CIS3008 Information Technology Service Management

Introduction

In earlier days, the staff of the companies used to record the data of their customers and clients using a traditional approach that is by using paper. But, eventually, due to the growth of technologies, companies have adopted the use of a computerized system which not only helps them to records the data of their customers but also it is very time and cost-saving for the companies. Similarly, a case study has been provided where a detail of an insurance company has been given who are very concerned about their future with respect to storing the records of their customers. Currently, the insurance company has around 200 customers who have purchased the policy from them.

The company provides two types of policies mainly, such as the life insurance policy and the educational policy in which 150 policies were the life insurance policy that the customer bought and the remaining 50 are the educational policy. Because of the increase in the flow of the customers the company has estimated it may get increased drastically by the upcoming year and because of that they have thought of implementing an OOPs based system that will be capable of handle several tasks to smooth the performance and the ease the workload of the staffs. In this report, the writer has addressed the concept of data structure which will be going to be used for the implementation of this new proposed system for the insurance company (Lokare, Jadhav and Patil 2018). Also, the types of algorithm techniques will be highlighted those will be most suitable for the system operations. The next section will start from a background where the detailed knowledge about the system operation and implementation will be mention.

The insurance management system will be the new proposed system will be implemented by using the concept of data structure. This section will cover all the areas of the implementation, the technique that has been used to do so, and the detail about the algorithm itself. The proposed system will an OOPs based system and the reason behind its choice hides inside its usability and understandability of the process. Here, three algorithms have been considered to support the case study of the insurance company. Mainly two tasks will be performed within the system, one is to search for the details of the customers by using certain keywords such as their name and policy number to be more precise.

Another task is to sort the entire data of the customers who will be there inside the system in order to generate an annual report for the company by putting some criteria such as date range, time range, etc. For these purposes the type of algorithm which will be going to be used is the searching, inserting, and merging algorithm. The searching algorithm will take care of the searching part where the customer details will be searched, the inserting algorithm will help to insert the data of the customers into the system, and the merging algorithm will help to sort the data of the customers and then merge them to generate a complete annual report. Various algorithms can be used in order to perform the mentioned types but the most suitable ones are the binary search, insertion sort, and merge sort. Below the writer has descriptively presented these three algorithms to provide a better understanding of them.

Binary Search:

Binary Search seems to be the most appropriate and easy technique for searching the stored data. It is said to be the most efficient algorithm which helps to search for data from the available list which is in a sorted form (Balogun 2020).. The concept behind the binary search is that it divides the available list continuously into half where the data are located. This thing continues until all the possible positions get combined sorted into one list. Here, the logic behind this algorithm is that the entire set of data, first of all, get divided and the middle data set to get checked in the first place but the data set which gets checked found to be half of the middle value then the program will search for the value in the left segment automatically whereas if the value found to be less to the searched value, then the program will automatically search for the dimension in the left direction (Mohammed, Amrahov and Çelebi 2021). These entire mentioned processes get repeated continuously till the time data get found or the entire list of elements will them searched and checked.

Merge Sort:

Quicksort and merge sort are quite similar, both the algorithm follows the well-known concept of divide and conquer which is perfectly suitable for this type of algorithm. Here, the lists are getting divided into two equal parts, and then once it gets divided the two divided parts get called by itself. Once the divided part gets called, the two halves get merged into one in a sorted manner (Shabaz and Kumar 2019). Merge sort uses the function named “merge()” in order to merge the two halves into one. For example, the list which is unsorted gets divided into a size L (suppose L is the size of the element), after that a sub-list has been created with L number. Therefore, L is the total available element that is present in a list where only one element needs to be available. Now, finally, it can be said that the element of a single list is in a sorted manner (MarszaÅ‚ek 2018). Once the entire thing gets done, the sorted list which is available get used repeatedly so that they can be combined with each other to produce one new sub-list set of K number in the second part where K=L/2. Merge sort will repeat the steps again and again until only one list available and the final result will be the sorted list.

Insertion Sort:

This algorithm technique is the most common and ultimate technique for inserting data. Insertion sort is very easy to understand as well as very easy to implement. This algorithm follows the concept where only the sorted array gets compared with each other sequentially and then they are arranged in such a manner so that they can be presented in a specific order manner simultaneously. The simple way to understand the entire analogy of the insertion sort is using the technique for arranging the set of playing cards deck. Here, the principle is based on inserting an element on a specific position. If the card is larger then, it gets checked but on the other side of the card found to be small then the smaller card will get replaced with the next available card and then the same checking process will continue (Gugale 2018). Therefore, in this way, the whole process of sorting gets repeated continuously until all the present unsorted cards get sorted. And finally, the cards will be placed into their proper position then only the entire set of cards said to be sorted.

