Overview: The final project for this course is the creation of an external capital funding proposal.    Most businesses face a landscape of uncertainty and a never-ending stream of risks and opportunities. Managers must continually project the likely financial impact of decisions, make recommendations, act on those decisions, determine how to pay for them, and evaluate the costs and effectiveness of what has been done. Many decisions are short-term, routine, and operational. Others are longer-term investment decisions that require substantial new resources, such as developing new services, expanding into new geographic markets, or undertaking business combinations or spin-offs. Each requires managers to forecast, plan, and make decisions based on a thorough understanding of both internal and external factors that can affect a company’s financial success.   For the summative assessment in this course, you will bring your finance and economics knowledge to bear by preparing an external capital funding proposal for a major international investment at a publicly traded corporation. In order to secure the support of potential financial backers, your proposal will need to lay out what the proposed investment opportunity is, how it fits within the company’s broader mission and goals, its financial impact, and the amount being requested and why (including alternative funding mechanisms considered). In addition, it will also need to include information on the organization’s context, risk factors, and microeconomic assumptions that could affect the success of the investment.   Prompt: You have already chosen the company you will use for your final project, and you have started a narrative description of your expansion project into another country. In this milestone, you will build on that narrative description providing sufficient detail about the expansion, its costs, and its time frame to give a loan committee a firm sense of the proposed investment. You will also analyze the impact of the investment proposal on your business by explaining why now is the right time for this investment given the global context and by explaining how the investment is a good strategic fit with your company. This milestone addresses all of Section II and Section III (Parts A and B only) of the final project.  

This assignment consists of two (2) sections: a project introduction and a Gantt chart or project plan. You must submit both sections as separate files for the completion of this assignment. You have been made the Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer (CIO / CTO) of an innovative e-Commerce start-up company that a venture capital group has funded. The CEO has given you sixty (60) days to deliver an information technology project plan in anticipation of the company locating to a new facility. Since this is a start-up company, there is currently no building or technology infrastructure to support the business. All information technology (hardware and software) must be implemented in either a hosted solution, on-site solution or a hybrid model. The CEO is expecting you to integrate different technologies from different partners and incorporate industry best practices in connection with the development of technological systems. The new facility is a two-story stand-alone building. The company currently consists of ten (10) employees with revenues of $5 million but is expected to grow to thirty (30) employees with revenue of $30 million over the next two (2) years. Section 1: Project Introduction 1.Write a project introduction that includes the following: a.Background information of the company. b.The type of business in which the company is involved. c.A description of the information systems that the company should have to support the business. The description should include the following: i.databases ii.systems analysis iii.security iv.networking v.computer infrastructure vi.human computer interaction vii.Web design d.The use of at least two (2) quality resources in this assignment.  Section 2: Gantt Chart / Project Plan Use Microsoft Project or an open source alternative, such as Open Project, to: 2.Create a Gantt chart or project plan (summary and detailed) template. The Gantt chart or project plan should: a.Record all tasks, subtasks, resources, and time related to the project. b.Outline the planning, analysis, design, and implementation phases. c.Develop in accordance with the systems development life cycle (SDLC).