Milestone Three: System Requirements
Matthew Ranes
IT 510: Advanced Info Technology
Southern New Hampshire University
April 6, 2023
Wendy Lamont
Systems Design
Ranes Property Management (RPM) is in the process of expanding and upgrading its IT
infrastructure. I will review the system design we plan to implement at RPM, and we will cover
specifications, data design, user interface design, and system architecture. Throughout this
project, we will upgrade desktops, printers, and office network, implement an onsite database,
and switch to a new cloud-based property management software.
Specifications
The property management software will be accessed via the Internet. This software will handle
tenant applications payments/billing and incident reports. Any important long-term information
regarding our clients will be inputted and stored within our on-site database. As discussed earlier,
the data stored on the database will include our client's property information, including income
reports, incident reports, and repair invoices. Below I will provide an image of the physical
design we plan to implement to meet our specifications, including our new office network setup.
Figure 1/Physical Design
As you can see in the above image, we have our on-site database connected via a LAN. This will
allow the employees at RPM to connect and access the database from their desktops. RPMs IT
department will manage the entire on-site IT infrastructure and the user accounts associated with
the cloud-based property management software.
Data Design
Now that we have gone through the physical changes that will be made to RPMs IT
infrastructure now, I will go over how we intend to store our client's information within our onsite database. Below I will provide an ERD that will give you a visual representation of our data
storage plan.
Figure 2/On-site Database ERD
As you can see in the above example, this database design is simple and will only store the
essential information for our clients, which we will keep for up to five years. The critical
information stored will be the client's property ID information, which encompasses the property
address, repair invoices, property income, and incident reports.
User Interface
Since our on-site database will be connected via our LAN network. Each employee that has
access to the database will be able to access it from any desktop connected to our LAN. Below I
will provide some screenshots of the user interface.
Figure 3/Login Screen
After you login to the database you will see a drop-down menu that will give you the option to
search for data either with a client ID or property ID. In this example we will search for data
using a property ID. Below I will provide the rest of the images that will guide you through the
process.
Figure 4/Dropdown Menu
Figure 5 Property ID Search Feature
Figure 6/Property Data
As you can see, once you complete the search using the property ID, you are presented with the
last five years of data associated with that property. You can now download any report you
would like to view to your desktop. This User Interface is simple and easy to use. When you
search for data using the client ID, you will be presented with a list of properties the client owns.
From there, you can click on whichever property you want to view, and it will pull up the
property data page shown in Figure 4.
System Architecture
Corporate Organization and Culture: RPM is an organization that manages a vast number of
rental properties for its clients. Our organization is quickly expanding, intending to provide the
most positive experience for its clients and tenants. Excellent Customer service and data
organization are two of our top priorities in achieving our overall goal of customer satisfaction.
Enterprise Resource Planning: The primary goal of this project is to expand our IT infrastructure,
which will benefit many areas of our organization. The improvements that will be made will help
all employees at our company by allowing us to automate the tenant application and screening
process, provide our employees with the proper equipment to perform their job duties properly,
and will enable us to easily store and access our client's data with our on-site database.
Total Cost of Ownership/Scalability: The total cost of this project is estimated to cost 30,350.
Investing in such a project may sound like a lot, but it will pay off in the long run. We must
expand our IT infrastructure to grow and accept the growing number of clients at RPM. With the
proper infrastructure, we will continue to grow and have more room for growth in the future.
Once this project is finished, we can manage ten times the number of clients and properties we
currently manage. This leaves us with a decent amount of scalability. Now that we are
implementing the basics of a solid IT infrastructure, we can easily add to it throughout the
upcoming years.
Integration/Interface Requirements and Security: The integration phase of transferring our
customer's long-term data from the cloud to our on-site database will be a Titus process. Still, it
will give our clients peace of mind knowing that we no longer rely on a third-party source to
manage their data. Integrating our new cloud-based property management tool will be a smooth
transition, making our employee's jobs more manageable while also allowing our tenants to
quickly pay their rent, file incident reports, and submit applications all online.
The on-site database will be the only system to interface with our IT infrastructure directly. We
should have minimal issues connecting this database via LAN. The only requirement to be met
before joining our database is ensuring our office network is set up beforehand. Finally, our IT
department will lead our overall Security with this new infrastructure. They will monitor and
manage our network, database, and property management software when it comes to identifying
threats, maintaining network health, database health, and administration of user accounts.
Feasibility Analysis
We must upgrade and expand our IT infrastructure to keep up with other competitors within the
industry. Completing this project will give our employees the tools and resources needed to
support our clients and tenants efficiently. This project is expected to take 20 working days, and
our IT department has enough technical knowledge to implement and finish it quickly. With 90%
of the work being completed by the IT department, this reduces the number of contractors
working on this project and will also decrease scheduling conflicts between tasks completed
along the way.