MMTI Theses and Dissertations (2019)

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    Cross SACCO information sharing and collaboration environment: ucredit mobile application
    (Strathmore University, 2019) Mukenya, Edwin Eddy
    Savings and Credit Co-operative societies (SACCOs) are the financial arm of the cooperative movement in Kenya. SACCOs have identified with mobile banking applications as a means of cheaply, efficiently accessing SACCOs transaction by their membership. These SACCOs mobile applications are designed to fit individual SACCO policy and Philosophy, locking the membership from access and comparing rival SACCOs service rates and products portfolios on same application. Hence no information sharing or SACCOs collaboration is being supported on these mobile platforms.Nevertheless, modern trends need to be adopted in the cooperative movement that will enable sharing of SACCOs information through mobile technology and inter SACCOs collaboration using mobile phone collaboration tools and thus SACCOs gaining stakeholders’ trust. These factors are important for increasing growth of SACCOs financial base and increase of individual SACCOs potential to grow. Thus, avoid the need for SACCOs to merge, and make SACCOs provide a united front that perpetually creates a large business entity to compete effectively with other large financial institutions such as banks, for customer market share. Entrenching an environment that will make SACCOs able to maintain efficiency and security on financial information access. The mobile application platform will expand delivery of products and services to consumers who are SACCOs members, expand members’ investment options and provide a simplified but high-quality service access to both current and new members.The SACCO collaborative information sharing platform is expected to provide a simplified concept that will enable consumers select services competitively across multiple SACCOs on one platform, consuming less time and reduce options burden to membership and reduce operational burden to individual SACCO.This dissertation is a study into possibility of designing and developing a mobile phone-based SACCO information sharing platform by adopting a collaborative business model. The study will apply theoretical frameworks which have been developed from existing literature on adoption of innovation in the sharing and collaboration application platforms. The factors that could influence SACCOs intention to adopt and use collaborative sharing platforms.
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    Robotic process automation for inventory control and management: a case of Freight Forwarders Solutions
    (Strathmore University, 2019) Mungla, Beryl Okwado
    Logistics services are a lifeline for most business enterprises. These services cannot be provided efficiently with an ineffective inventory management system in place. Technological advancements enable enterprises acquire information systems to improve operational efficiency. Manual data entry into warehouse management systems has a myriad of setbacks including: High error rates; Slow turnaround time; Investment in additional personnel to countercheck the accuracy of manually entered data; Increased error rates due to unexpected spikes in manual data entry; Deviation of attention from tasks that are cognitive based to those that are rules based resulting in decreased employee productivity. Robotic process automation, a disruptive, new technology leveraging on artificial intelligence was used in this study to automate the business processes performed in the inventory control and management module of a warehouse management system. Relevant literature was reviewed to better understand how the technology has been implemented in other organisations. The waterfall model was selected for development of the software robots due to its applicability in the selection of business processes best suited for automation as well as throughout the development lifecycle of the robots. Processes that were selected for automation had the following characteristics: mundane, manual, repetitive, rule-based, labour and time intensive. The developed solution delivered several benefits to the organisation including: Increased accuracy of the information captured in the system; Reduction in error rates during data capture; Significant reduction in time consumed during execution of tasks; Cost savings due to reduction in operational costs; Process improvements due to streamlining; Increased productivity, quality and compliance; and Redeployment of employees to higher value functions. Results from solutions testing showed that majority of the respondents agreed that the software robots had attained the desired results. The aim of this research paper was to explore ways through which technology could be leveraged to transform manual business processes into automated and streamlined processes through robotic process automation technology. The conclusions drawn indicated that process automation increases operational efficiency and employee productivity through redeployment to more cognitive based tasks.
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    A Mobile application that enables restaurants list their left-over food at discounted rates in Nairobi
    (Strathmore University, 2019) Ngugi, Bettirose Njoki
    Food waste is a huge problem in Kenya and many other countries, in fact, the severity of the problem borders that of climate change and global warming. Institutions in the catering industry such as hotels, restaurants, supermarkets and events caterers prepare food every day that is not all consumed at the end of the day. This is food that is good for human consumption ends ups as waste most times. More to this, most consumers make food orders but end up having leftovers on their plates at the end of their meals. Plate waste and vegetable peeling produced during food preparation process is still consumable by animals such as pigs and dogs, but most times than not, ends up in waste bins rotting. While this amount of food goes to waste, more and more people sleep everyday hungry and even more are said not to have a nutritious food to keep them active and healthy. Food waste contributes to global warming through greenhouse gas emission comparable to that produced from road transport and mitigating it will have a positive impact on climate change. This being the case, there is need to bridge the gap between excess food produced by hospitality institutions and those who need it either for their consumption for human consumable food or animal consumption for left-over food. This study seeks to help manage food waste in the hospitality industry, by creating a platform where hotels, restaurants, supermarkets or just companies in the catering business report excess food and people in need of food sign up and place their orders for both human consumable food and plate waste suitable for animals. The organizations have a choice either give up the food for free or charge a small fee. The study provides data to these organization to help perform predictive analysis on trends with a goal of enabling them know how much is consumed and keep this in mind when preparing food to avoid food wastage. The software methodology used is prototyping model. From research, it was established that in deed food waste is a global problem that needs attention and a mobile application was created as the front end interface that allows users to browse through meals and place orders and a backend that allows restaurants to update the mobile application with meals available for the day.
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    Farmers mobile application for ordering inputs and marketing produce
    (Strathmore University, 2019) Limo, Augustine Biwott
    Farming operations experience long agricultural supply chain every day. These long chains include, but not limited to very long processes of getting desired farm inputs and reaching the actual market for produce leading to excessive price abuse. In a small-scale farming setup, a farmer cannot access direct input and even sell their produce to the right market other than to depend on middle-men, brokers, who do not give them fair dues and thus the overall value of the farming becomes un-profitable. The current small-holder farming setup do not explicitly consider commercial farming and majorly concentrate on subsistence farming yet there is enough potential to go commercial. This dissertation investigated the agricultural supply chain process. It was done by considering the challenges faced by farmers, especially small holder during start of farming, nurturing and selling produce. Further the current solutions used to get inputs and sale of produce were considered and a suitable solution designed, developed, tested and validated to ensure that it solved these challenges. Data was collected from existing records of farmers input per season, produce gathered and sold. The data collected was used as input to an Android mobile application for farmers to order inputs and sell produce. Scrum Agile Development methodology was adopted as the software methodology for developing the solution. A proof of concept mobile application was adopted to make farm input orders and sell produce. Testing was conducted by the several farmers who were registered in the platform and a setup place in Eldoret town.