The insurance company seems to have concerned about the future scenario as addressed in the case study. As per the last statement of the company it has been found that the based on their estimation the numbers of customers will get increased tremendously within the next three years. Because of that, they have thought of implementing an OOPs based system that will be capable of handling all their company’s tasks and will also be able to compete with future concerns. Currently, the insurance company has around 200 customers who have purchased the policy from them. The company provides two types of policies mainly, such as the life insurance policy and the educational policy in which 150 policies were the life insurance policy that the customer bought and the remaining 50 are the educational policy. They have estimated that in the upcoming year the customer number will increase by 10%. So, due to that, the new proposed system will get implemented at the company.

The system will able to perform two common tasks which are the most important tasks performed by the staffs of the company daily. The first one is to search the details of a specific customer from the huge bunch of data within a second just by providing their policy number and name. And, the second task is to sort the data of the customers according to different criteria such as providing date range or purchased time or any other in order to generate an annual report for the company. The management will able to use analyze certain things by using the report. So, in order to make possible, four important sections have been addressed like the variables, ranges, and keys which are essential for identifying the variables where the data will get stored, operation and justification which will provide an overview of the main operations performed by the system, algorithm, and justification where the algorithm for the two techniques will be shown, and modification where some recommendation will be provided to make the system more viable for the company.

Variables, Ranges, and Keys

It is very important to have the data in the system first in order to perform any sort of operation. But the data cannot be stored just by putting it in, variables list must be declared first so that the data can be stored into it according to the type and name identified (Lippuner 2019). But declaring the variables is not enough because every data has a different size so, the size of the function also needs to be declared along with the variables to prevent the loss of unnecessary memory space. If the system is built dynamically then it can prevent because in such a system only the required memory space gets allocated which is not only good for the system but also make data manipulation much easier. The required variable list is “customer_details” and “policy_details”.

Operations and Justification

The proposed system of the insurance company will able to perform two main tasks as mentioned in the case study. They are:

1. With the new system, the staff of the company will able to search for specific customer names from the huge number of data set just by providing their policy number and name.
2. With the new system, the management of the insurance company will able to generate an annual report for the company by sorting the data based on the criteria and merge them together to prepare a report.

            Here, to perform the searching mechanism, binary search will be used because using this algorithm any sorted element forms the list can retrieve the comparative data from the new proposed system. And to perform sorting merge sort algorithm will be used.Merge Sort Algorithm (MarszaÅ‚ek 2017):

Here, the input gets divided into two-part, it called itself to merge by using the merge() function. The merge (l, r, m, arr) is the process that assumes that the arr[m+1…r] and arr[l…m] get sorted to merge the two sub-array into one .

3.4. Modification

The case study stated that within the next three years the number of customers will get increased to 4000 from 200. So, the appropriate modification of the system is to use the “Array List” (Rothwell and Rothwell 2019). It is capable of holding huge data in its single data type so, it will only allocate the required memory space and prevent space loss which will keep the system run smoother even in the future.

Conclusion

The insurance company handles lots of customers records which make their tasks little bit stressful but by the implementation of the proposed new insurance management system their burden will be reduced and they can be able to perform their task very easily. The new system will be capable of performing various activities such as update, create, and delete of data anytime they want.

References

Balogun, G.B., 2020. A Comparative Analysis of the Efficiencies of Binary and Linear Search Algorithms.

Gugale, Y., 2018, April. Super sort sorting algorithm. In 2018 3rd International Conference for Convergence in Technology (I2CT) (pp. 1-5). IEEE.

Khatami, M. and Salehipour, A., 2020. A binary search algorithm for the general coupled task scheduling problem. 4OR, pp.1-19.

Lippuner, J., 2019. C++ Introduction and Best Practices (No. LA-UR-19-26916). Los Alamos National Lab.(LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States).

Lokare, V.T., Jadhav, P.M. and Patil, S.S., 2018. An integrated approach for teaching object oriented programming (c++) Course. Journal of Engineering Education Transformations, 31(3), pp.17-23.

MarszaÅ‚ek, Z., 2017. Parallelization of modified merge sort algorithm. Symmetry, 9(9), p.176.

MarszaÅ‚ek, Z., 2018. Performance tests on merge sort and recursive merge sort for big data processing. Technical Sciences/University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn.

Mohammed, A.S., Amrahov, Åž.E. and Çelebi, F.V., 2021. Interpolated binary search: An efficient hybrid search algorithm on ordered datasets. Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal.

Rothwell, W.B. and Rothwell, W.B., 2019. Array Variables. Beginning Perl Programming: From Novice to Professional, pp.41-55.

Shabaz, M. and Kumar, A., 2019. SA sorting: a novel sorting technique for large-scale data. Journal of Computer Networks and Communications, 2019.

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