ONLINE HOUSE ALLOCATION SYSTEM FOR CUSTOMER SATISFACTION. (A CASE OF KENYA PORTS AUTHORITY)

MWASENE ASHA SULEIMAN

System project proposal submitted to School of Human Resources Development
(SHRD) in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of a degree in Bachelor of Business Information Technology of The Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology

JANUARY, 2016

DECLARATION.

This application project proposal is my original work and has not been presented for a degree in any other University.

MWASENE ASHA SULEIMAN
(HD232-C005-0599-2012)

………………… ……………………………
Signature Date

This application project proposal has been submitted for examination with my approval as
University Supervisor

MR. SAM KYANG’ANDA

………… …….……………
Signature Date

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background.

Technology has evolved to be used in various ways. One of this ways includes collection and retrieval of information. Through these characteristics, information systems have been made.
Web based applications have evolved significantly over recent years and with improvements in security and technology there are plenty of scenarios where traditional software based applications and systems could be improved by migrating them to a web based application.
Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) is a state corporation with the responsibility to "maintain, operate, improve and regulate all scheduled seaports" on the Indian Ocean coastline of Kenya, including principally Kilindini Harbour at Mombasa.
Online house allocation System is a computer software product that coordinates and integrates all the inherent activities involved in the management and running of a housing facility. The system meets specified security, technology and functionality standards for managing electronic housing records and practice management of information in the institution. The system will provide the reception an easy way for searching on houses, listing off houses, inserting the employees information, getting details about specific employee, making a reservation for employees and doing payment process.

1.2 Statement of the problems.
Employees at Kenya Ports Authority are far too many to be accommodated therefore most of them live far from the working place this leads to lateness at work hence the productivity goes down. Kenya Ports Authority has several estates within town which have benefited some of the employees. However, there is no clear system of how these houses can be allocated to the employees. Some verbally request for the houses, others give letters to the housing officers while others have actually moved in locally especially when an employee is retiring. As a result those who verbally request for the houses may not be able to be allocated because it is to forget something told verbally since there is no documentation or record to show that a certain employee requested for a house on certain date. The management also does not have updated records of vacant rooms or occupied rooms. To know whether there are still some vacant rooms, the person in charge has to go to the residence building and check physically. Also the lack of updated information about the room availability and their types causes some employees to be allocated to the type of rooms they did not want. There is lack of security since data is stored in filing cabinets it is freely available to anyone. This information can easily fall into the wrong hands it can be used against the company in malicious way or against employees or employers to blackmail them. This kind of information is also prone to manipulation and lots of anomaly resulting from lack of security of knowing who is accessing what or who changed what. Therefore it is necessary to develop an automated online system that assigns the houses automatically with user defined rules that track details about each employee, update status each time a booking is made, save employees information into database.

1.3 Research objectives.
1.3.1 General objective.
To develop online house allocation system for customer satisfaction.
1.3.2 Specific objectives. i. To analyze the current system, with a view of specifying requirements for an interactive house allocation system. ii. To develop an online house allocation system with booking features for conviniency. iii. To enhance the system with matching features to divide prospective allocatees to houses, according to their requirements. iv. To develop reposting feature that will provide housing status reports for management decision making.
1.4 Significance of the study.
This project offers a convergence for the theoretical concepts of my undergraduate program and the practical technical implementation of the knowledge and skills gained in real world business environment. The study will benefit the company by improving its services through online services hence turning it to be more efficient and effective aiming to meet its client’s demands. It will also benefit house operators and those in the similar line of business.
1.5 Scope.
This project will work towards developing online house allocation system for KPA housing department to provide customer satisfaction.
1.6 Limitations/constraints i. Developers constraints * Time
The time given for the study and development of the system is limited, bearing in mind that the developer is also undertaking class work at the same time. To manage the pressures involved, the researcher was forced to utilize the allocated time with sleepless nights in order to complete the requirements.

