Narrative Analysis Homework

Based on the narrative below, your assignment is to complete the following:

Table of Entities and Activities (use MS Word)
Context Diagram (use Visio and then copy into Word - alternatively neatly hand draw, scan, and copy to Word)
Systems Flowchart (use Visio and then copy into Word - alternatively neatly hand draw, scan, and copy to Word)
Your submission to BB should be a single Word document.

Naming Convention

Erickson, Inc.

Erickson, Inc. sells plumbing supplies to contractors primarily in the northwest. They use an ERP, called ARIS. ARIS has a centralized database for all of its activities.

Each month, the AR Junior Clerk prepares and mails customer monthly statements by requesting and printing from ARIS the statements for all customers with balances for that period. A report listing the customer numbers and amounts due is printed and given to AR Senior Clerk. The customer statement provides the option for customers to mail checks or to post a payment to Erickson's PayPal business account.

In order to facilitate the PayPal option, the AR Junior clerk has to print the PayPal listing of their customers and their unique customer number and compare that with a printed file from ARIS with customer names and account numbers. Typically, the AR Junior clerk will update the PayPal system with a few new customers and unique numbers each month. Customers make payments by sending money from their PayPal account and referencing their customer number.

Erickson's customers mail their payments back to Erickson where AR Senior Clerk batches the checks and sends them to the cashier. The AR Senior Clerk then uses the payment stub to enter the payments as a batch into ARIS where the AR master data is updated to record the payment. Once the batch is updated, ARIS will print a listing of all payments made and recorded. If there are any errors (e.g., payments posted without valid account numbers), the AR Senior Clerk will review the information and correct it.

The AR Senior Clerk then logs in to PayPal to print a listing of payments made during the period and compares those payments and the ARIS printed listing to the original printed list provided by the other clerk. Any discrepancies are noted and customers that have not paid are marked with a highlighter. This highlighted report is copied and the original is filed by date and the copy is sent to the AR Junior Clerk for follow-up on late payments.