Cis8000 Global Information Systems Strategy Assessment Answers

Answer:

Organization Overview

WORA (Wheels on Road Automobiles), Howick is an organization that is based out of Sydney and Christchurch. The organization specializes in dealing with the Sales and servicing of the leading vehicle brand, Nissan. It offers discounts and deals to the customers along with several insurance policies to choose from as well.

The Problem

The services that are offered by the company do not have an online presence yet in this modern era of computing and technology. It leads to the occurrence of several problems as the expectations of the existing customers are becoming difficult to meet and there is a lesser engagement that is being made with the new customers. There are several problems that are being encountered in terms of the management of information as well. There are loss in sales along with reduction in revenues that is being observed along with poor customer conversion rate.

Concept and Solution

The solution that has been proposed in order to overcome the problems that are related with the present systems include the following key points:

• Ability to ensure that the walk-in customer is handled with utmost care and is converted to a buyer
• Provide deals and offers to retain customers and improve engagement with the customers
• Enhancement of the revenues by at least 40%

The solution that is proposed is in the form of a desktop application that has been termed as ‘Deals on Wheels’.

Key Features

• Login ability to the users to get associated with the organization
• Registration ability to the users to create their accounts
• Search functionality to look out for desired vehicle and deal on the basis of factors such as color, price etc.
• Ability to book a test drive by selecting the vehicle type and model
• Ability to view the best offers that are applicable once the test drive is requested and booked
• Ability to view the features and specifications of a particular model and change the same if desired
• Ability to view the accessories that are provided with the car
• Ability to customize the accessories by making changes and purchase the same through the portal
• Ability to view and select the insurance policies for the car
• Ability to pay for the insurance policy that is selected
• Ability to provide feedback on the experience with the portal and services
• Ability to contact the business side and link with the social media accounts

Business Case

The project will be associated with many expenses and costs such as cost of developing the application, cost of designing the application, tools costs along with maintenance and resource costs.

The desktop application for WORA with the name as Deals on Wheels will reduce the cost that is currently associated with the operations and communication as the operational activities along with the communication with the customers will be performed by the application itself. Also, lesser resources will be required as the automation will be introduced which will bring down the cost related with the resources.

There will be an annual hike of 40% that will be experienced on the revenues and it will allow better engagement with the customers as well.

Target Audience

• Old customers that are looking to buy a new car
• New vehicle buyers that are looking to buy a new car next year
• New vehicle shoppers that are looking to change their car in a time period of 6 months

Strategic Alignment

The primary strategy of WORA is to provide best and desired cars to the customers along with the applicable insurance policies. It aims to provide the customers with an easy experience and convenience in the purchase and selection of the car so that they have maximum satisfaction.

Deals on Wheels is an application that will be designed with the aim to offer the customers with all the options related with the cars and their accessories to look at and select from the same. Also, the customers are the target audiences of the application to achieve maximum satisfaction from their end. The application will therefore fall in alignment with the strategies of WORA (Schierholz, Kolbe and Brenner, 2015).

Value Proposition

• The cost being spent on the communication activities will be reduced along with the operational and resource costs (Burkhart, 2016).
• Satisfaction levels of the customers engaged with WORA will rise by at least 38%.
• Annual revenues earned by the company will go up by 40%.
• Employee efficiency levels will show an improvement of 25-30%

Infrastructure Requirements

The development platform that will be used for the application will be NetBeans and the operating systems for which the app will be developed will include Mac, Windows and Linux distributions.

Coding of the application will be carried out in JAVA and there will be a database that will be set up for the application which will be done using MySQL Server.

The delivery model that will be used for the development of the application will be Platform as a Service (PaaS) and a private cloud will be used as the deployment model. These models will assure security in the application and will also provide ease of maintenance and scalability in the application (Gartner, 2012).

Software Design, Development and Testing Strategies

Designing of the application will be done with the following key points in consideration

• Consistency will be followed as a principle (Sharma, 2016).
• Layout shall be kept simple
• Navigation shall be kept smooth
• Use of colors shall be according to the theme

Development strategy used in the application should make use of the methodology as agile framework in which the development will be carried out in iterations termed as sprints.

Numerous testing processes shall be carried out in the application to make sure it emerges as a zero defect software. Bugzilla shall be used as a tool for defect reporting and management and special focus shall be paid on the security and load testing.

Internationalization for a Global Market

Users from every part of the world will be using the application and therefore it shall be designed with an international and global perspective.

• Multi-lingual users shall be able to access the application by providing them with an option to choose from the desired language.
• Application shall have responsive design and shall be based on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) principles (Karray, 2015)
• Payment shall be accepted through PayPal, e-wallets, debit cards and credit cards.
• Global rules of ethics and information security along with Intellectual Property shall be applied and followed.

Social Media Integration Strategies

Social media has become an important tool in the current times (Woodrow, 2016). The desktop application that is designed for WORA shall also have integration with the social media accounts and frameworks. Login abilities through these accounts along with ability to share information with the aid of these accounts shall be made possible. Also, users shall be able to post information and share files with fellow users using social media accounts.

