Human services: Substance abuse counseling

Human services: Substance abuse counseling

Introduction

Imagine that young are sitting on a bench in a busy park. Imagine that you are watching all the people that are passing. There are high chances that many of those people are dealing with a substance abuse issue, whether knowingly or unknowingly.  Research has it that millions of people do suffer from substance abuse every year, and it is the most common problem in America (Richards & O'Hara, 2014).  The term substance abuse refers to the habitual usage of a mind altering substance, and it can be alcohol or drugs. Many of the victims may see that they are okay and blessed in some things, but the truth is that those substances fracture their souls and harm their bodies.  The abuse of substances like drugs or alcohol always inflicts a person’s mind as well.  People suffering from substance abuse do not like themselves. For example, somebody who has hot temper can become violent when under the influence of alcohol or drugs. That is the reason it is an issue that requires the intervention of human services to help the victims overcome as well as conquer the dependencies on those substances such as alcohol and drugs.

Needs Analysis

Substance abuse is the chronic or habitual use of any chemical substance that can alter the mind of the body other than the medically warranted purposes resulting in effects that are detrimental to an individual. (Craig & Baucum, 2001). Substance abuse in this paper refers to the misuse of legal products and illegal products like cocaine, and cannabis that are harmful to the well-being of persons and the welfare of the society.  When people’s abuse substances for a long time, they reach a point where they become substance dependence.  At this juncture, there is uncontrollable craving as well as the use of the substances despite their potential harm to the person or society. It incorporates both the legal and illegal substances. Individuals that is dependent on substances become unable to quit by themselves and need treatment to help them stop using those substances.

Statement of the problem

Substance abuse, especially among the youth In America, is increasing every day despite its effects on both individuals and the community. Nevertheless, the victims of substance abuse show signs of cultural influence. Many of the tribes have the cultures of dealing as well as brewing substances in their homes, thus exposing the young men to such substances at an early age. The consumption of those drugs and alcohol increase due to peer pressure when those young people reach adolescence (Kawaguchi, 2004).  Many of those young people prefer the strong local spirit put on miniature sachets, and it goes at very low prices. Consequently, the young generation is having spoilage, rape, imprisonment, joblessness, homelessness, and unwanted pregnancies. Forced marriages, prostitution, and others die from HIV/AIDS.  Because of these problems, the future of America is not only at the state of doubt, but it is also in a terrible dilemma because the youth are the future parents and leaders.  The solution to the problem is to find the challenges of substance use among then youth in America and then apply the substance abuse counseling and a better theoretical approach to remedy the situation.

Types of abused substances

The youth abuse both the legal as well as the illegal substances. Legal substances include the socially acceptable and psychoactive such as over the counter and prescribed medicines (Parry, 1998). In addition to the above drugs with medicinal value, there are also other substances abused by the youth such as solvents in glue, nicotine and inhalants, alcohol beverages, petrol and nail polish. Illegal substances are those prohibited and whose use, trading or possession constitutes a criminal offense. Those substances include cocaine powder, examine, ecstasy, crack, morphine, fentanyl, heroin, cannabis, mandrax, methamphetamine, flunitrazepam, wellconal and opium (Craig & Baucum, 2001).

The causes of substance abuse among the youth today

Young people are coming to the health professionals or human services professionals for assistance use substances as a means of coping with emotional or situational distress (Rose, 2000). The influence of peer groups also is a key factor that leads to substance abuse among the young people. Generally, in the current social set up, youths learn by modeling –exposure from their peers due to anticipated rewards for deliquescence engagement.  As with sex, substance issues may remain secretive for the adolescents. That is particularly so when the young people perceive possible adverse consequences in case of disclosure (e.g. judged, refused accommodation or parents informed).

Application of cognitive behavioral treatment for the substance abuse problem

There are around ten years elapsed since there was the emergence of cognitive behavioral therapies by Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck. Academic literature began to embrace the theory in the 1990s as a forming treatment for the victims of substance abuse and dependency. Cognitive behavioral therapy abbreviated as CBT is an established form of treatment for various issues, and its tenet is that people’s problems arise from their evaluations, beliefs, and interpretation in light of life events. Currently, CBT has universal applicability, and it is one of the few treatments empirically supported by the American Psychological Association to handle various issues and disorders (NIDA, 1998).  Specific uses of CBT in substance abuse application include motivational interviewing, contingency management therapies, and cognition-focused drug counseling.  All those are variations of CBT. It is a short-term comparative intervention, and it takes twelve to sixteen weeks sessions conducted in community-based outpatient settings. It is also flexible enough to have adaptation to individual patient therapeutic needs.  Those features make it an ideal therapy for some clients though it first has an outage for only heroin addicts.

