These assignments require you to apply research skills and information systems theory to a case study. Read the "Assignments Brief" section first to get a general idea, then complete the tasks detailed for each assignment. Submit the reports specified by their due date. 

Assignments Overview 

In Assignment 1, you will undertake a literature search to gather appropriate references to support your answers, arguments and recommendations for the Case Study Questions. You must submit your proposed list of references in the prescribed report format, in this case an annotated bibliography. You must do this assignment on your own, not in a group. 

See Assignment Requirements further down in this document for more information about annotated bibliographies. 

Assignment 1 will be assessed on the appropriateness of your choice of references and sources, and on your annotations. 

In Assignment 2, you will write a non-technical report in which you provide answers to the Case Study Questions in detail. You will use the references chosen previously, adjusted appropriately according to assessment feedback if applicable. You must submit your report in the prescribed format. You may do this assignment in a group - see Group Work Requirements document for rules about working in groups. 

Assignment 2 will be assessed according to criteria listed in the downloadable marking criteria sheet. 

The detailed assignment requirements (presentation, formatting etc.) follow directly on from the Case, and the Case Study Questions. 

Correct Referencing 

For both assignments, use HARVARD referencing style for in-text referencing and for the References List. Check the course web site for links to help with referencing and the Harvard referencing guide. 


The Case: 'FixItNow' 

'FixItNow' (FIN) is a SME owned and run by Adam Smith and his younger brothers Ian and Paul, in the regional town of Shockhampton 210 kilometres away from the state capital city. FIN is a supplier for building, plumbing and gardening businesses and home clients. 

Ten years ago, when Adam, Ian and Paul were working for a local hardware store, they decided to start their own business to take advantage of a booming home market. Adam was working in building, Ian was in plumbing, and Paul was in gardening section. The three opened a store for building, plumbing and gardening supplies. Initially it was a bit slow but soon the business started to grow as the brothers used their local contacts to get more orders. Being a fair business and with competitive prices, FIN soon became a household name. 

Adam, Ian and Paul did not have any formal qualifications so to help with office and admin work they hired Gillian Cole, a former employee of their previous workplace, as office manager and left her to organize the office functions as she saw fit. Gillian did not have any formal education in Accounting or Business but it was felt that her 20 years' experience from the previous job in a hardware store gave her the essential skills required to run a small business. 

FIN had simple operations. Individual customers shopped at the shop front and business clients placed their orders via telephone or fax to the FIN office. EFTPOS facility was available to everyone, with cheque payments available to business clients only. Deliveries were available at extra charge. 

Gillian did everything manually - at first, being a small business with a low number of clients this was easy to manage but soon she realised that the accumulating information about customers, suppliers, products plus bookkeeping was becoming more difficult to manage. Gillian was the only one in the office, on the floor there were the three brothers plus 10 fulltime and a similar number of casual staff. There were two mobile salespeople always in the field. All in all, payroll included around 26 staff. 

With written orders and invoices, manual bookkeeping became a nightmare. Managing the supplies inventory and keeping track of what is in store and what was on order and scheduled deliveries was becoming very difficult. Often customer orders were not delivered on time, as supplies were not ordered in the right quantities from the suppliers. Scheduling casual staff and managing their manual claim forms posed quite a challenge. The customers' details were in a manual register but there was a big question mark on currency of the information. 

Adam hired a part time person to help Gillian with the administration, but this did not solve the problems. So a personal computer with some essential business and Accounting software was purchased to transfer all of the manual records and information to electronic files including products, customers, suppliers and Accounting including payroll. Using a computer proved helpful and they started to input information about customers, suppliers, employees, jobs, schedules, payroll, pricing information, other overheads, invoices, and other financial figures. 

The three owners worked very hard and after ten years, the business had grown significantly. They now had a total of 57 employees including 3 more mobile sales people. Gillian has 3 staff in the office now to help her with the office work. But now another challenge emerged. Having some of the information on the only PC in the office and most of the remaining information stored in the filing cabinets, created certain problems. For instance, it became difficult to make decisions about some business matters as relevant information might or might not be complete, correct, and/or current. Therefore, more time was required to validate and verify data between the computer and the filing cabinets. 

