INFS 5117 Assignment 1 – Critical analysis
Individual assignment, 30 % of the overall grade, due 27 September, 11:59 PM
Purpose
To utilise the topics of week 1 to week 6.
To apply your understanding of different business situations.
To demonstrate your research ability and analysis skills to convince your audience.
What’s for
This is a proposal to prepare your second assignment. You will be an analyst to conduct a business investigation and report to one of the following sectors (your choice):
Retail
Education
Healthcare
Government
Online business
You must chooseonesector for this proposal.Requirements
Make sure you cover these 4 titles and the subtitles (in bold) in your proposal. Questions are my examples; you can have your own questions to answer.
The sector
It is important to clarify how you understand the sector, and how you see the trend and competition within the sector.
The nature of the business:
What is the business? The reason to know the nature of the business is to make sure you understand that in this sector what services/products they provide, how they grow and what they need to be more competitive.
The business model:
What do they do for money? How they differentiate each other?
Other comments associate with this organisation:
Do they currently have new or transformed business activities developed for the COVID?
Data/IT/analytical solution
From what you’ve seen the business, provide solution(s) to help them do better. It can be many aspects to think of – increasing sales, better customer relationships, better diagnostic solutions, easier to spot the market etc.
1/4
What is the approach?
What is your proposed solution? What is the enhancement or problem you’ll tackle? You have to let the business knows what are the things that you’re going to fix or improve.
Why is the approach?
What is the benefit they’re going to have from your solution? You should consider all stakeholders.
Demos of your approach
It’s important to pinpoint their problems with your solutions and be straightforward to clarify the practical needs from their business perspective.
Technical explanation
Although it’s “technical” as the title, you don’t have to explain the details of implementation or the technology if you don’t fully understand.
What’s the data? How to collect?
You can comment this in detail about the type of the data, why, where and how to collect.
Technical aspects of your approach
What does the type of analytics your solution belong to? Discuss the pros and cons of your solution. What’s the limitation – what can be done and what cannot? If it’s prediction models, what are the techniques you employed e.g. supervised learning for linear regression?
Implementation:
If the organisation accepts your proposal, what will be the procedures look like? Who should be involved and why? Is there any technical change that the organisation needs to be made due to your implementation?
(Your own title)
The purpose of this section is to discuss other things that don’t fall into the previous sections but you want to add. It’s a compulsory section.
(What-if situations)
If the organisation accepts (or not) your proposal ... and then ...
(Assessment or analysis)
Before, during, and/or after the solution, things need to be assessed, monitored or analysed.
(Other)
Other of your own discretionary comments.
2/4
Marking criteria:
Clarity:your writing is understandable – expression, grammar and tone.
Research:your comments are made by evidence built from logical ways of expression.
Technical explanation:you’re able to explain your approach with the clarity that the pieces of technical components or procedure can be understandable from the business perspective.
The benefit:the level of benefit that your select sector will be received.
Rubrics
Equal and under P1
C/D
HD
Clarity
Unstructured format, unprofessional tone, or using personal judgements
Structured format
Efficiently concise and precise to deliver the key points. Format is coherent and effective in communicating
Research
Most of the comments are made without evidence.
Comments are made with evidence.
Comments are made with evidence. Statistical based of comments used in reasoning and advising that are quantifiable and comparable.
Technical explanation
Lack of clarify in the analytics you proposed to use
Technical aspects of the analytical approach are mentioned.
Efficiently to communicate your comments with non- technical background people
The benefit
Not enough support to cover the “why” that the benefit is relevant to the organisation.
Benefit and the reason behind are mentioned.
A “cross-validation” is provided. (Why something works, and doesn’t work)
For the organisational perspective, you provide the genuine benefit that is strong enough that business is confident to accept your advice. (Consider this by putting yourself into the shores of the stakeholders of the business)
3/4
Format
Minimum 1500 words, no maximum.
You can have any format for your proposal, but keep in mind, any business report should consider:
Concise and easy to understand:Readable and straight to the point!
Evidence and reference:If you cite a number, integrate it with a reference. If you say that A will result in B, make a reference. Because the business may follow your advice to launch a project, it’s better (almost) everything you comment is traceable and backed up by evidence.
Organisational perspective writing tone:Everything you write in this proposal should firstly consider the business (putting your shoes into their situation).
Reference style:Any standard referencing system is acceptable; UniSA Harvard is preferred. Do NOT use the default MS Word referencing system.
Grading
You’ll receive the marking result by the level of grades (HD, D, C, P1, P2, F1, or F2). All late submission will have a penalty – 10% off per day.
An extension will only be considered to the request made by a week prior to the due date except special circumstance.
You can use weekly workshop assignment discussion sessions to verify your ideas and/or discuss on your draft.
Get started
It is suggested to conduct board research by reading many cases about how businesses use technologies (data/IT/analytical solutions) to enhance their organisations.
Then, use the knowledge learnt from the weekly topics to explain the technical aspects about what the solution will be, why, and what will be involved.
You can reference any existing business cases in the same industry you selected. For example, company ABC has done X in retail so it would be helpful if ...
Keep in mind, this is a business writing (a proposal) so be transparent and practical about what you say because anything you advise would be considered into production and business activities.
Questions?
Please ask questions as earlier as possible inworkshopsthroughonline forumandemail. Version 2 | 4/9/20 edited.
changes arehighlighted4/4