Human service agents advise that CBT is crucial for substance abusers although there can be other therapies combined with it to make the outcome more successful.  Given the complexity of addiction that involves bio-psycho-social mechanisms, the guiding principle for those human service agents is a combination of therapeutic approaches tailored to individual patients.  The agents and other medical practitioners have it that CBT is maintaining effectiveness when used in conjunction with other treatment options. Those treatment options include self-help groups, vocational counseling, pharmacotherapy, family and couples therapy, and parenting skill training. Substance abuse is a bio-psychological phenomenon, and CBT therapy is very promising as many clients are showing positive responses (NIDA, 1998).  It incorporates the client’s social as well as environmental context to reinforce the strength of CBT’s modality since it is a type of treatment that emerged from moral or disease models.

The approach of CBT is to start from where the client is. To make the client maintain motivation on the therapy, the social workers ensure that the client is comfortable with the therapy and within the client-professional relationship. There is a mutual agreement of the treatment goals by the client and the therapist with an emphasis on the client’s identified problems and consideration of the skills and knowledge of the professional.  The collaboration fosters the creation of a good working relationship and helps avoid a passive stance by the therapist as it assures that the treatment is most relevant and useful to the patient (NIDA, 1998). The maintenance of that client-professional collaboration makes CBT vital in deconstructing the notion of personal deficiency and blame that the client might be having over the years of struggling to conquer substance dependency.  It helps to challenge the negative thoughts that contribute to harmful behaviors that according to pure CBT theory culminate to self-regulated change and more positive outcomes (Fisher, 1995).

Demographics of chosen population

The demographics in this document represent the survey done by MTF last year, 2014 regarding alcohol and drug abuse that comprise substance abuse problem. The results show that the use of electronics cigarettes is high among the youth in America and of those, only 14.2 percent that view it as harmful to their health.  There is also the continuous use of marijuana use among high school seniors whereby only 36. 1% of the users in these groups say that the use of marijuana puts the user at a great risk.  The study also shows that marijuana smoking exceeds cigarette smoking whereby among the high school seniors 21.2% use marijuana, compared to 13.6 percent who smoke cigarettes. Tobacco use is also heightening with 22.95 of 12 graders using hooker in the year 2014. 

References

Craig, J. & Baucum, D. (2001). Human development. (9th Ed.). London: Prentice Hall.

Kawaguchi, D. (2004). Peer effects of substance use among American teenagers. Journal of Population Economics, (17), 351-367.

NIDA (1998). A cognitive-behavioral approach: treating cocaine addiction. Rockville, MD: Author.

NIH (2014). Monitoring the future survey, overview of findings 2014. 

Parry, H. (1998). Substance abuse in South Africa: country report focusing on young persons. 

Richards, S., & O'Hara, W. (2014). The Oxford handbook of depression and comorbidity.

Rose, J. (2000). High risk youth: alcohol and other drug use. 

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in custom essay paper writing if you need a similar paper you can place your order from custom research paper services.  

Plagiarism

Plagiarism normally implies the taking of another individual’s thoughts as well as words in terms of their ideas, sentences, concepts and using them is if they belong to you. The essence of the stealing is whereby the individual fails to give credit to the author of the content they are using or otherwise citing the source of the borrowed material.  The majority of the plagiarism cases are normally willful in the context of being some form of theft, although there are some other cases that are unintentional. Thus, plagiarism is a form of fraud and involves the stealing of another individual’s work and consequently lying about the stealing.

Some of the issues normally considered as being plagiarism include:

·         The turning of another individual’s work and making it your own

·         Copying ideas or words from another person’s work and failing to give them credit.

·         Presenting incorrect information relating to the source of a quotation

·         Failing to place quotations in quotation marks.

·         Altering word but copying the structure of the sentence and failing to give credit.

