Proceedings of Applied International Business Conference 2008
REQUIREMENT MODEL FOR WEB BASED CUSTOMER ORDERING SYSTEM:
SEGAR MART AS CASE STUDY
Abdul Manaf Bohari ψ, Wan Rozaini Sheikh Osman , Nur Haryani Zakaria and Bashir M.Mohamed
Geblawi
Universiti Utara Malaysia, Malaysia
___________________________________________________________________________
Abstract
The major concern among the farmers these days are on distributing their products to the right
customers at the right time. These farmers have been depending on “middle-person” to take their
products to customers. This situation has restricted farmers to be more successful in selling their
products and earn better profits. In today’s digital economy, selling goods have moved from the
traditional way to the new way of doing business on the Web. Seeing this as an opportunity,
agricultural goods should not be excluded from this golden opportunity. This research project is
intended to propose a requirement model for web-based customer ordering system. Requirement model
provides a more structured and integrated guide for the development of the system and serves as a
good starting point for system development to understand users’ requirement. To accomplish this
research project, a case study has been conducted at Segar Mart which is a shop (selling agricultural
products) initiated by MARDI for the farmers to sell their products direct to the customers. The
requirements captured from the study are modeled out using Unified Modeling Language’s (UML)
notation. The prototype technique is used to validate the requirements. In this technique, a simple
prototype is developed by using ASP as programming language, My SQL Database server and
Macromedia Dream weaver for interfaces.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Keywords: Agribusiness; Requirement model; Web-based application.
JEL Classification Codes: C44; N5.
1. Introduction
Agriculture is the process of producing food, feed, fiber and other desired products by the cultivation of
certain plants and the raising of domesticated animals (livestock). The agricultural economics
profession has been constantly reshaping itself since the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, the
economic importance of agriculture and the large proportion of the population working in this sector
increased the value of research on farm management and the economics of agriculture, leading to the
establishment of the farm management profession.
Related to the agriculture field is a term called the agribusiness. Agribusiness is a concept of economics
which includes the sum total of all operations involved in the manufacture and distribution of farm
supplies, production operations on the farm and the storage, processing and distribution of farm
commodities and items made from them. The main aim of agribusiness is to create an affluent local
community in order to nurture human resources through promotion of agriculture voluntarily carried
out within the community (Futatsugi, 2004).
In today’s digital economy, the agribusiness sector is under pressure to extend its enterprise and
exchange information automatically with its trading partners and suppliers in order to energize their
core competencies and obtain greater market. According to Lamb (2000), one of the key changes
impacting on Agribusiness suppliers is the changing “characteristics” of today’s and tomorrow’s farm
manager. This includes new generation of decision makers, use computers to manage and record,
manage bigger operations and expect more from suppliers. To address this challenge, traditional
farmers should consider ICT intervention which will likely to bring significant direct and indirect
impacts on enhancing agricultural productions.
ψ
Corresponding author. Abdul Manaf Bohari. College of Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia, 06010
Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia. Corresponding author Email: [email protected]
Proceedings of Applied International Business Conference 2008
2. Problem statement
Customers are indeed very important in any business - without them, there will be no business. This
rule of thumb applies the same to agribusiness. There is a mutual commitment in the relationship
between farmers and customers (consumers) where by the farm feeds the customers and the customers
support the farm by sharing in its risks and benefits. The major concern among the farmers these days
are on the supplying of their products to the customer. Currently, farmers are depending on “middle
person” to take their products to customers. This is due to the failure of farmers’ community to reach
out directly to the community of customers.
The existence of this “middle person” (bridging the gap between farmers and customers) resulted an
inter-dependency relationship. This relationship has restricted farmers to be more successful in selling
their products and earn better throughout the business deal. Selling agricultural goods on the web is a
challenge that involves distribution of physical products. Selling information solves that problem
because information products themselves can be distributed over the internet (Rolf, 2005). Due to the
problems stated, improvements in the flow of customers making orders directly to the farmers are
extremely important. When customers are able to make orders directly to the farmers, the role of the
“middle-person” can be minimize or better still if it can be eliminated totally. If this situation can be
achieved, it is definitely going to benefit the income of the farmers and in long term should benefit the
agribusiness industry significantly.
