manage this data effectively and in an efficient manner and to use it to analyse
its own activities.
With the advent of integrated powerful automated tools in today’s leading business
organisations, there has been a noted increase in the level of business efficiency, accountability
and reporting standards.
ZEMA is a savings and credit cooperative society which was formed in 1998 and draws its
members from five Reinsurance companies namely Africa Reinsurance, Munich Reinsurance,
PTA Reinsurance, Continental Reinsurance and East Africa Reinsurance.
It is mandated with the task of ensuring that member’s contribution is well kept and accounted
for. It also ensures processing of loans is a smooth and fast so as to ensure the members are not
inconvenienced in one way or another due to delay in processing.
When the cooperative society was formed it had only twenty members but twelve years down the
line the company has had a fair share in increase of its members to a figure above one thousand
members.
Despite the fact that the cooperative society has many members most of the transactions are done
in a semi automated system. This has led to lots of difficulty in
i) Processing of loans
ii) Processing of loan repayments
iii) Generating statements to members
It’s for the above stated reasons that ZEMA is looking to automate its functions so as to improve
greatly service delivery to its members.
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1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT
The current system is not able to perform the following issues, which is very crucial for effective
service delivery to its members.
Inability to capture loan details
Currently it’s not possible to capture loan details in a manner that it will be possible to
easily search, retrieve and edit.
Inability to generate member’s statements
The system currently being used is not able to generate member’s statements. As per the
cooperative by-laws it was agreed that members should be receiving the statements on
quarterly basis and this has not being possible.
Difficulty to cross validate between Members and loans held.
In the current system it’s very difficult to determine how many loans a member has at one
given time because the system is semi automated. Hence it takes long to process a loan.
Large volume of manual records
The treasurer is at the moment overwhelmed with the amount of records that are not
organized and captured in a system. He is forced to verify and process all loans and
repayments transactions manually. This has led to processing of inaccurate information.
Unavailability of reports
The current system in place is not able to produce accurate and timely reports.
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1.2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Information systems have greatly improved the way organisations conduct day to day operations.
Bosij, (2000) defined Information System as “a system designed to produce information that can
be used to support the activities of managers and other workers”.
Most organizations undergo some kind of strategic change as the management tries to strengthen
the organization’s existing core competences and build others in order to compete more
effectively (Hill & Jones 2001) . The strategic change is seen as a move from a present state to a
future state in order to increase competitive advantage.
1.2.1 Cooperative Societies
The SACCO movement in this country and the neighborhood requires an Integrated SACCO
Management Information System that is dynamic enough to fulfill the present and expected
growth needs in the future. To date, there are very few SACCOs that have implemented a fully
working Integrated management Information System that cuts across the Microfinance
Operations (MFI) and front office operations. (Spartan 1997).
1.2.2 The Need For Re-Engineering Cooperatives Societies
Good management requires a constant scanning of the environment. This is done with a view to
identifying changes in the operating environment, in order to determine appropriate operational
strategies to be adopted towards achieving desired objectives. (Ayoola 2006:2) re-engineering is
done by assessment of the current operational environment to determine the most appropriate
strategies for the future. At the inception of modern cooperatives, governments intended to foster
and nurture cooperatives to grow and become self reliant, as government gradually withdraws.
However, this has not been the case since they have not embraced the change in technology. The
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implication is perpetual dependency on old techniques resulting into erosion of self-help and
self-responsibility nature of cooperatives. In fact the so called work place cooperatives that are
supposed to demonstrate intellectuality in this regards could not help the matter which is mostly
the technological framework.
Re-engineering becomes necessary to sustain the good advantages of cooperative societies in an
economy. It will give the cooperative movement a strategic repositioning to meet the need of
SMEs and other economic requirements.
1.2.3 eCOOP
Spartan has for the last Ten years gained experience in SACCO computerization and thus has
for the last one year come up with and implemented this state-of-art system in a number of
SACCOs in Kenya who are fully satisfied and happy with the system. The system they designed
is called eCOOP and I made a lot of reference from this system which is widely used in Kenya.
1.2.4 Conclusion and Recommendation
Cooperative method remains the vibrant economic technique of poverty eradication, wealth
creation, job creation and rural development and SMEs financing. There are various problems
militating against the performance of cooperative societies Also the changing world of
technology poses great challenges to the efficiency of cooperative societies in Nigeria most
cooperative societies are operating with inadequate capital.
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1.3 PROPOSED SYSTEM
The proposed system will be in a position to solve the problems faced by the current system.
The system will be designed in such a way that it will maintain consistency in the various stages
outlined above. New loans will be captured in the new system and it will be linked to the
member’s module and reports module etc so as to facilitate faster processing of loans and
generation of reports.
On a general outlook all modules in the system will be interlinked to speed up capturing,
searching and retrieval of information from the system.
1.4 JUSTIFICATION OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM
The proposed new system will have following benefits to the society:
1.4.1 Enhance faster processing of loans
The computerized system will be very fast as opposed to the semi automated system which will
reduce the amount of time taken to process loans
1.4.2 Provision of reports
The proposed system will be able to generate reports easily and accurately to the members and
the committee managing the cooperative.