·         Copying a lot of ideas or words from a single source making it the majority of one’s work irrespective of whether credit is given or not being under the fair use rule.

In the academic field, the majority of colleges and universities have a zero tolerance policy for plagiarism, with plagiarized papers resulting in a direct failure in the assignment and other cases expulsion. Some of the techniques used in avoiding plagiarism include;

·         Ensuring one identifies what they have written as direct quotations.

·         Ensuring one keeps the working bibliography.

·         Maintaining a clean research log.

·         Allocating adequate time for reading.

·         Allocating adequate time for the gathering of materials.

·         Writing down the citation for each source used. 

         

·          Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in custom essay paper writing if you need a similar paper you can place your order from custom research paper services.

Building shared services at RR communications

Question 1: Advantages of a single customer service

·         A single customer service if essential in ensuring that we have few auditors unlike the case of separate customer services where many are in the requirement. That shortens durations for audits and saves on resources.

·         A single customer service ensures quick services to customer service as there is no transferring of customers from one division unit to another.

·         A single customer service helps the company to consolidate data in one place making it easy for the company to trace the services offered to customers.

·         A single customer service ensures that the information technology and the business work together harmoniously, and this leads to delivery of better services to customers.

·         A single customer service ensures that the work of auditors is easy as they will have one pace to look at compared to the many areas in case of a decentralized customer service. Centralization of customer service also ensures more coordination of auditors.

·         A single customer service ensures that there is one IT system that helps manage the entire organization. It saves on the cost of having specific IT needs for each division in case of decentralized customer service.

Question 2: Implementation strategy for a customer service center to guarantee support from the divisional presidents

Enhancing understanding

In this step, it will be necessary to get all the presidents on the same page. It entails eliminating their ill-formed mindset regarding the merger by helping them understand the benefits to accrue from the customer service center. There will be the calculation of the costs and resources in requirement both the separate customer divisions and a single customer center. There will be a head-to-head comparison to help the presidents see the difference between the two systems. Without tangible evidence, they will not understand the need for merging the customer centers, but with the clear comparison of the advantages of the new system and disadvantages of the old, they will comprehend better. There is nothing that interest organizational administrators like cutting down on expenses in the daily operations of the business (Moss & Brodie, 2002). That itself will have the presidents’ full support for the merger.

Laying down objectives

The stage of outlining the objectives and the company vision is also indispensable in ensuring full support by the presidents for the new system. There will be listing the objectives for the news system as this will make it clear why there is a need to merge the divisions. The presidents will have a better understanding of the deliverables of the new system. Some of the objectives, for instance, will be to reduce the amount of resources required to manage the system, to have more accountability for operations, easy mining of data for more intelligent decision-making, etc. A single customer service center will also lead to the easy maintenance of the associated hardware and software as this will take place from a single point (National Computing Center, n.d). There will be need to demonstrate how the objectives have alignment with the company’s vision. That will ensure full support by the presidents.

Unifying the IT and the Business

Unification of IT and business is a vital task required in the company as there is a lack of a common information management system in the organization in question. Business and IT unification is the set of applications supported and delivered, called the application portfolio (McKeen & Smith, 2009). There is a disjoint of the firm’s information assets which means that there is a wide gap that exists between the IT and business. Unifying IT and business and ensuring that the presidents understand why that is needful will make them fully willing to support the strategy. In the effort to unify the IT and business, it will also be necessary to remove the CIO team that has been a great hindrance for the unification. The business cannot master the rapid pace of business complexity, but it is possible for it to manage the consequences of its operations (Dvorak et al., 2013). Those consequences are normally the information visibility and unclear priorities. The IT and business unification will help the company to maintain its competitive advantage; otherwise business complexity will weigh it down.

Appointing an overseer team

Another way to ensure that the implementation of the single customer service center has support by the presidents is to appoint a team to oversee ten maintenance of the data warehouse. The team will handle the management comprised of all the presidents. The members of the overseer team should consist of analysts belonging to vital functional areas of the firm. That will not only ensure the buy-in of the presidents, it will also make the project to have success because the team members are people who have knowledge and capability due to their previous performance. The purpose of having his team is also to assure the presidents that every department has representation in the new system and that there is the protection of their interests. It will increase the potential for global acceptance of the system and help to eliminate any roadblocks to the system’s adoption.