With their problems in managing the business, profits began to dive. Adam called a business meeting to try to work out the problems of recent months. The following issues emerged: 

1) Accounts payable and receivable suffered due to incorrect invoicing. 
2) Inventory problems -- no correct information about what was available, what was on order, delivery times from suppliers, what has been ordered by business clients and delivery schedules, back orders etc. 
3) Supplies -- not ordered in a timely manner, supplies ordered which were not in demand, or were ordered in more than required quantities. 
4) Customers and business clients had problems tracking their orders. 
5) Communications -- Incorrect contact details meant that clients could not contact FIN staff. Invoices were often sent to wrong addresses. Mobile salespeople did not have up to date information about products, available inventory or delivery lead times to provide to the prospective clients. 
6) At the shop front, employees had problems accessing policies and other work related information to complete their tasks. Employees also found it difficult to communicate with each other as most of the time staff were not at their stations for a variety of reasons. 
7) Lastly, casual staff often received incorrect pay or pay went into the wrong bank account due to incorrect and delayed processing of their claim forms and timesheets. 

Adam, Ian, Paul and Gillian realised they had significant problems. Gillian knew that computers and IT could help in managing the business, including a mobile sales force, and play a role in acquiring new business and competing with their market rivals. A decision was made to introduce IT in the business and use it to support business operations, information management, decision making, and making strategic plans, including an intention to create an online presence to provide a better service to their customers and suppliers. 

To initiate this project, Adam contracted you, an IT consultant, to prepare a report that addresses the following initial concerns and interests of management. 

Case study questions are on next page. 
Case Study Questions 
Instructions: Read the following questions, do the necessary reading or research, then answer the questions in your own words. Do not quote from the case study text as part of your answer - we already know what is in the case study. 

1. To help FIN management to understand what information systems are, provide a definition and briefly explain why information systems are important for any business. In doing so, briefly discuss the different types that exist and what they are used for. Limit your discussion to a maximum of 5 major types of information systems identified from your readings that you think are most applicable to FIN and why. 
2. Based on the list of seven identified issues above, discuss what you think needs to change in business and technology terms, for this company. Give reasons. 
3. Review and summarize Michael Porter's five competitive forces model. Then discuss which of the competitive forces, if any, do you think applies directly to FIN, and how might FIN respond to those competitive forces? Explain your reasoning. 
4. What is meant by the term "information requirements" in the context of information systems? Provide a brief but clear explanation of this term (with appropriate references), then identify and describe the information requirements of FIN. 
5. Discuss the major ethical issues that commonly arise in business contexts. Discuss how contemporary business and information systems ethics might impact on FIN's operations. 
6. Explain why it is that in business, organizational change must be managed carefully. In light of this, if FIN should decide to implement the changes you identified in Question #1, provide several (3 or more) tips on how FIN could best manage the changes. 

Assignments Requirements and Report structure details 

FOR ASSIGNMENT 1 (due COB Friday of Week 4) 

First, read the Case Study and the questions carefully. Next, you must identify a minimum of six references that will help you to answer the Case Study Questions in the next assignment. Your list of proposed references must include at least three academic (scholarly) references and at most three general references. This means you can use more academic references and fewer general references, but not vice versa. 

Some websites are not acceptable as reference sources in research tasks. These include general encyclopaedic websites such as Wikipedia, and the numerous student study sites that publish papers in various school or university study categories. Likewise, general printed encyclopaedias, popular magazines and newspapers are not considered to be scholarly references. 

Using multiple quotes or material from different pages in the same reference is only counted as one (1) reference. You may use your prescribed textbook or any similar IS textbook as one of your general references. 