3. Research questions
The research questions are:
• How to eliminate the “middle-person”?
• What sort of application can be implemented to accommodate the customer ordering process?
• What are the requirements of web based customers order application?
4. Research objectives
The objectives of this research are:
• To determine the requirements for web-based customer ordering system.
• To develop model for customer ordering application.
• To develop prototype to validate the model.
5. Scope of study
This research will focus on the development web-based customer ordering application focusing on
agribusiness industry. Segar Mart has been chosen as case study in order to obtain the requirement
to complete the research project.
6. Significant of study
This research will help farmers to sell their products directly to customers without middleman and thus
farmers' income and their revenue of quality supply would increase significantly by improving partially
supplying through agriculture operation.
7. Literature review
The agricultural production sector is the central part of the agribusiness system. This sector produces
products that range from food items, such as vegetables, and grains, to fiber products such as cotton,
wool, and forestry products. The agricultural production sector is one the more efficient production
sectors in the world. (Rouge, 2004). The agriculture approach to countryside development has three
main goals which are to expand substantially the production base, raising production and distribution
efficiency that are parallel with the regional norms, and also to promote equitable distribution of
production and productivity gains (Martins, 2004). The expansion of the production base involves
breaking out from subsistence agriculture by increasing and diversifying the marketable surplus of the
farm. Rising agriculture and production as well as competitiveness have not automatically and
consistently led to increased farm’s incomes. Often, more production meant surpluses that depress farm
gate prices. Meanwhile, lower farm gate prices also do not automatically lead to lower food retail
prices. It appears that an inordinate share of the benefits from higher production goes to middlemen.
In the conventional era, agriculture is considered as a highly productive sector. There is growing
concerns about its sustainability which have given rise to interest in alternative approaches. These
alternative approaches were in hope to lower several major risks such as the distribution of product,
conservation of farm resources, reduce environmental impacts and also improvement of the
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profitability and competitiveness of farming in the long-run (David C, et al., 1991). While there is
interest in farming alternatives, there is also hesitancy on employing suggested alternatives. Their
hesitancy arises from several factors such as fears of reduced profits, unknown management
requirement and loss of affordability by current traditional way of agriculture. Besides that, farmers are
also concerned about lacking in the knowledge of important information that should require expanding
their products.
The new model of agricultural development stresses on the intensification through progressively
specialized operations and substitution of capital and purchased inputs for labor (Pieri, et al., 2002).
This model has fostered lots of diversity and high cash production costs. Instead, the new approach
seeks to meet the concurrent goals of increased productivity and reduced environmental risks in both
temporal and spatial dimensions through diverse crops, livestock, inputs, and management practices.
Such diversity fosters positive ecological relationships and biological processes within a new system as
a whole.
The modern view of agribusiness includes any business whose activities affect the flow of food
products from production to consumption (Rouge, 2004). The agribusiness industry includes all
businesses in the food system and all businesses associated with imported food and fiber products.
Agribusiness today's, represents a complex system that not only supports the production sector of
agriculture, but reaches well beyond the farm gate. It includes all businesses that are involved in
providing a wide range of food and fiber products for consumption.
Agribusiness is a complex a group of industries engaging in product- related production, exchange and
marketing. It involves marketing channels which extend from farm suppliers up through farmers and
ranchers, to processors of food and fiber, to food retailers and finally reaches the consumers. (Taylor,
2000)
Agribusiness is just what the name implies agriculture in business (Hanson, 2002). When anyone buys,
vegetables, fruit, juice, eggs, milk, or similar products at your supermarket, you depend on
agribusiness. Agribusiness also provides jobs and income for nearly one-fifth of America's workforce.
In one way or another, we all depend upon agribusiness to fulfill consumer needs. Because of this
interdependence, agribusiness is common business. Cooperatives provide many services and products.
As mentioned above about the types of products what makes these products unique is that the farmers
who produced them are also the owners of the company that helped to bring them to the consumer's
side a cooperative is simply a type of business that is owned and controlled by the people who use its
services.