Question 3: Is it possible to achieve an enterprise vision with a decentralized IT function?

A decentralized it functions cannot make an enterprise to achieve its vision because there will be no focusing of the vision of the enterprise. A decentralize IT function in an organization leads to the evolution of many issues in the various company divisions. There can be conflicts of interest regarding the management of the IT functions when they exist in a decentralized format. It is hard to have a common strategy and view from the company’s vision when the IT function exists in such a way. The success metrics will only focus on the individual divisions rather than focusing on the corporate vision of the company. It is easy to integrate the IT and business with centralized IT functions, but if the IT functions do not have centralization, then it is hard to merge the two for organization’s success.

 A centralized IT function ensures that a company information runs seamlessly and is relevant to all departments including the accounting and financial (McKeen & Smith, 2011). A single, standardized and centralized IT operating system enhances quick decision-making across all the departments as all the departments look at the same data. A decentralized system lengthens decision-making. A decentralized IT function makes customers visit different databases for the same company making the purchases and queries take longer than expected by customers. The company vision is to have high quality and improved customer service, and a decentralized IT function makes the achievement of that vision almost impossible.

Question 4: Business and IT problems caused by lack of common information and IM strategy

There are many IT problems and business problems when there is no common information and enterprise information management (IM) strategy as outlined below.

Business problems

The auditing of information is not sharable by all the departments, and the duration of both internal and external auditing is long. Lack of a common information and IM strategy makes the company not focus on the new growth opportunities that may emerge in the market. It will be hard to consolidate information and then make solid plans to seize the upcoming opportunities. The data update takes a long time as it is not in a common place. The management conflicts may also arise due to the different approaches to the administration of the different lines of business of information (Khan & Sikes, 2014). It makes the company not be flexible and responsive to the new and better ways of doing business. Lack of a common information and IM strategy results in less efficiency of services and it also leads to high operational costs; which is uneconomical for the firm (Porter, 2008). The services offered to customers may be poor due to the many points of service for the customers. That will culminate in loss of customers due to dissatisfaction.

IT problems

Important projects aimed at improving the company’s operations will not receive the required support and effort by the entire management and IT administration (Smith & McKeen, 2007). That is because there is no sharing of the information and communication pathway within the organization. There can be data duplication, for instance, the customer data will exist in all the divisions, and this is uneconomical. Management of information is a core to an organization’s success, but if there is no common IM and information strategy, then there will be poor information management. It will consequently make the company lose to its competitors. Backing up of data is problematic due to lack of consistency in the data and duplication of data.  Lack of a common information and IM strategy within the enterprise makes it difficult to have uniform data protection strategies in place, and there will be no accounting for information loss (Smaltz, 2011).

Question 5: Governance mechanisms for common customer data and shared customer service. The useful metrics

Many governance mechanisms and metrics exist for encouraging the implementation and usage of a shared enterprise data system. The first governance mechanism required for the shared customer data and service is the alignment of the divisions and the IT department. The metrics need to have alignment with transparency to make sure that information technology has congruence with the business operations. The governance mechanisms need to incorporate all organizational departments to focus on regulatory issues, risk alleviation, and enhancement of business opportunities. The concern of the metrics should entail making the company information useful in the enterprise system (Porter, 2008). Those metrics need to identify the areas of weakness as well as the avenues of improvement for the firm to have a competitive advantage over its rivals. The company will be identifying the additional governance mechanism required as it cannot come up with all the mechanisms in a day and then be successful. Close governance and metrics will help in any improvement plan of the firm.

References

McKeen, D. & Smith, A. (2009). IT Strategy; Issues and Practices (2nd Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

McKeen, D. & Smith, A. (2011). IT Strategy; International edition (2nd Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Moss, L. & Brodie, M. (2002). Data Rich, but Information Poor? 

Porter, M. (2008). The five competitive forces that shape strategy. Harvard business review. 

Smaltz, H. (2011). Are You Leveraging Your Data or Is Your Data Leveraging You? HIT Exchange , pp. 8-9.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in custom essay paper writing if you need a similar paper you can place your order from custom research paper services.

