Research Paper
This individual assignment is a research-oriented activity,
and aims at demonstrating your knowledge of the business, the technology, and
the intersection of both. The purpose of this paper is three-fold. First, students
will analyze a real-world company or organization. Second, students will
identify a business problem or an opportunity associated with this
organization. Third, students will propose a technology-based solution that helps
address the business needs and adds value to the organization.
Please note that your paper should not repeat the study of an organization that has already been
discussed in the textbook (e.g., Zara, Netflix, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and
Target, etc).
Each student will produce a five-page (double-spaced) content paper (in Microsoft Word), plus the title page and references for a
total of eight pages maximum via APA
standards. Tables and figures may be included in the appendix and would not
count toward the required length of the paper. Please note that the paper will
receive penalty if it exceeds the maximum length requirement. The paper needs
to have at least five in-text citations (excluding
citation of the textbook), which should be listed on the reference page.
Page 1: Title Page
Page 2-6: Content
Page 7-8: Reference List (please
list all works cited in the writing of this paper. No Wikipedia, ask.com,
about.com, etc)
Visit this website for more
information on APA standards.
Project
Overview
The paper’s focus should be on identifying a business
problem or opportunity and proposing a technology solution. You will need to
identify a real-life business that you are familiar with. The business must
have a problem or an opportunity that can make use of an information technology
solution. The following is a list of potential problems and opportunities
around which you may want to focus your project.
·
Lack of competitiveness or profitability
·
Inefficient processes
·
Slow product development
·
Obsolete or outdated IT organization and
technologies
·
Poor corporate communications
·
Ongoing personnel issues
·
Take advantage of a new technology
·
Use technology to support or automate manual
processes
·
Use technology to improve decision making
For this project, you will need to select a technology
category that will serve as a solution for the problem or opportunity you have
identified for the selected business. The technology solution should not be the
product/service sold by the selected business.
For the purpose of this project, it is important to
differentiate between a technology category and a specific vendor or
product. The technology category is a broad area, such as CRM system or web
analytics. A vendor/product is a specific company or product, such as
Salesforce, Oracle, Google Analytics, and so forth.
Although the list of technology categories that you can
choose is vast, the list below gives some suggestions you may want to consider.
·
Accounting/financial information systems
·
Appointment scheduling systems
·
Asset tracking systems
·
Inventory management systems
·
RFID systems
·
SCM systems
·
CRM systems
·
ERP systems
·
HRM systems
·
Business analytics
·
Business intelligence
·
Cloud-based services (SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS)
·
Collaboration technologies
·
Communication technologies
·
Database management systems
·
eBusiness/eCommerce
·
Electronic medical record systems
·
Information systems security solutions
·
Group decision support systems
·
Internet of Things
·
Artificial intelligence
·
Knowledge management systems
·
Network technologies
·
Project management systems
·
Social media applications
·
Mobile applications
·
Speech-to-text systems/voice recognition systems
·
Wireless sensor network
·
OTHER (with approval of the professor)
Project Deliverable
The deliverable of this project is a research paper that
follows the APA style. The paper should contain the following major sections.
1.
Business organization (two pages) – this section
provides information about the organization you are doing the project for. It should include the following components.
a.
To what industry sector (or sub-sector) does
this organization belong?
b.
What do organizations in this sector typically
do?
c.
What are the services/products they
produce/deliver?
d.
How big is the organization? (e.g., # of
employees, assets, and annual revenue, etc.)
e.
What are the organization’s primary products or
services that it manufactures/delivers? Who are its customers/constituencies
and what are they looking for? What value-added does the organization provide to
its customers?
f.
Use at least one of the strategic management
theories (e.g., SWOT analysis, value chain analysis, and competitive advantage
theory, etc) to discuss the strategic position of the selected organization
g.
Briefly describe the business problem or
opportunity that you will be providing a technology solution for, and explain
how this problem/opportunity affects the organization from a strategic
perspective
h.
What is the business process that is underlying
this problem/opportunity?
2.
Technology category (two pages) – in this
section, you will perform research of the technical solution category. It
should include the following components.
a.
Explain what this technology is for. What is its
business purpose?
b.
Describe technical details, including both customer-facing
(e.g., technology interface) and backend (e.g., technological architecture)
configurations. How does the technology work? What are the key components?
c.
Explain how this technology will impact business
processes, improve decision making, and/or enable business innovation.
d.
Key vendors/market players
e.
Advantages of this technology category
f.
Disadvantage of this technology category
3.
Implementation strategy (one page) – this
section describes how the selected technology will be implemented in the
selected organization. It should include the following components.
a.
Identify how the project team should be formed
and the skills required to carry out the project.
b.
Identify reasons why this project could fail.
c.
Explain what metrics you will use to measure
project success and why you selected these metrics.
Textbook is in the file attached for the reference.
Textbook references are required, but do not count as the 5 in text citations!
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