Agribusiness viewed in its historical setting encompasses all functions relative to the production and
distribution of farm commodities which were performed by farmers. There are many new functions that
have been developed since that time. Farming communities in this early period produced essentially all
suppliers used for farm production purposes, including draft animal for power feed for draft animals
and other livestock, tools, fertilizer, and seed. The agribusiness concept is also useful for analyzing the
response of agriculture to changing supply and demand condition. For example, price of farm
commodities must reflect costs of many purchased suppliers for production purposes in addition to the
unpaid labor inputs of the operators and the families. (Luttrell, 1967)
Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) has become the mechanism to enhance the
effectiveness of information flow in this modern trend. This applicable to various field including
promoting agriculture sectors in general and improving rural development. There are no blueprint
approaches for ICTs or magic bullet ICTs that will automatically improve rural livelihoods, but instead
the skills and resources need to be harnessed to determine, plan and implement appropriate ICT
interventions to improve rural livelihoods (Richardson, 2005).
ICT intervention that improve the general livelihoods of poor rural families have the potential to enable
those families to free up time for agriculture work through information or services which help improve
family health and well-being. The end of these ICT interventions is not improved agriculture
production or post harvest activities but it is mainly aimed at reducing poverty in the context of
improved livelihoods, recognizing the clear importance of the rural family as the hub of agriculture
production in areas of poverty and within national economies (Richradson, 2005)
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With the increasing advancement of ICT technology, e-commerce is seen as a great opportunity to
promote agriculture products not only to a wider range of local customers but also to the customers
around the globe (Ying. Z., et al. 2005).the development of e-commerce of agriculture products should
push on three aspects which are to promote the agribusiness to implement e-commerce to strengthen
construction of the logistics system and the payment system and to create the environment and
condition for launching online marketing in enterprise.
Selling agricultural goods is a challenge, since it involves distribution of physical products. Adequate
information must be well disseminated to a wide range of customers in order to boost up the selling
activities of agriculture products. In addition, agriculture products are commonly originated and
produced by the rural people and these addends up the challenge. There for ICTs intervention such as
agriculture portals and e-commerce websites would definitely contribute to disseminate information as
well as increase the selling activities involving these agricultural products. According to (Rolf, 2005),
The web is a versatile medium that also allows information suppliers to enhance the value of their
products for information users. This effort of utilizing the web to promote agriculture products have
been adopted by the Ministry of Agriculture in China. They had launched its first agriculture ecommerce website on August 2000 and the number of agriculture websites has increased significantly
from 200 to more than 2600 in five years time.
Digital Agriculture is the demand of agricultural modernization. (Tang, 2002) looking from one
perspective, the number of population in the world increase from 10-20 percent each year contribute to
food demand twice as much from the current supply. With the increase of population, conflicts between
people and farmland, between people and food suppliers will further severe. Unfortunately the level of
agriculture resources utilization is very low, which will not only deteriorate the environment, but also
aggravate the conflicts existed and lead to a vicious circle of agriculture production. This issue must be
realized in order to sustain the development or agriculture product to support the increasing demand.
Abd Rahman Marto (2000) said that in Malaysia there are two categories of farmers. Subsistence
farmers, who account for 80 percent of the farming community, comprise the older and more
traditional generation. Only 20 percent are commercial farmers who have a more modern, profitoriented outlook. Youths with better education search for better occupational prospects in the
manufacturing sector. The migration of youths from the rural areas to the cities is another problem, as
it has considerably reduced the pool of farm workers and increased the area of unutilized land. Farmers
involved in food production face low returns because of low productivity and the consequent inability
to meet market demand The Ministry of Agriculture organizes a Malaysia Agricultural, Horticultural
and Agro-tourism Show each year as a platform to promote appreciation of the most successful farmers
of the year as well as to update them on the latest global agricultural technology.