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 Introduction
This chapter discusses the literature review of an online house allocation system. It involves the strength and limitations of the current system, related work, the conclusion and finally the proposed system. The system provide the reception an easy way for searching on houses, listing off houses, inserting the employees information, getting details about specific employee, making a reservation for employees and doing payment process.
2.1 Concept of a clinic
A house is a building that functions as a home, ranging from simple dwellings such as rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes and the improvised shacks in shantytowns to complex, fixed structures of wood, brick, marble or other materials containing plumbing, ventilation and electrical systems. Most conventional modern houses in Western cultures will contain a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen or cooking area, and a living room. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such as chickens or larger livestock (like cattle) may share part of the house with humans. The social unit that lives in a house is known as a household. Most commonly, a household is a family unit of some kind, although households may also be other social groups or individuals. The design and structure of the house is also subject to change as a consequence of globalization, urbanization and other social, economic, demographic, and technological reasons. Various other cultural factors also influence the building style and patterns of domestic space.
2.2 Example of a clinic management information system Louw, Door Janne, (2006, May 10,2006). Developed a hotel management system that can be used online. This system allows the guests to do their booking online by them self. Some of task that the system can do are providing a query for arriving date and the length of staying, providing the number of On rooms, view all available rooms and provides user the ability to choose one or more of them, recording the number of on rooms, view all available rooms and provides the user the ability to choose one or more of them, recording kind of guests and how many going to be in the single room, providing the cost of booking, storing the guests detail; like, name, address and telephone, asking the user for confirmation, final confirmation views with the detail of booking and the guests can review or cancel the booking.
Another existing house booking system is the one that was being used by Kenya Ports Authority which is a manual system hence the need to develop an automated online system that assigns the houses automatically with user defined rules that track details about each employee, update status each time a booking is made, save employees information into database. 2.3 Concept of online house allocation system
Online house allocation System is a computer software product that coordinates and integrates all the inherent activities involved in the management and running of a housing facility.
According to Lucey, (2012), all organizations operations are ever changing. Management and information systems that support them have to deal with that change and adapt to their operations, systems and organizations themselves in order to survive and prosper. Therefore Kenya Ports Authority needs a residential online booking system to solve this problem.
Benefit of a house allocation system
Internet has provided a lot of easy ways to reach out to the things of your interest. In the last few years a big rise is seen in the online shopping. It has become very popular in the recent times with consumers visiting the websites directly or simply through the search engines to different vendors for what they need or require. This growing trend has made many website administrators to take the advantage of the trend by simply providing the consumers with the online reservation facilities which offers them a flexible system to booking instantly.
Online house allocation system is created to computerize manual operations in companies. The primary purpose is to digitize employees’ records so as to make data retrieval easy and efficient. Being in the digital form, employees’ data can be conveniently shared and accessed by multiple simultaneous users at different locations, resulting in smoother operations and collaboration among employers.
This invited the innovations in the software, and today there are many house reservation software, which as the name suggests are exclusively created and developed to make reservation easy and comfortable for the consumers.
However, when it comes to online booking software system, speed plays a major role in its growth. The online reservation is all about the touch of the button or click of the mouse to save time and energy. It simply reduces the duration of the task which normally has taken hours.
There is another advantage which comes with the online allocation system is that errors has been reduced to nil. This is because of the sophisticated system which rejects inconsistent information, making online booking more secure and efficient.
2.4 Knowledge gap
The current system of house allocation at Kenya Ports Authority is not yet computerized and this has made the process of application to be very slow and tiresome. During application, forms are provided to employees who fill them by hand and deposit them to the Housing Office. The staff in charge classifies all the application forms and processes each case at time.
The current system being manual, the management does not have updated records of vacant rooms or occupied rooms. To know whether there are still some vacant rooms, the person in charge has to go to the residence building and check physically. Also the lack of updated information about the room availability and their types causes some employees to be allocated to the type of rooms they did not want.
Online house allocation System is a computer software product that coordinates and integrates all the inherent activities involved in the management and running of a housing facility. The system will meet specified security, technology and functionality standards for managing electronic housing records and practice management of information in the institution. The system will provide the reception an easy way for searching on houses, listing off houses, inserting the employees information, getting details about specific employee, making a reservation for employees and doing payment process.