1.4.3 Improve on security and confidentiality
A cooperative society involves a lot of personal information of its members this information
should be secured and treated with high level of confidentiality. The new system will ensure only
authorized personnel can access the information and thereby protect the confidentiality of the
personal information.
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1.4.4 Improve on accuracy of the reports
The proposed system will ensure that information captured is accurate by counter checking with
other modules in the system. It will also reduce on errors of omission by prompting users to input
information on the required fields.
1.4.5 Ensure business continuity
The new system will facilitate backups to be done easily and regularly. In case of a disaster it
will be easy to recover and ensure the cooperative society continues to offer its intended services
to its members.
1.5 OBJECTIVES OF PROJECT
1.5.1 System objectives
To reduce errors and improve the accuracy of data input.
To ensure security and safety of members data and information.
To shorten loan processing time so as not to inconvenience members
To enhance consistency.
To design a system that will produce timely reports as stipulated in the by-laws
To design a more flexible system.
To upgrade member services and attain a competitive edge.
1.5.2 Project objectives
To collect comprehensive information, this will enable the project to run sufficiently.
To carry out a field research on what information should be available to make the system
functional.
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To design an interactive database in oracle database using the servers available to the
cooperative society.
To design a good and interactive user interface and required modules.
To implement and test the code to check if it meets the user requirements and satisfy its
functionality.
To document all the activities and tasks.
Reduce operational cost by ensuring minimum human labour
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1.6 METHODOLOGY
The following steps will be followed
System Requirement specification
Current system is evaluated and deficiencies identified. This is done by interviewing users of the
system.
System Analysis
The users and IT specialists collaborate to collect, comprehend, and logistically formalize
cooperative requirements by gathering the cooperative requirements. The requirements are
prioritized and put in a requirements definition document.
System design
This is where the technical blueprint of the system is created by designing the technical
architecture, choosing amongst the architectural designs of telecommunications, hardware and
software that will best suit the cooperative’s system and future needs.
Other activities including designing the systems model, writing the test conditions and system
development/coding will be done at this stage.
Validation and Testing
The system will be tested using the established test scripts. Test conditions will be conducted by
comparing expected outcomes to actual outcomes. If it differs, a bug is generated and a
backtrack to the development stage must occur.
Implementation and maintenance
The system will be used in the actual workforce and the user guide created and training provided
to the users of the systems.
The system will be kept up to date in tandem with the changes in the cooperative and ensuring it
meets the goals of the cooperative society.
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1.7 RESOURCES
The new proposed system will require the following resources
1.7.1 RESOURCES REQUIRED TO DEVELOP THE SYSTEM
i) A desktop computer or Laptop – P4 , 1GB RAM, 100GB Hard disk
ii) Test data
iii) Microsoft windows XP
iv) Oracle database
v) Oracle Developer suite
vi) Oracle Application server
vii) Browser e.g. Internet explorer, Firefox etc
1.7.2 RESOURCES REQUIRED TO RUN THE SYSTEM
i) A server – G4 and above , 3GB RAM, 400GB Hard disk
ii) Back-up hardware components
iii) Microsoft windows server 2003
iv) Oracle database
v) Oracle Application server
vi) Browser e.g. Internet explorer, Firefox etc
1.8 CONSTRAINTS
1.8.1 Exigencies of work
Due to exigencies of work it will be difficult to get full attention of the Zema Re committee
members which might delay system delivery.
1.8.2 Availability of computing resources
Getting Oracle applications will be difficult because they are expensive and require license to use
them.
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1.9 REPORT TO
The progress of the project shall be communicated on a regular basis to Mr. Calisto Warambo
who is the chairman of the ZEMA RE. cooperative society and Ms. Lucy Mburu who is my
Supervisor.
2.0 PROJECT SCHEDULE
Task Description Task Planned Planned Deliverables
Duration Start Date Completion
Date
1 Project proposal 1 Week 26/01/2010 03/02/2010 Project Proposal
design
2 Requirements 2 week 4/02/2010 18/02/2010 System requirement
specification design specification document
3 System design 4 weeks 19/02/2010 19/03/2010 Design specification document
specification
document
4 Preparation of 1 week 22/03/2010 29/03/2010 Presentation done
progress report
5 Test plan document 2 weeks 03/05/2010 17/05/2010 Test Plan document
design
6 System Coding and 5 weeks 19/05/2010 26/06/2010 Progress presentation
compiling
7 System testing 2 weeks 28/06/2010 12/07/2010 Test results
8 Implementation 1 week 13/07/2010 20/07/2010 Implementation strategy
strategy document document
design
9 User manual design 1 week 21/07/2010 28/07/2010 User manual
10 Compilation of 1 week 29/08/2010 4/08/2010 Final project documentation and
complete system and compiled system
final documentation
11 Project presentation 1 day 05/08/2010 05/08/2010 Present project
3.0 CONCLUSION
The new proposed system is viable project and it will go a long way to eliminate the limitations
of the current system and will improve efficiency in the cooperative society.
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4.0 REFERENCES
1. Adekunle, O, 2008. Re-engineering cooperative societies
2. Rittinghouse, J. 2003. Managing Software Deliverables: A Software Development
Management Methodology.
3. Lewis, R. 2006 Project Management. Ireland: McGraw-Hill Professional.
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