Malaysia’s agricultural sector was accorded renewed and extra importance by the government after the
economic crisis of 1997, with a particular drive to reduce the food importation bill (Ricky, 2005). One
of the primary objectives in increasing exports and reducing the import of agricultural commodities is
in meeting the challenge of enhanced and more efficient agricultural production. As a consequence of
the new issues in agricultural trade, the government formulated a strategic agricultural development
master plan, referred to as The 3rd National Agricultural Policy for 1998-2010 (Ministry of
Agriculture), designed to maximize income through optimal utilization of resources in this sector. With
these steps (MOA) decided to come out with such as enhance food security, increase productivity and
competitiveness of the sector, deepen linkages with other sectors, create new sources of growth for the
sector, conserve and utilize national resources on a sustainable basis.
8. Research methodology
In order to implement the research project, a research design model by Vaishnavi and Kuechler (2005)
has been chosen (refer to Figure 1 below). It is imperative to develop a standardized means to
communication the treatments performed on the research project as well as the outcomes of these
treatments. The research design model will be explained according to the phases tallied to the phases
done in the research project.
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Figure 1: Research design model for IS
Source: Vaishnavi & Kuechler (2005)
The research design model above has five phases which are Phase 1 - Awareness of Problem, Phase 2 Suggestion, Phase 3 - Development, Phase 4 - Evaluation and Phase 5 – Conclusion. Each of the
phases will be elaborated on the next subsection.
Phase 1- Awareness of Problem
As the name implies, the basic idea of the research project comes out of the realization of problem
existed in the domain area studied. The realization of the problem initiated from literature review
search. In agriculture filed, the major concern among the farmers these days are on the supplying of
their products to the customers. If the farmers failed to supply their products to the customer
(preferably on time) they won’t be able to sustain in the sectors. This is because majority of the
products they produce are those which cannot last long (easily perishable). Not only that, farmers also
have to deal with “middle-person” to distribute their products and this resulted in low income generated
on the farmers side due to some amount of profit needs to be shared with the “middle-person”.
Therefore, researcher realized that something must be done in order to help these farmers to not only
distribute their products directly to the intended customers but also to generate sufficient income in
order to foster their economy and subsequently promote total growth in the agriculture sector.
To strengthen the fact obtain through the literature review, researcher has also done some field work.
Researcher has visited real farmers at the same time workers in Segar Mart in Alor Star. According to
their mentioned the current position of doing business on Agriculture’s product it’s not completed to
treat with so many customers and Segar Mart is normal shop where to meet the customer. The farmers
and workers in Segar Mart told researcher we need modern way to distribute our product (farmers and
workers in Segar Mart). So the we realized that the solution is to develop a Requirement Model for
Segar Mart. Therefore, this study will lead to develop Requirement Model for Segar Mart that will help
the farmers and workers in Segar Mart to supply their products and increase their revenue.
Phase 2 - Suggestion
This phase involved in suggestion the appropriate solution towards the realization of the problems
identified in phase 1. This study looked into designing a Requirement Model for Segar Mart that to
come out with system can help both farmers and workers in Segar Mart. The Suggestion phase follows
immediately behind the proposed system and is intimately connected with it as the dotted line around
Proposal and Tentative Design (the output of the Suggestion phase) indicates. There are many
approaches to the problem of ordering through internet which are discussed over terms. Therefore, the
study will be using data obtained from the farmers and workers in Segar Mart. The data will be in Time
Series Uniform and will cover several aspects of Requirement Model for Segar Mart cases and futures.
Phase 3 - Development
This phase is the core implementation of the research project where the development of the
requirement model was being proposed system developed by using active server protocol (ASP) and
SQL Server 2000 was used as Database to store all important information and cases about Requirement
Model for Segar Mart to be used in ordering process. In the Requirement Model for Segar Mart
process, the requirement of the system prototype functionalities and the requirement were identify
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using UML diagram and modeled the UML is a language for visualizing, constructing used to construct
as mentioned Use case diagram, Activity diagram, Class diagram, Sequence diagram, Collaboration
Diagram and finally to come out with the Interfaces of this system.
The Tentative Design is implemented in this phase. The techniques for implementation will of course
vary depending on the artifact to be constructed. An algorithm may require construction of a formal
proof. The implementation itself can be very pedestrian and need not involve novelty beyond the stateof-practice for the given artifact; the novelty is primarily in the design, not the construction of the
artifact.
