Smith Consulting Database Environment

Smith Systems Consulting has been providing clients with Business Application and Web Services since 1994. SSC was founded in 1984 with five employees, and has grown to a total of 350 employees. These employees help to provide consulting and services in seven main areas of technology. These main areas are Design, Hosting, Development, Maintenance, Database, Support, and Programming. SSC provides these services gaining the company a reputation of a major consulting company with revenues in excess of $45 million. "Smith Systems Consulting is a proven leader in innovative, but practical, information technology services and consulting" (Apollo Group, 2011, para. 3). With this growth and success, SSC needs to create and maintain a database to track consultant staff, staff skill sets, and the projects each staff member is a working with.

SSC Database Objectives

SSC currently has 350 employees, of which consultants will need to be identified, skill sets listed, and current workload available. With the growth and incoming revenue of the company, monitoring consultant's availability and skill set will allow a more efficient project assignment. Currently SSC assigns projects based on known skill set without any best practice for project assignment. Creating a database that identifies consultants, their skill sets, and current projects they are working on will allow a more efficient process for project assignment. This database will also allow clients to receive the best service from the consultant in the skill set that best suits the client's request. Without this database, consultants may be assigned to multiple projects resulting in possible delays on project progress and end dates. All companies should have best practices identified to allow processes to run smoothly and efficiently.

SSC Database Entities

For the best practice of consultant assignment to benefit SSC and its clients, a database needs to be created and maintained. In this database three main entities will be identified and maintained. These three entities are Consultant Staff, Staff Skill Sets, and Current Assigned Projects. These three entities will help to identify all SSC consultants available for assignments, each consultant's skill sets ranked from best to acceptable, and each consultant's current projects assigned. These entities will be identified in tables labeled as indicated above. Currently SSC does not have a database of this information available or in use. Without the use of this data, the company may not have the most qualified consultant working on projects within his or her skill set. Also without this data, some consultants may be assigned too many projects resulting in project overload and others with little work to complete. Collection and maintenance of this data will help to streamline SSC project assignment, work completed