Challenges in global business

Introduction

Like many multinational corporations, Apple Inc manufactures many of its products primarily overseas, in places such as China, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand Compared to the United States. Even though many of these countries have labor laws in place, their laxity can rebound on the company in adverse ways.  For example, there were serious allegations of employee working conditions in at Foxconn, one of its Chinese manufacturers in the year 2006.  The allegations included longer working hours of 15-hours per day and overcrowded and ill- equipped residents for employees. After thorough investigations, the company found that the claims had merit. Accordingly, Apple Inc has made tremendous steps towards high standards of environmental responsibility, social responsibility, and ethical conduct. Apple’s suppliers are required to follow the guidelines and responsible practices whenever they make products or provide services for the company.

 Apple’s supplier code of conduct goes beyond mere compliance with the law by drawing upon internationally recognized standards to advance environmental and social responsibility. When differences arise between legal requirements and standards, the stricter standards are expected to apply in compliance with applicable law. Supplier’s compliance is assessed, and the violations may jeopardize business relationships to the extent of termination. In addition to maintaining standards, the company has regularly made changes in the past detailing its expectations for suppliers regarding health and safety, labor and human rights, ethics, environmental protection and management practices. This paper lists and explains various changes that the company has made to its Code of Conduct in recent years for suppliers providing goods or services to Apple Inc, or for use in or with Apple products. (Moren, 2010)

Environmental standards

Apple Inc has vigorously enforced its environmental standards across its supply chain. The company has implemented various programs such as Clean Water Program and EHS Academy. The clean water program promotes saving half a billion gallons of freshwater. The EHS Academy educates managers and suppliers to preserve diligently and protect the planet’s resources for future generations. Apple Inc conducted 451 audits of its suppliers in 2013. This accounted for more than 51% audits conducted in the year 2012.  The two specialized types of audits conducted were specialized environmental audits and process safety assessment. One of the Environmental practices that came under scrutiny in the audit report particularly focused on conflict minerals.  (Moren, 2014)

Apple Inc now requires all smelters of tantalum in its supply chain to be recognized as conflict-free by third-party auditors. Similar steps have been taken to suppliers of other minerals included in the manufacture of Apple products such as tungsten, tin, and gold.  Additionally, the Company released a list of refiners and smelters that it uses together with their verification status.  The goal of the stricter measures is to improve the accountability of its smelters and provide information for its stakeholders. (Moren, 2014)

The company’s measures have increased suppliers’ transparency and how they conduct business with the company. Apple Inc has in the past increasingly pushed suppliers to remove hazardous materials from products and afford more renewable energy for data centers in order to reduce the use of conflict minerals. For example, the company began investigating the potential associated environmental impacts and human rights of using certain minerals like tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold in 2009. In 2010, Apple Inc mapped its supply chains down to the level of refiners and smelters.  The Consumer Electronics Company has been instrumental in mapping its suppliers so as to exert its collective influence to build devices that meet environmental standards. (Moren, 2010)

Labor and human rights

Apple Inc continually strengthens suppliers’ code of conduct to help implement safer and more ethical working conditions. Apple Company looks at the code of conduct violation by conducting audits to improve working conditions. The company actively looks for issues and fixes them. For example, in 2014, 633 supplier audits were conducted in 19 countries as an activity in Supplier Responsibility initiative. Audits are conducted by Apple auditors and supported by various third-party auditors. The third parties auditors are experts in their fields and are trained to use detailed auditing protocols. Suppliers are graded on more than 100 data points during each audit corresponding to each category of the company’s Supplier Code of Conduct. (Apple, 2015)

The audits are conducted up and down its supply chain starting from component suppliers that produce hard drives, screens, cases, and other Mac components, as well as other products such as keyboards and displays and nonproduction suppliers, all the way up to final assembly manufacturers. Additionally, Apple Inc was the first electronics firm to engage directly with Indonesian smelters towards improving working conditions. To further push for solutions, the firm spearheaded the establishment of the Tin Working Group in the year 2013.  The company along other stakeholders held in-person meetings with more than 30 Indonesian tin traders and smelters and government officials and throughout 2013 and 2014 to establish a foundation and relationships to implement a possible system to enable the tracing of tin back to legal mines and testing out new land management practices. (Apple, 2015)