Complete this assignment in the form of an annotated bibliography. In an annotated bibliography, each reference, properly formatted in Harvard format, should be followed by a paragraph describing how that reference is relevant to the Case Study, which Case Study question it is relevant to, and how it could be helpful and pointing out any negatives as well. For an example of an annotated bibliography, see 
http://www.library.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@lib/documents/doc/uow085511.pdf 
Or 
http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/pdf/anno_bib.pdf 

At least six credible references must be used and at least three of these must be from academic (scholarly) journals. The maximum three general references may be from industry magazines or books. The references can be from printed or online sources and must be current (i.e., within the last five (5) years). You can use material from organisational web sites as an example to support your arguments but these will not be counted towards the references' quota (i.e., 6 references). A library guide is available for this course that you can access via the link from the course Website. The guide walks you through using scholarly databases to locate suitable reference sources, and by using this guide, you will find it much easier to locate suitable sources and you will also be able to observe the types of references that are acceptable as academic research sources. Note that any information in the guides that may refer to previous assignments or to other instructions do not take precedence over instructions contained in this assignment. At all times your assignment must conform to instructions in this document. 

Your assignment must include the following sections as shown: 

• Title page -- must include: assignment title, a suitable report title, your name and student number, course code and name, term and year, name of your tutor, due date, and the date submitted. Place title page on its own page. 

• Your annotated bibliography -- use the page heading "Annotated Bibliography". REMEMBER THAT FOR EACH REFERENCE, YOU NEED TO INDICATE WHICH CASE STUDY 
QUESTION(S) IT IS RELEVANT FOR. If you omit this, you may lose marks for lack of relevance. 

Other formatting requirements 

• Header (Assignment title, centred, and page number, right aligned) 

• Footer (student ID and your last name, left aligned, and course code/term/year, right aligned) 

• Header and footer should start from the page containing 'Introduction' heading. Use section breaks to control this. 

• Text formatting (Times New Roman, 12pt., single-spaced. You may also make use of appropriate emphasis such as bold, italics, and underscore) 

• Paragraph formatting (left aligned, single spaced and 6 pt. space after each paragraph) 

• Page formatting (should be in A4, portrait orientation, with 2.54cm margin all around) 

• Do not number or bullet-point Headings and Sub-headings. 

• Other report components such as Executive Summary, Introduction or Abstract, Discussion, Recommendations, and Conclusions are NOT required for assignment 1. 


FOR ASSIGNMENT 2 (due COB Friday of Week 10) 

As the consultant, your brief is to advise your clients on the possibilities that would best suit their requirements. You do this by writing a non-technical report that addresses the questions raised in the Case Study Questions and making full use of the references you identified in assignment 1 plus four more scholarly references, making a minimum total of ten references. 

Note that your use of the references should fully incorporate any feedback received from assignment 1 assessment. For example, if a reference was marked as inappropriate in assignment 1, then that reference cannot be used in assignment 2. You must select a new reference to replace the inappropriate one. Assignment 1 will not be marked again so do not re-submit it - the replacement reference(s) will be marked on its merits in assignment 2 with no further opportunity to change it. 

The four additional references must be scholarly references only, and must be selected to support your discussions, that is, they must be relevant to one or more of the assignment questions. You may use more references if you wish to do so, provided they are appropriate. 

As previously stated, some websites are not acceptable as reference sources. These include general encyclopaedic sites such as Wikipedia, and the numerous student study sites that publish papers in various school or university study categories. 

Assignment 2 must include the following sections in the order shown: 

• Title page - -- must include: assignment title, a suitable report title, your name and student number, course code and name, term and year, name of your tutor, due date, and the date submitted. Place title page on its own page. 

• Executive summary (state the purpose of the report, summarise your major findings, conclusions, and explicitly state your specific recommendations.) Place this on its own page. 

• Introduction (identify the purpose of the report and what will happen in the report, no need to have further sub-headings within 'Introduction' heading). 

• Discussion (This is where you will address the Case Questions, using your own words in a discussion style, but supported by your references. Use suitable headings and sub-headings. 

• Summary and Recommendations (brief wrap-up of your major points, and then based on your discussion and analyses, state explicitly what your recommendations are). 

• References (a complete reference list at the end of the report using Harvard referencing style - refer to the Harvard reference guide available from course website). Place this on its own page. Correct in-text referencing is expected.