Prepare a journal which records your activities and progress related to completing this assignment. In date order, clearly list the following:

? Date of research activity/discussion/meeting/participants

? Topic researched, discussed or other activity

? Time duration

? Brief description of research activity/discussion - and what tasks each team member did

Activity B: Report to CEO

Background: You have been hired to do a review of a company's ICT strategy. This is to include a review of new social media technologies and their potential application to the company.

Select an organisation to analyse for this assignment. If you are employed, you are encouraged to base this assignment on the organisation that you are currently working with, if it meets the criteria. The organisation may be a commercial, government or not-for-profit organisation but it must have at least 100 employees and a web site. Use the web, newspapers and/or personal contacts to gain information about the organisation and its management of IT. When selecting the organisation, you should take into account the nature of the organisation's business environment and the extent to which the organisation is dependent on IT to run its operations. Search on the Internet for examples of company ICT Strategic Plans and use a similar structure for your report.

Complete the requirements below by producing a written report to the CEO.

Part 1: Introduction: background of selected organisation

Describe the background of the selected organisation in terms of the following: the industry sector (e.g. manufacturing, services, retail, education, banking, healthcare, travel etc) it operates within, its key products/services, corporate mission, corporate structure, major business processes, business strategy and relationship with external entities e.g. other organisations, government etc.  Provide its homepage URL.  

Part 2: Analysis of business challenges using the management, organisation and technology model

At the beginning of each chapter in the Laudon & Laudon 12ed. textbook the authors provide an opening case to illustrate how a particular organisation hasused information systems to overcome the business challenges it was facing.  The authors describe how the organisation achieved thisin terms of a model composed of three elements: management, organisation and technology.  Review these three elements in the section "Dimensions of Information Systems" in pp.49-56 of the textbook and re-read some of the chapter-opening cases.  Also, revisit the following sections in Chapter 5: IT Infrastructure & Emerging Technologies: Section 5.2 - Infrastructure components, Section 5.3 -Contemporary hardware platform trends and Section 5.4 - Contemporary software platform trends.

Identify a set of business challenges that the organisation is experiencing.  Using themanagement, organisation and technologymodel, describe and analyse how information systems could provide the answer to these challenges.You should organise your solution as follows:

• Describe the business challenges
• Analyse thesebusiness challenges in terms of: management, organisation and technology
• Summarise the information systems requirements
• Describe the IT infrastructure investment requirements in terms of Figure 5-9: The IT infrastructure ecosystem in p.206 of the textbook (note that not all of the seven components will be relevant to your discussion), and
• Provide a graphical summary of your solution in terms of the management, organisation and technology model.

Part 3: New social media applications - background and recommended strategy

There is a wide range of new social media (SM) and file sharing technologies that are building a following in the marketplace. Write a summary to the CEO and other senior managers in the organisation addressing the following:

• Review 6 of the new social media (SM) and file sharing technologies such as Pinterest, KIK, Pheed, Vine, Chatter, Ning, Tagged, Hootsuite and others in terms of functionality (these are just examples of some new SM technologies and you should search for others)
• Cite the URL for the SMs that you have selected and briefly explain why you think these SM are important and up and coming.
• How businesses are using new social media
• Business opportunities and benefits from new social media
• Problems and drawbacks of new social media, and
• The future ofnew social media for business
• Select one of these new media for more detailed analysis of its potential application for your business - justify your selection. You may select more than one SM if they are part of a suite of applications.

Recommend a strategy to help the organisationleverageone or more of the new social media to achieve its business objectives. If the organisation already has such a strategy in place, recommend how it could further avail itself of new opportunities provided by recent advancements in technologies.  Before you commence your search for material to help you formulate the strategy you should first review Chapter 3: Information systems, organisations and strategy in the textbook.  Your recommended strategy should be sufficiently detailed to help the CEOin its implementation.  The following are some of the areas and issues which your strategy must factor in:

• The reasons why the organisation should invest in new social media
• The key areas where new social mediais likely to have an impact on its business
• Therisks the organisation must consider and how these risks can be mitigated
• Thesupporting tools, solutions and skills the organisation need to have, and
• How the organisation can measure the success of its new social media initiative.

Part 4: Conclusions: key findings and recommendations

Summarise your key findings and recommendations to the CEO related to your analysis. Clearly state your conclusions.