31266 – Introduction to Information Systems Assessment 1 – Individual assignment Information Systems in Business, organization and society STUDENT NAME STUDENT ID TUTORIAL TIME SUBMISSION DATE (Through Turnitin software ) STUDENT SIGNATURE I acknowledge that this is my own work and that all materials that are used are attributed and referenced. Part (1): Short answer questions (6 marks in total) 1. Your university wants to recruit high-quality high school students from your state. Provide examples of (1) the data that your recruiters would gather in this process, (2) the information that your recruiters would process from these data, and (3) the types of knowledge that your recruiters would infer from this information. (3 marks) (No more than 80 words) 2. Differentiate between Porter’s competitive forces model and his value chain model. (3marks) (No more than 40 words) Part (2) Long answer questions (8 marks in total) 1. Explain some of the quality-of-life improvements made possible by IT (provide two example? Has IT had any negative effects on our quality of life, if Yes, provide two examples? (4 marks) (No more than 60 words) 2. Explain four roles of the IT in the university human resources management. (4 marks). (No more than 80 words) Part (3) Case study ( 16 marks in total) Case study 1- (8 marks in total). Established in 1948, Kennards Hire is one of the largest family-owned tool and equipment hire companies in Australia. Headquartered in Sydney, Kennards Hire operates through over 120 branches and employs almost 1000 employees across Australia. In the last few years Kennards Hire has experienced rapid growth, with revenue increasing by approximately 50 per cent. This growth was also associated with large volumes of data concerning Kennard Hire operations. For example, at the time of this growth Kennards Hire was handling more than 7 million transactions annually and servicing over 36 000 accounting customers. To manage their operations Kennards Hire originally used many fragmented legacy systems which could not interface with each other, although they worked well in isolation. These systems are often interdependent, with data generated by one often required as input by another. Consequently, extensive manual intervention and repurposing of data was often required as data were transferred between systems, which made business data analysis and integration (e.g. historical trends and financial outcomes analyses) and reporting challenging and inefficient, thereby constraining the ability of Kennards managers to manage business operations (e.g. financial performance of branches and customer activity). As a result, Kennards Hire managers often had to rely on personal experience and guesswork, rather than evidence, to make decisions. Recently, Kennards Hire implemented a business intelligence (BI) system (Microsoft BI and data warehouse solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, SharePoint Server 2010 and Excel 2010) which enabled them to address many of the challenges and issues of the previously fragmented legacy systems. Specifically, BI systems are used to systematically analyse raw data in organisations and comprise many activities, including data mining, online analytical processing (OLAP), querying and reporting. First the Kennards Hire BI system contributed towards improving decision making.With the new BI system, Kennards Hire managers are able to access up-to-date data and generate both customised and ad-hoc reports easily and quickly, which has increased visibility of various operational aspects of the company and branch operations, including financial outcomes, sales, hire history of products and customers. With enhanced visibility and accessibility to this information, Kennards Hire managers now have a better understanding of the types of hire products they need to invest in, the geographical locations where these should be offered and the manner in which customer preferences can change. Taken together, these enhancements have enabled Kennards Hire branch managers to both monitor and control performance while also empowering them to make better decisions. Second,the Kennards Hire BI system contributed towards improving customer service. The new BI system has significantly enhanced the quality of the data collected and held by Kennards Hire. For example, the new system has improved the management of fleet and customer hire history. With fleet hire history data, Kennards Hire can quickly identify popular and unpopular products and adjust offerings accordingly. With customer history data, Kennards Hire can now analyse and correlate their customers’ product hire preferences, location information and problems encountered. This enables Kennards Hire to offer better and more personalised service to customers while also creating growth opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling of hire services. 1.1 What are potential disadvantages of using fragmented applications in a distributed business such as Kennards Hire? (3 marks) (No more than 40 words) 1.2 Provide three examples of how BI helps Kennards Hire gain competitive advantage in the tool and equipment hire industry (3 marks). (No more than 20 words) 1.3 Which strategies (two strategies) does BI use to help Kennards Hire address? Provide examples to support your answer (2 marks). (No more than 20 words) Case study 2- (5 marks in total). AAA is an Asian automobile manufacturer that sells their automobiles throughout Asia and Australia. They have a major manufacturing facility in Asia where they produce most of their cars. Currently a number of different functional areas in AAA have their own transaction processing system. Furthermore, they have a disjointed information systems, and this is causing communication problems and tracking problems. There has also been a lot of problems with the fortnightly transfers of information from system to system. Finally, the systems in place still only allow AAA to interact with suppliers and customers via an old-fashioned fax (i.e. they fax their orders to the suppliers). The rivalry among existing competitors is also getting intense. 2.1 What are the problems that AAA is facing regarding the use of their existing Information Systems? Please recommend an Information System solution (what type of Information System do you recommend to be used in AAA) and briefly describe the proposed Information Systems (3 marks) (No more than 50 words) 2.2 Explain two benefits that AAA will achieve after deploying the proposed system (2 marks) (No more than 20 words) Case study 3. (3 marks in total). The Nook is a small cocktail bar managed by Malakai and Abbie. Data collection has always been important to Malakai and Abbie. However, their form of data collection was to keep up with paper receipts from cover charges, drinks, food, etc. They mainly did this to create financial statements. However, they also know that their data collection is incomplete because many people pay with cash and no itemised receipt is printed. Therefore, often the best they can do is a general statement of costs and sales. They have no way to measure and track individual sales, customers, products and the like. In fact, they have never been able to track sales to customers, night of the week, band (type of music playing) and so on. Even more important, they do not know very much about their customers. Why do they come? What do they like? What do they wish was better? What are the most popular drink items? How do people rate their overall experience? Which drink and food items are most popular and at what time of the night? How can they best reach their customer base? Facebook? Twitter? Email? The only way to answer these questions is to have data that can be analysed to create information. The only way to capture the data in an organised format is to use a database. 3.1 Given the type of information, Malakai and Abbie want to find in their data, explain what advantages (three advantages) would they find in a relational database over multiple flat files (spreadsheets)? (3 marks) (No more than 30 words) Criteria Part (1): Short answer questions (6 marks in total) • Correct identification and explanation, valid articulation of reasons • Structure and Grammar Part (2) Long answer questions (8 marks in total) • Correct identification and explanation of theory, valid articulation of reasons, supporting references. • Structure and Grammar, references Part (3) Case study (16 marks in total) • Appropriate and clearly justified recommendation, correct application of theoretical knowledge relevant to the case, supporting references. • Structure and Grammar Late submission - 10% per day Other Penalties as per instructions -10%( e.g. font, size, spacing, Word count beyond range) Explanation: Submitted to Turnitin and No Issues (otherwise 0 mark and/or disciplinary action) Total Mark out of 30