Phase 4 - Evaluation
Once constructed, the artifact is evaluated according to criteria that are always implicit and frequently
made explicit in the Proposal (Awareness of Problem phase). Deviations from expectations, both
quantitative and qualitative are carefully noted and must be tentatively explained. That is, the
evaluation phase contains an analytic sub-phase in which hypotheses are made about the behavior of
the artifact. This prototype was demonstrated to a few students which they found this system is
working, also easy to know and useful for farmers and Segar Mart as they mentioned.
Phase 5 – Conclusion
This phase is the finale of a specific research effort. The study being analyzed is concluded and
summarized in this part. Analytical discussion will be presented including the benefits, limitation and
some suggestions for future works of related studies.
9. Research findings and analysis
FINDING 1: Requirement Model For Customer Ordering Process For Agribusiness
Use Case Diagram
Use case diagram is used to describe the functionality of a system in a horizontal way that is, rather
than merely representing the details of individual features of the system, and used to show all of its
available functionality The analysis explored first the use case diagram to give a view of the web-based
customer order and the actors in the system. The use case diagram of web-based customer order system
has two actors, which are Customer and Segar Mart. There are nine packages use cases diagram. Each
use case specifies some behavior, possibly including variants that the subject can perform in
collaboration with one or more actors. Use cases define the offered behavior of the subject without
reference to its internal structure these behaviors, involving interactions between the actor and the
subject. Use case diagrams are shown in figure 1, 2 and 3.
Definition of Actors
Actor represents anything that needs to interact with the system to exchange the information. In other
word, Actor is someone or some thing that must interact with the system under development. In this
system we have two actors which including the Customer and Segar Mart.
Table 1: Definition of actors
Actor
Customer
Segar Mart
administrator
as
Description
Register as customer and enable them to order the Agriculture’s
product through web.
Control and be responsible for the system. Give the facilities to the
customer’s to allow them to access the system
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Figure 2: General order process use case
Figure 3: Use case diagrams for customer
Figure 4: Use case diagrams for Segar Mart
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Use Case Specification for the Actors
Table 2: Use case specification for the customers
USE CASE
NAME
BRIEF
DESCRIPTION
USE CASE
NAME
BRIEF
DESCRIPTION
USE CASE
NAME
BRIEF
DESCRIPTION
USE CASE
NAME
BRIEF
DESCRIPTION
USE CASE
NAME
BRIEF
DESCRIPTION
REGISTER
To allow customer to register and enable them to purchase the product,
LOGIN
This use case describes how a user logs into the web based customer order
system
CHECK AVAILABLE PRODUCT INFORMATION
To allow the customer to enquire product information such as pricing,
function, and product description.
ORDER PRODUCT
The use case is activated by the customer’s. it enables the customer’s to
order product
ORDER ADDITIONAL QUANTITY
This use case initiated by the customer to make a new order that is not
available in the current offer.
Table 3: Use case specification for the Segar Mart
USE CASE
NAME
BRIEF
DESCRIPTION
USE CASE
NAME
BRIEF
DESCRIPTION
USE CASE
NAME
BRIEF
DESCRIPTION
USE CASE
NAME
BRIEF
DESCRIPTION
LOGIN
This use case describes how a user logs into the web based customer order
system
CHECK CUSTOMER ORDER
This use case activated by Segar Mart and describes the road for the
system to get customer’s order.
PRINT CUSTOMER ORDER
This use case initiated by Segar Mart to get out the customer order.
MAINTAIN PRODUCTS
This use case is activated by the Segar Mart. It enables Segar Mart to view
status of product ordered. It has other three options such as update product,
delete product and add product it controls the product information.
Activity Diagram
The Activity Diagram can help to describe the flow of control of the target system, such as the
exploring complex business rules and operations, describing the use case also the business process.
In other word, an activity diagram is a special kind of state chart diagram that shows the flow from
activity to activity as well and there are two kind of activity diagram such as activity diagram for
the customers and Segar Mart. The activity diagrams are shown in figure 5 and figure 6.
