1.1 Project Overview

1.1.1 Goals and Objectives

1.1.2 System Statement of Scope

1.1.3 Major Inputs

1.1.4 Processing Functionalities

1.1.5 Major Outputs

1.2 Major Software Functions

1.3 Performance / Behavior Issues

1.3.1 e-Loan Online

1.3.2 e-Loan Host

1.4 Management and Technical Constraints

1.1.1 Goals and Objectives

e-loan is a system comprises of two parts : the e-loan Online Application and the e-Loan Host Application. The e-Loan Online Application will be the interface for the e-Bank respective clients such as corporate institutions and individuals to do data entry and submitting loan application as well as transactions via Internet. Inquiry of loans related information include requests for disbursements and to update e-Bank on any repayments are also available. These external users can also check the status of their applications as well as transactions. e-Loan Host Application is used by e-Bank to process the applications and transactions received by the respective clients. It will allow authorized e-Bank users retrieve the submissions by external entities as well as generate reports pertaining to e-Loan. In addition, internal users will use this component to maintain the static data used in e-Loan such as fund group, source of fund, sector codes, corporation type and so on. The system will then facilitate the provision of such data wherever necessary to the subscribers.

(Note : External users refer to the bank's client such as corporate institutions or individuals. Internal users refer to all the authorized bank staff such as high level management officers, system administrator and etc.)

The fundamental roles of e-Loan are:
1. Consolidate and integrate all the activities in managing, administering the Funds/Loans Processing from the initial application of loans till the maturity/settlement of the loan.
2. Facilitate the analysis of funds and loans information and to facilitate management information reporting.
3. Provide user friendly and flexible Graphical User Interface (GUI) for operating e-Loan system.
4. Facilitate the generation of various reports for the use of top-level management.

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1.1.2 System Statement of Scope

e-Loan Processes
e-Loan will comprise of a number of processes that require input from or produce output to the external entities. These processes also serve to facilitate the processing and manipulation of the data provided to it in order to derive the end-results required by the various users. These processes can be classified under the following components:

>> e-Loan Online
>> e-Loan Host

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1.1.3 Major Inputs

The major inputs from the external users are the submission of their personal or corporate profiles and project proposal as well as other loan applications details. Other inputs include posting of disbursement and repayment transactions. These inputs are feed into the system via e-Loan online module. On the other hand, internal users act as the regulatory authority that owns and operated e-Loan. Besides the personal details, inputs supplied by this group of users include the static information used in e-Loan such as fund group, source of fund and etc.

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1.1.4 Processing Functionalities

External users includes all respective e-Bank customers/clients will submit the application via the e-Loan Online web application. They will key in the information via the online application form and submit the application or transactions directly online.

The Web Server will service the requests and provide a confirmation receipt to the clients/customers who submit online. At scheduled intervals, the e-Loan Host database server will 'pull' the new transactions or applications from the e-Loan Online database and update the database. At the same time, it will e-mail the list of new transactions and applications to the users who are subscribed to receive the mailing list. Subsequently, another replication service will be activated to update the status of existing applications or transactions.
Internal users include authorized high level management officers will process the applications that have been received whereas the transactions will be verified. After processing, transactions will be updated and posted accordingly. On the other hand, loan applications are processed by the respective the officers and upon completion, the officer will generate either an approval or rejection letter.

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1.1.5 Major Outputs

The major outputs of the e-loan system are the various management reports. Listed below are examples of two specific types of outputs from this system :
Generation of Standard Approval or Rejection Letter
An interface will be provided for authorized bank officers print the approval or rejection letter upon approval or rejection of the application. The letter will be based on a pre-determined template or format. The letter will also include reasons for rejection in the event that a rejection letter is being generated.
Generation of Audit Confirmation of Balance Report
The audit confirmation of balance report will also be printed from a pre-determined format.

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1.2 Major Software Functions

Listed below are the major functions of the e-loan system which categorized according to the system modules:

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1.3.1 e-Loan Online

e-Loan Online will be developed on a three-tier architecture with the presentation layer serving web pages to the users whereas processing will take place in the middle layer and finally the database layer to provide storage of data.

e-Loan Online will be deployed on the Internet whereby users will be accessing the application via any Java-enabled web browser. Listed below are the hardware environment for e-loan Online Application :

a) Web Server
PIII 600 MHz
256 MB SDRAM
Windows 2000 server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Internet Connectors

b) Application Server
PIII 933 MHz
256 SDRAM
Windows 2000 Server
SQL Server 2000 Standard
Microsoft Windows 2000 Internet Connectors

c) Client Workstation
Intel-based Personal Internet Ready Computer
Connectivity
- Modem (for dial-up) or
- 10/100 NIC (for COINS)

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1.3.2 e-Loan Host

e-loan Host will be developed as a client-server application using Visual Basic 6.0 accessing a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database. Listed below are the hardware environment for e-loan Host Application :

a) Database Server
PIII 933 MHz
2560 MB SDRAM
Internal 20/40 GB DDS4 Tape Drive
Windows 2000 Server
SQL Server 2000 Standard

b) Client Workstation

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As early as the planning phase, several major constraints have been identified. They are the limited time, inexperience and limited human resources.

As can be referred in the project schedule earlier, the development team has been given roughly four months time to finish the project, starting from the feasibility study phase till the project maintenance phase. So, the time constraint will limit some of the software creation and enhancements.

Then next major constraint is due to the lack of experience of the development team. The team members do always focus on small software applications development during last experiences. So this is our first time to undertake such a large scale of software development project. In addition, the team members have to deal with the project management efficiently in delivering an expected system.

It is rather difficult for only four persons to complete the whole system as the scope of this project is rather large and there are a lot of business constraints and logics that have to be considered when developing the system. More skillful programmers are needed to ease the development.

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