According to the annual reports, the company Apple Records supplier compliance with labor and human rights practices, environmental impact practices, ethics practices, health and safety practices, management commitment practices. It considers some problems as a core violation when they directly contradict Apple's Supplier Code of Conduct. Such violations include underage or involuntary labor, abuse, threats or intimidating practices against employees, falsified audit materials and serious environmental threats. Such facilities found directly violating the codes of conduct are placed on probation for a year pending further audits at the end of the period. Thus, every supplier conducting business with Apple is required to demonstrate the highest commitment to protecting employees’ rights. Such includes abiding by a maximum 60-hour workweek. In 2014 alone, 92% percent of all our suppliers were compliant. (Apple, 2015)

For example, in 2014, the most common violations found among suppliers concerned improper calculation of overtime, excessive working hours, deficient benefits, pay below minimum wages, discrimination, poor ergonomics, unsafe working conditions and negative environmental impact. Beyond the carrying out of audits, the company holds suppliers answerable with a periodical evaluation of Key Performance Indicators, which comprise measurements of injuries, training, and living conditions. The company makes procurement decisions in part on the basis in part on key indicators. (Apple, 2015)

The strict measures are taken as an oversight for the suppliers due to various incidents involving employees. Example, in 2009, reports on suicide by a Foxconn employee reportedly after losing a prototype of a new iPhone hit the headlines allegedly after being abused by Foxconn security personnel. It became clear that the company had to increase oversight as long as it is outsourcing products from countries that lack the same kinds of oversight as the United States. (Moren, 2014)

A Corrective Action Plan is required for every supplier in order to remediate all violations. The corrective action plan outlining a corrective course of action must be submitted within two weeks of the audit.  Severe violations adversely affect the suppliers’ business relationship with the company that may result in possible termination. The supplier is then monitored by a team of verification specialists who check in intervals ensure the supplier is on track. A delay in progress is escalated to senior management. (Moren, 2014)

Worker’s Protection

Apple Inc has also instituted changes to improve the ways its suppliers manage and recruit foreign workers. In particular, the company has required limiting of recruitment fees, which such employees are needed to pay to various labor agencies. Despite the fact that such fees are legal; the firm has set a ceiling on them equal to a month's net pay. In 2014, the firm helped 4500 foreign contract employees recoup US$3.96 million in excessive amounts paid to labor brokers.  The move is meant to control the practice. Another example is that of Apple Inc partnering with three firms as well as other groups such as trade unions and nongovernmental organizations to commence a pilot program that would improve the management of foreign contract workers working in Malaysian companies. The program also provides employees with education on relevant laws and their rights as well as cultural orientation and. According to the firm, such processes learned from that experience will be extended to the other suppliers. (Apple, 2015)

References

Moren, D. (2010). Apple cleans up its supply chain. Macworld, 27(5), 14-15.

Apple Inc (2015) Supplier Responsibility: 2015 progress report 

Moren, D. (2014) Apple's 2014 supplier report: Better working conditions 

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in custom essay paper writing if you need a similar paper you can place your order from custom research paper services.

Systems analysis data modeling

Introduction

A data model represents the information requirements for an organization. A data model acts as an essential communication tool for discussion with system users apart from serving as a blueprint for the database system (Blaha, 2007). It thus acts as a bridge between the real work information and the database storing the data content. Creation of blueprints takes place at various levels of detail, that is, the high-level requirements, basic architectural layout, and the detailed plumbing design. Data modeling in systems analysis differs depending on the type of business, as businesses processes are different, and the identification of the system occurs at the modeling stage. When developing a suitable data model, it is vital to liaise with stakeholders so as to understand the requirements. The function of data modeling in system analysis is to help in comprehending the system requirements. It makes the life of end users and developers easier.

Origins of data modeling

During the early days of data processing system development focused on the automation of the tedious manual business processes. The key river was the elimination of the slow manual process.  In the process of system development, the primary objective was the production of a set of programs that helped to automate a business process (Kabeli & Peretz, 2003). The business environment has been changing in complexity due to the development of technology, thus making the old ways of performing system analysis hard to meet current and future needs.  Nowadays, the process of system analysis comprises of two main tasks that are data modeling and functional modeling.  Traditional development methodologies emphasize on functional modeling using data flow diagrams while object-oriented methodologies put emphasis on data modeling using class diagrams.