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Figure 5: Activity diagram for the customers
Class Diagram
A class diagram shows the existence of classes and their relationships in the logical view of a
system. A class is a collection of objects with common structure, common behavior, common
relationships and common semantics. Class Diagram provides an overview of the target system by
describing the objects and classes inside the system and the relationships between them. It provides
a wide variety of usages from modeling the domain-specific data structure to detailed design of the
target system. With the share model facilities, you can reuse your class model in the interaction
diagram for modeling the detailed design of the dynamic behavior.
Figure 6: Activity diagram for Segar Mart
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Proceedings of Applied International Business Conference 2008
Sequence Diagram
Sequence diagrams present inside view of the system. They describe how use cases are realized as
interactions among societies of objects, including the messages that may be dispatched among
them. The Sequence Diagram models the collaboration of objects based on a time sequence. It
shows how the objects interact with others in a particular scenario of a use case with the advanced
visual modeling capability. Sequences diagram was constructed for each use case.
Collaboration Diagram
Collaboration diagram is an isomorphic form of sequence diagram a collaboration diagram
displays object interactions organized around objects and direct links to one another. It emphasizes
the structural organization of objects that directly send and receive messages. Collaboration
diagrams (interaction diagrams) illustrate the relationship and interaction between software objects
the entire Collaboration diagrams divided to two collaborations which are Customer and Segar
Mart.
FINDING 2: Prototype developed for validation process.
Prototype development and interfaces
The requirement model for Segar Mart has been validated using a working prototype. The
prototype was built by using active server protocol as programming language. The prototype was
demonstrated to a few students that found this system is working and also was found easy to
navigate and very useful. The interfaces was done by using dream waver for the design and also
using active server protocols as programming language. The database is running on Microsoft
Access.
Lists of Requirements
Table 4 shows a list of requirements for Segar Mart. There are eight (8) functional requirements
that were documented in this project.
10. Discussion and conclusion
This section provides the discussion and conclusions regarding the major findings of the study in
four chapters. The first chapter begins by presenting a brief overview of the study. The second
chapter shows the literature review of this study. Third chapter discussed the methodology that
implemented in this project. Fourth chapter showed the result as well as the conclusion of the
study, the conclusion, limitation of study, and suggestion for possible further research in
Requirement Model for Segar Mart.
The result of the study showed that the system can help the poor farmers to increase their revenue
and for Segar Mart to perform their work in good situation. This system displayed the information
that help Agriculture sector that provided the information to the user as much as they want to know
in
Table 4: A list of requirements
No
1
2
3
4
8
USE CASE
NAME
Registration
Check available
product
information
Order product
Maintain
product
Check customer
order
REQUIREMENT DESCRIPTION
To register for customer information
To view the information about available product in
the system
To customer order product
• To view the status of product
• To add product
• To update product
• To delete product
• To check the order that has been made by the
customer
• Print customer order
REQUIREMEN
T TYPE
Functional
Functional
Functional
Functional
Functional
Agriculture sector. Segar Mart system can play a role to ensure that farmer can sell the product
without referring to the "middle person". The requirement model for Segar Mart was developed to
help poor farmer and workers in Segar Mart. Then, the prototype to help the farmers and workers
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in Segar Mart that to allow the customer to make order from everywhere this system has been
designed using Unified Modeling Language (UML). This working prototype can be readily used
by farmers and Segar Mart workers to enhanced the ordering process.
11. Recommendations for future project
This ordering system has an advantage in helping customers to order products and Segar Mart
workers to make the best profit, because this system can make a good process of ordering
products. This system provides faster processing than normal human can do and is able to crop
with heavy and tedious workload to provide efficiency of the work flow. Besides that, order
process can be performed that enables users to carry out the order transaction correctly and
accurately.
Segar Mart can play part of the role to promote ordering part on Agriculture’s product. Segar Mart
can help farmer and workers in Segar Mart to perform ordering part of Agriculture process.
Hopefully it can change the view of thinking amongst the ordering on Agriculture product to be
more competitive and efficient in daily work within a computerize system. It is recommended that
the future research should be complete system, not just ordering product. Further, the user interface
also plays a crucial role in enhancing the system's effectiveness the interface can be enhanced
using other software.
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