BCO6615 Strategic Use of ERP Systems
Assignment 2: Short paper (essay) Date due: Check VU Collaborate Available marks: 35 (Individual assignment) Your essay should be approximately 1700-1900 words. Use 1.5 spacing with a 12 point Times New Roman font. Though your paper will draw from the lecture material and readings— you should consult appropriate references from the library and other suitable sources. Citation of sources is mandatory and must be in the Harvard style. The short paper contributes up to 35% of the overall assessment in this unit. There is an expectation that the tasks associated with this assignment will reflect a professionally written paper. Topic: In a world of information technology (IT) abundance, competitive advantage (CA) has little to do with access to technology. Indeed, because enterprise systems (ES) are the most adopted technology by businesses, it would be difficult for a firm to achieve a competitive advantage (CA) purely on the basis of having an ES. However, companies do use their ES systems to achieve competitive advantage within their industry sector. Hence, discuss three strategic approaches a company can use to achieve competitive advantage and/or differentiation using their ES? Use two different case studies for each strategic approach selected to support any discussion. Assume that your firm has an ES in place (the paper should NOT be about introducing or implementing an ES in a firm). Your essay must include: Assignment Cover Page: Use the cover sheet provided. Paper’s title page: Include the Unit name/code, Assignment Title, Student Name and Number, semester and year (not part of the word count). Introduction: Introduces the topic and reiterates the question(s) being addressed. Identify the three strategic approaches covered. Include the paper’s structure. Main part: Discuss, compare and/or contrast different perspectives, present arguments supporting the purpose of the paper. Include cases as examples. Conclusion: Summarise the salient points you have made in the body of the paper. These should match your stated purpose. BCO6615 Strategic Use of ERP Systems
Word Count: Include a word count at the end of the paper just after the conclusion section. References/Bibliography Must be consistent in Harvard style (not part of the word count). The footer must include your name, student ID, and page number. A header should include a short version of the paper’s title. Given that this will be a current issues paper, references should be no older than 5-7 years. It is recommended that Google Scholar be used as the first search engine to identify relevant articles. VU library has subscriptions to useful research resources so after identifying your resources on Google Scholar you may be able to download full text of papers from https://www.vu.edu.au/library. Submission Your paper must be submitted via the Assessment Dropbox link in VU Collaborate. You can use regularly submissions to the Assessment Dropbox to check for similarity using Turnitin. The file must contain the whole report including references, however please DO NOT include the declaration form in this file. Name your assignment file the following way Last Name-studentnumber.docx (for instanceHawking-7654321). Name your declaration form file in the following way— Declaration-Last Name-studentnumber.docx Assignment 2 submission and Turnitin *Penalties for late submissions will be enforced at 25% of available marks (8.75). No assignment can be submitted 1 week after the due date, thus resulting in 0. *****Turnitin Similarity In this assessment task, it is expected that students will achieve a similarity score of less than 10%. We suggest that you submit your first draft about 5 days before the deadline to see your Turnitin rating. Turnitin may take up to 48 hours to generate your result. The dropbox allows multiple submissions before the due date. The marker will mark your LAST submission. Note: Originality Reports are not plagiarism reports, nor are percentage matches indicative of levels of plagiarism. They are simply a tool to assist in bringing any similarity matching in text to an assessor’s attention. However, high similarity index is likely to result in a very low mark the assignment. The originality report requires interpretation and interrogation, and a case by case examination of whether plagiarism has occurred or not will be performed. Should BCO6615 Strategic Use of ERP Systems
similarity breaches occur, penalties will be applied at the discretion of the unit coordinator. Proposed marking for the assignment Paper has an identified purpose (4 marks) Mark i) Paper introduces topic (1) ii) States the purpose of the report restating the assignment question(3) Body of paper has appropriate content (20 marks) i) Contains appropriate material— accurate, relevant and interesting (4) ii) Presents a well-structured discussion (4) iii) Paper addresses the question(s) posed & justifies the identified strategies (6) iv) Includes a suitable number of appropriate industry examples (6) Conclusion (2 marks) i) Paper properly reflects on the main discussion (2) References & Grammar (9 marks) i) Citations are indicated correctly (Harvard) (3) ii) Well written; good flow & consistent writing style; Grammar & spelling (4) iii) Citation are recent— not greater than 5-7 years (2) Total Score 35