The role of system analysis data modeling

The goal of data modeling is to ensure that complete and accurate representation of all data objects required by the database (Valacich et al., 2007). Data modeling for system analysis uses makes use of easily understood natural language and notations, thus, it is easy for the end-users to review and verify them. Data modeling is also indispensable to database developers that use it as a blueprint for building the physical database. The developers utilize the information of the data model to define the relational tables, stored procedures, triggers, primary keys, and secondary keys. A poorly-designed database will consume more time in the long run. If the developers do not carefully analyze the system, they may create data models that leave out data needed to create critical reports (Valacich et al., 2007).  It may also produce results that are inconsistent or incorrect, and the one that cannot accommodate changes in the users’ requirements. If the data model is wrong, the application will do what the users want.

What makes system analysis data modeling important?

The main characteristics that make system analysis data modeling vital are communication and precision (Blaha, 2007). Data model is a representation of the organizational information requirements and so it ought to truly reflect data requirements of a business.  The data model must clearly indicate every aspect of the data of a company’s operations. That is because data models serve as communication tools with users of domain experts. That is why the analysis of the system must focus on those two aspects.  One of the major requirements in system analysis is quality. The value of data modeling is to establish the single version of truth for the enterprise or to have a single view of a business. For companies to maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace, they ought to make decisions based on accurate data of the enterprise. Systems analysis data modeling helps the decision makers to make better evaluations and enhancements of efficiency or their organizations or companies.  One of the approaches to improving the quality of data in systems is to model the data that improves the procedures for decision-making.

Data modeling at different information levels

External data model

The external data model or very high-level data model is a display of the database system as viewed by the different user groups. An external view (or model) looks at the world from a specific perspective and for a specific purpose. The external models are the appropriate places to hold data needs for a specific business context and the rules that apply to it.  Data models of most systems nowadays take a view of the world from the perspective of that system, and so external models (Ponniah, 2007).

Conceptual data model (high-level data model)

Conceptual models are useful in clarifying the vital information, how concepts have a definition, and how the concepts relate to one another (Valacich et al., 2007).  High-level data models help in collecting the business requirements as well as clarifying understanding of the basic concepts. The purpose of the conceptual model is for communicating with the user community.  It is also a diagram that identifies the business concepts and the relationship between those concepts for the purpose of gaining, reflecting and document understanding of an enterprise’s business. The model is essential and has wide usage in the early stage of requirements analysis for systems. Conceptual data model construction is a common practice in the early stage of system development in industries.  It takes the form of an entity-relationship diagram, and some scholars consider it as a picture on the puzzle box offering the vision of the result of the information puzzle (Valacich et al., 2007).

Logical data model

It entails more detailed levels of a diagram showing data layout, size and type of data, and the relationships between various objects (Hoberman et al., 2009). The logical level data model shows more details including business rules and business logic.  The mandate of creating a logical data model lies on an architect of a data modeler, but a business person is in the requirement to ensure proper application and definition of business rules.

Physical level data model

Physical level data models for system analysis indicate technical details for implementing data structures or databases (Blaha, 2007). A physical model represents a physical store of data. Physical models must support the conceptual model, and there are several physical models for a conceptual model.

Conclusion

System analysis data modeling take place at the organization level, and it acts as a vital communication tool useful to the developers and the end-users.  It helps the users and the developers to understand better the system because data models represent the visual image of the system (Ponniah, 2007). The analysis process of a system entails data modeling and functional modeling as the main activities. The traditional data modeling methodologies emphasize on functional modeling of systems using data flow diagrams while new ones, which are objects oriented emphasize on data modeling using class diagrams. There are data models at different levels of information systems including conceptual, logical, external and physical models. The type of model depends on the purpose of that model and the resources available.

References

Hay, David C.  Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002.

Ponniah, Paulraj: “Data Modeling Fundamentals”, Hoboken, New Jersey: A John Wiley &Sons, INC., 2007 USA.

Steve Hoberman, Donna Burbank, and Chris Bradley. 2009. “Data Modeling for the Business: A Handbook for Aligning the Business with it Using High-Level Data Models.” Technics Publications, LLC,, USA.

Valacich, A. Hoffer, F. & George, S. (2007). Analyzing System Data Requirements: Saddle River: Prentice Hall, Pp 295 - 296.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in custom essay paper writing if you need a similar paper you can place your order from custom research paper services.