SBM4203 Management Information Systems

Assessment Brief: SBM4203 Management Information Systems
Trimester 3, 2021
Assessment Overview

AssignmentTutorOnline

Assessment 1: Online Quiz

Assessment Details:
These online quizzes will assess your knowledge of key content areas of learning materials from weeks
1 to 9. For successful completion of the quizzes, you are required to study the material provided
(lecture slides, tutorials, and reading materials), engage in the unit’s activities, and participate in the
discussion forums.
These quizzes will be completed online through the APIC Online Learning System (OLS).
Marking Information: There will be four quizzes conducted during trimester, each quiz will be
marked out of 100 and weighted 10%, together, they will comprise a total of 40% of the total unit
mark.
Assessment 2: Case Study-1

Assessment Details:
This assignment assesses the student’s application of theoretical learning to practical, real world
situations.
Mini Case Study
FoodVan
FoodVan is an online grocery and ready-to-eat meals delivery business that decided to analyse
around a million transactions from almost 100,000 customers in their database so it could better
understand what its customer wanted for their online grocery shopping. They also would like to
implement a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution to better understand their
customers, hence, improve their customer service. They also would like to see an improvement in
their Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems, as their growing product lines require a more robust
integration of their systems with their suppliers. In view of this, they are investigating pioneering
technologies in RFID systems to be used in their warehouses. The vision of the company is “to be the
go-to online store for food” by offering speed, convenience, choice, and price delivered to
customers door within 30 minutes or less.
It used analytics to build a data-centric approach to its business. Their efforts bore so many results
that the initial Proof of Concept (POC) reports identified that banana, grapes, peach, and pineapple
were the most fruits their customers buy in 202x. As a result, they’ve realised that their big data
could reveal insights they don’t know before which could even create new sources of revenue for
the business (for example, fruit baskets as a product line for the five most popular fruits sold).
“We had a lot of data coming from our point-of-sales software. Initally, the challenge was
how to a develop a quick way to talk to the company’s POS database. Our goal was to use
the huge amount of transaction data in a cost-effective way and find the right metrics to
help us drive our business forward,” said Al Coles, vice president of R&D and analytics at
FoodVan.
The company used Tableau to crunch its data. Initially, they used Microsoft Access but eventually
used SQL to talk directly to the company’s POS database. After they found an easy way to access the
data, their next challenge was to drill down into the information in ways that would positively
impact business results. While they have an in-house IT personnel specialising in MS Access and SQL,
they needed additional help from external consultants in implementing Tableau, a data visualization
software focused on business intelligence. Tableau is a powerful and fastest growing data
visualization tool. It helps in simplifying raw data into the very easily understandable format in the
form of dashboards and worksheets. Tableau is cost-effective as it only cost them $70 per month for
the subscription.
FoodVan have two primary revenue streams that needed to be optimised: Online Grocery and MealIn-A-Wheel Delivery.
“These two revenue streams were driven by different base emotions in our customers, so it
was important for us to understand that when we began to analyse our data for optimizing
our business. Understanding our customer motivations will allow us to create the metrics
that we can use moving forward,” Coles said.
In the case of Online Grocery, revenues came in when customers buy because of three factors,
convenience, choice and price. Using big data analytics, FoodVan will be able to formulate metrics
that will help them meet up these needs.
In contrast, Meal-In-A-Wheel revenues are generated from different customer motivations.
“You buy ready-to-eat meals because you don’t have time to prepare, you want instant food
in no time, irrespective of the cost. People want choices and quick delivery”, Coles said.
Coles acknowledged that it was sometimes easy to get lost in all of the data.
“It took us awhile to narrow and refine data and metrics,” he said.
In the end, Coles said that the three foremost analytics questions FoodVan asked were:
• How can we further improve our services?
• How do we reduce delivery times?
• How can we find hidden needs and fill up with new products and services?
Their big data roadmap started from using MS Access, then switching to SQL as an easier way to
access the data from the POS database to drilling down into the information through business
analytics using Tableau.
After rolling out their Big Data and CRM strategy, FoodVan have nearly doubled their annual sales to
$878,850 and welcomed an additional 15,000 customers in 202x, a 10% increase in total customer
count.
You are required to Identify the issues managers face in the selection, use, management and
deployment of IS (ULO-1), Identify the issues managers face in the selection, use, management and
deployment of IS (ULO-2), assess the relationship between organizations, IS and business processes
for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) (ULO-3), and
appraise the salient characteristics of CRM, SCM and IS assets management (ULO-4).
The following areas should be covered in your assignment using the case study context:
1. Provide a brief description of the organisation
2. Identify the issues managers face in the selection, use, management and deployment of IS
3. Assess the relationship between organizations, IS and business processes for Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM)
4. Appraise the salient characteristics of CRM, SCM and IS assets management
5. A report of 1800 words summarising your analysis must be submitted by the due date.
Reasonable assumptions are allowed.
Penalty for Late submission: a deduction of 5% of the total mark shall be imposed on each of the
next subsequent days.
Submission requirements
1. Use a typical report structure, with a Cover Page, Table of Contents, Executive Summary,
Introduction, Body, Recommendation/Conclusion and References format.
2. The Executive Summary and the References are excluded in the word count.
3. The Cover Page should clearly indicate the names of the person submitting with report and the
word count.
4. You can use each question above as Headings in the Body of your report.
5. All References should reflect quality citations from relevant academic journals and adhere to
the correct Harvard format (Wikipedia NOT allowed).
Marking Information: The Case Study-1 will be marked out of 100 and will be weighted 30% of the
total unit mark.
Marking Criteria and Rubric

