Assignment Guideline

1. Select a case study. You could use your own case study or the case study provided in Appendix 1.

2. The report should cover the following aspects

3. The report should consists the following headers
a) Cover page
Your name, student ID, title of the case study

b) Executive Summary
Summary of the report (e.g. summary of the digital strategy you put in, how you derive the digital strategy and what problems have been solved by the digital strategy you propose)

c) Introduction
- Context of the case study
o Reasons why the case study company requires a digital strategy? Or problems faced by the case study company
o Brief illustration on the industry
c) Digital Strategy Analysis

- Industry analysis
o Review the industry which the case study belongs to (e.g. if you are using John Lewis as a case study, you will have to review how Retail industry works)

- Illustrate any strategy analysis methods you use to analyse your case (refer to session 2)

o Literature review on the selected strategy analysis method
o Explanation of why that particular strategy analysis methods are selected

- Results of the strategy analysis / Recommendations
- Assumptions made by conducting the strategy analysis (e.g. the analysis is done based on the relevant documentations found online and assume the documents are accurate)
d) Digital Strategy Implementation
- Explain the objectives of the proposed digital strategy
- Explain the features (digital capabilities) of the proposed digital strategy (e.g. a digital platform for increasing sales)
- Discuss the digital platform used for this purpose (e.g. enterprise information systems platform etc, refer to session 4)
- Discuss the key skills (e.g. data scientist, information manager) required in implementing the digital strategy
- Discuss how the digital strategy impact the existing business processes (e.g. the new CRM will change the way how the company manages the customers)
- Discuss if there are any hardware or devices involved (e.g. apps, mobile devices)
e) Limitation
- Explain what are the areas that are not addressed by the proposed digital strategy (e.g. if you are using Porter Five Forces in section c, you may not get relevant information about the suppliers when analysing the Bargaining Power of Supplier)
f) Conclusion and Future Work
- Conclude the report (e.g. what have been achieved)
- Explain what you would like to do in the future to address the limitations you found in section e. Or, explain how you could improve the use of the selected strategy analysis methods in the industry of your case study
g) References
- Use Harvard Referencing Styles

4) Make sure your report is well written, appropriately formatted and free of spelling errors.

Appendix 1

YourHome is a small family owned bed and breakfast (B&B) business. YourHome has been running in a small touristic town in UK for more than a decade. YourHome offers budgeted accommodation and continental breakfast for travellers. YourHome has been a flagship B&B in the town and it is known by great customer service.

The business has been good not until recently when a chained-brand hotel is built the town two months ago. The chained-brand hotel offers modernised rooms in a similar rate as they have huge capitals from the investors aiming to penetrate the market for budgeted accommodation. As a result, YourHome business has dropped drastically last month.

Although the location of YourHome is better than the chained-brand hotel as it is closer to most of the touristic spots in the town. Still, due to the brand effect and membership reward system, some travellers have switched to the chained-brand hotel.

The customer base of YourHome are existing customers or customers referred by existing customers. Most of the customer are either local or European. YourHome adopts "word of mouth" strategy in order to gain new customers. YourHome does not have any sophisticated digital platform. YourHome advertises the room on Airbnb website and booking.com. However, YourHome has to pay the agent fees to these agents for advertising the room. In addition, YourHome has a simple website that provides the room, location and contact details. YourHome also has simple systems written by family members for keeping customer details, finance and accounting activities. YourHome has ten employees (a few of them are the family members). Two staff is working in the kitchen, two for cleaning, two for reception and four for administration.

As the founder of YourHome, you have decided to create and implement a digital strategy in order to maintain the current position in the market place. Please follow the assignment guideline in creating and implementing the digital strategy.

The case study and the assignment and follow the instruction one by one.