Risk Management

There will be many risks that will be present in association with the desktop application for WORA. These risks will be related to the data and information along with risks around technicalities, operations, legal frameworks, budget and schedule. There may be non-adherence to legal policies or overrun of budget/schedule along with technical failures or operational errors that may come up. There may also be attacks on the availability and privacy of the information present in the desktop application (Analyze, 2016)

Disaster recovery, disaster control along with information backups shall be installed on the application. There shall also be administrative checks and validations carried out to make sure that none of the risks are executed (Berg, 2016).

Deployment and Integration Strategies

Deployment and integration of the desktop application shall be done in a step by step manner rather than performing it at one go. It will assure that the migration is done correctly from existing to the new system and the users adapt to the same.

The users shall be incorporated with the application by releasing a test version which is termed as the beta version which shall be used by the users and the feedback shall be collected. In this manner, all the existing flaws will be highlighted which shall be rectified and the final release shall be made.

User Acceptance and Change Management

User acceptance will be a prime goal for the desktop application that will be designed for WORA. The users shall be incorporated with the application by releasing a test version which is termed as the beta version which shall be used by the users and the feedback shall be collected. In this manner, all the existing flaws will be highlighted which shall be rectified and the final release shall be made.

There will also be various changes that will get introduced in WORA because of the implementation of the desktop application. These changes will be mainly associated with changes in the strategy, operational activities etc. Also, there may be changes during the project timeline in terms of the requirements. These changes shall be handled and managed with the process described below.

• Preparation: Identification of the changes shall be made to devise the strategy to handle it without causing any damage (Hegde, 2016).
• Management: Changes shall be managed by executing the strategies and plans that are made with regular reviews.
• Reinforcement: Closure activities around the changes shall be made in this step.

Legacy Systems

Database that is currently installed in WORA shall be analyzed with its information sets. Security tests shall be executed on these information sets which shall then be migrated to the new database that will be compatible and constructed for the desktop application. The process shall be carried out in steps so that the information is not impacted in any manner.

Enterprise Data Integration

There are several departments that function together in WORA such as sales and marketing team, customer relationship team, management and operational staff members etc. All of these departments have their specific process of functioning and carrying out the activities. It will be required to integrate the data from these departments in desktop application and integrate the application itself with the rest of the systems. The same shall be done with the use of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) package in WORA.

The duties and responsibilities will not end with the deployment of the desktop application at WORA. It will however require the maintenance activities to be carried out along with frequent upgrades as well (Weiderman, 2016).

Future Opportunities and Enhancements

• The UI of the application shall be improved according to the customer feedback.
• Enhancements shall be made in the security and protection mechanisms installed in the application.
• There shall also be inclusion of the BI and Big Data techniques in the application for better handling and management of information.

Conclusions

It has been recommended that the desktop application that is designed for WORA is also launched on the mobile platforms. There are various users in the present times that prefer mobile devices instead of the desktops and personal computers. It is because of the ease of usage along with the ease of accessibility that comes along with the mobile devices. Also, security is one of the primary concerns that are present with desktop and other web/mobile applications. There shall be measures and steps taken to make sure that the security architecture of the application is enhanced and upgraded from time to time. 

References

Analyze, I. (2016). Risk Management. [online] Available at: https://agile.csc.ncsu.edu/SEMaterials/RiskManagement.pdf [Accessed 19 May 2017].

Berg, H. (2016). Risk Management: Procedures, Methods and Experiences. [online] Available at: https://ww.gnedenko-forum.org/Journal/2010/022010/RTA_2_2010-09.pdf [Accessed 19 May 2017].

Burkhart, S. (2016). Enabling mobility withing your organization. [online] Available at: https://rsmus.com/pdf/wp_aligning_mobile_apps_to_your_business_strategy.pdf [Accessed 19 May 2017].

Gartner, (2012). Platform as a Service - PaaS - Gartner Cloud Computing. [online] Gartner IT Glossary. Available at: https://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/platform-as-a-service-paas/ [Accessed 19 May 2017].

Hegde, A. (2016). What is change management. [online] Available at: https://www.andrewneang.com/research/2008-GTP/ChangeManagement_v5.pdf [Accessed 19 May 2017].

Karray, F. (2016). Human-Computer Interaction: Overview on State of the Art. [online] Available at: https://s2is.org/Issues/v1/n1/papers/paper9.pdf [Accessed 19 May 2017].

Schierholz, R., Kolbe, L. and Brenner, W. (2015). Strategy Alignment of Mobile Solutions in Customer-Oriented Processes. Wirtschaftsinf, 47(1), pp.17-24.

Sharma, S. (2016). Agile Processes and Methodologies: A Conceptual Study. [online] Available at: https://www.enggjournals.com/ijcse/doc/IJCSE12-04-05-186.pdf [Accessed 19 May 2017].

Weiderman, N. (2016). Approaches to Legacy System Evolution. [online] Available at: https://www.sei.cmu.edu/reports/97tr014.pdf [Accessed 19 May 2017].

Woodrow, M. (2016). 9 Tips for Integrating Social Media on Your Website : Social Media Examiner. [online] Socialmediaexaminer.com. Available at: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/9-tips-for-integrating-social-media-on-your-website/ [Accessed 19 May 2017].