Assessment 3: Case Study-2

Assessment Details:
Read the case study and the article below, then complete the exercise at the end. In order to answer
the exercise questions provided, you will need to conduct further research about the topic (read the
article below see the list of references included for further research).
Case Study
UBER
Uber is a ride-sharing service that was rolled out in 2009 after two of its founders, Travis Kalanick
and Garrett Camp couldn’t get a taxi in Paris during a snowstorm. It originated from the idea, “What
if you could request a ride from your phone?” Its vision and mission are to “bring transportation-for
everyone, everywhere…that is safer, cheaper and more reliable…create more jobs opportunities and
incomes for drivers.”
Today, Uber boasts an annual revenue of over $11 billion, a market capitalization rate of $74 billion,
and over 19,000 employees. With 75 million global customers and three million dedicated drivers in
83 countries, Uber has been a legitimate game-changer in the ride-sharing services market.
The name Uber is derived from the German word meaning “above all the rest,” a bedrock principle
Kalanick and Camp wanted for their young company. Uber has completely revolutionized the way
passengers hail cabs for their journeys. All the riders need to do is to open their mobile phone, tap a
button, and find an affordable ride in minutes. Being true of the meaning of its name, Uber is always
on the lookout for IS solutions that can help them better improve their processes, performance, and
customer service. One of them is the use of Enterprise Systems. For example, SAP has built solutions
that can dramatically improve the experience on Uber, both for the passenger and the drivers
themselves. One area where SAP can provide improvements is in finding parking spots, especially in
major cities. SAP’s built-in platform can simplify this process and make it automated.
Finding a parking spot in major cities can be a huge waste of time for drivers. Typically, these drivers
go around car parks one by one to find one with a spot available. Built with the SAP HANA cloud
platform, the SAP software makes use of data from the Sat-Nav systems to identify the closest car
parking space available. When the car approaches the car park barrier, the driver can view details
such as the number of spots available, parking fee, etc. on their in-cabin display. Should they choose
to go ahead, the system automatically clocks them in and charges them on their way out.
In direct competition with Google and Tesla Motors, Uber was also a frontrunner in the future of
driverless cars. However, they faced some Intellectual Property (IP) issues when Alphabet Inc’s
Waymo sued Uber in 2018 for theft of its self-driving technology. In March 2018, a self-driving car
fatally struck a pedestrian, causing the company to temporarily suspend all testing. In May 2018,
Uber announced that it would halt its Arizona testing program but would conduct it elsewhere. In
July 2018, Uber’s self-driving cars made their return in Pittsburgh, but it was never the same. In
December 2020, it was announced that Uber would sell its autonomous vehicle business to Aurora
Innovations, a start-up in San Francisco. Uber had invested more than $1 billion in the business at
the time of the sale.
References:
Patrick Lin. (2021). The ethical dilemma of self-driving cars. [Online Video]. 9 December 2015.
Available from: https://youtu.be/ixIoDYVfKA0. [Accessed: 23 May 2021].
TechRepublic. 2021. Our autonomous future: How driverless cars will be the first robots we learn to
trust. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.techrepublic.com/resource-library/downloads/ourautonomous-future-how-driverless-cars-will-be-the-first-robots-we-learn-to-trust-pdf-download/.
[Accessed 23 May 2021].
TechRepublic. 2021. Tesla’s Autopilot: A cheat sheet. [ONLINE] Available
at: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/teslas-autopilot-the-smart-persons-guide/. [Accessed 23
May 2021].
TechRepublic. 2021. 81% of Americans believe driverless vehicles will kill jobs for professional drivers
– TechRepublic. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/81-of-americansbelieve-driverless-vehicles-will-kill-jobs-for-professional-drivers/. [Accessed 23 May 2021].
ZDNeT. 2021. How autonomous vehicles could save over 350K lives in the US and millions
worldwide. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-autonomous-vehicles-couldsave-over-350k-lives-in-the-us-and-millions-worldwide/. [Accessed 23 May 2021].
ZDNet. 2021. US House approves bill to advance autonomous car testing. [ONLINE] Available at:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-house-approves-bill-to-advance-autonomous-car-testing/.
[Accessed 23 May 2021].
ZDNet. 2021. Autonomous vehicle predictions are premature: Toyota. [ONLINE] Available at:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/autonomous-vehicle-predictions-are-premature-toyota/. [Accessed
23 May 2021].
Exercise:
After reading the case study above and conducting further research, you now need to answer the
following research questions below:
1. Demonstrate an appreciation of the impact of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems on
businesses.
2. Demonstrate an understanding of the issues involved in the design, implementation and
maintenance of ERP Systems.
3. Evaluate the benefits and limitations of use of ERP Systems.
4. Analyse the relationship among ethical, social, and political issues raised by management IS.
5. A report of 3000 words summarising your analysis must be submitted by the due date.
Reasonable assumptions are allowed.
Penalty for Late submission: a deduction of 5% of the total mark shall be imposed on each of the next
subsequent days.
Submission requirements
1. Use a typical report structure, with a Cover Page, Table of Contents, Executive Summary,
Introduction, Body, Recommendation/Conclusion and References format.
2. The Executive Summary and the References are excluded in the word count.
3. The Cover Page should clearly indicate the names of each person in the group and the word
count.
6. You can use task above as Headings in the Body of your report, and after the question is the name
of the group member(s) who discussed that particular topic. For example, “Evaluate the benefits
and limitations of use of ERP Systems” by Jaspreet Singh.
4. All References should reflect quality citations from relevant academic journals and adhere to
the correct Harvard format (Wikipedia NOT allowed).
Marking Information: The Case study-2 will be marked out of 100 and will be weighted 30% of the
total unit mark.
Marking rubric: