As a business analyst in the Chief Information Officer’s (CIO's) department of Maryland Technology Consulting (MTC), you have been assigned to conduct an analysis, develop a set of system requirements, evaluate a proposed solution, and develop an implementation plan for an IT solution (applicant tracking or hiring system) to improve the hiring process for MTC.This work will be completed in four stages, and each of these four stages will focus on one section of an overall Business Analysis and System Recommendation (BA&SR) report to be delivered to the CIO.

Too High Tech ("Smoke and Mirrors" or Real Sales)? Staci Sutter works as an analyst for Independent Investment Bankshares (IIBS), which is a large investment banking organization. She has been evaluating an IPO that IIBS is handling for a technology company named ProTech Incorporated. Staci is essentially finished with her analysis, and she is ready to estimate the price for which the stock should be offered when it is issued next week. According to her analysis, Staci has concluded that ProTech is financially strong and is expected to remain financially strong long into the future. In fact, the figures provided by ProTech suggest that the firm's growth will exceed 30 percent during the next five years. For these reason, Staci is considering assigning a value of $35 per share to ProTech's stock. Staci, however, has an uneasy feeling about the validity of the financial figures she has been evaluating. She believes the ProTech's CFO has given her what he believes are quality financial statements. however, yesterday Staci received an email from a friend, who was an executive at ProTech until he was fired a few months ago, that suggests that the company has been artificially inflating its sales by selling products to an affiliate company and then repurchasing the same items a few months later. At the same time, Staci received a memo from her boss, Mr. Baker, who has made it clear that he thinks the ProTech IPO can be extremely profitable to top management "if it is done correctly." In his memo, Mr. Baker indicates that the issue price of ProTech's stock must be at least $34 per share for the IPO to be considered successful by IIBS. Part of Staci's uneasiness stems from the fact that a coworker confided that she had seen the CEO of ProTech and his wife at an amusement park with Mr. Baker and his wife last month. If ProTech's sales figures are inflated, Staci surely would assign a different value to the company's stock for the IPO, but it will take her at least two weeks to completely reevaluate the company using different data. Staci knows that if she stays with her current analysis and she is wrong, the consequences can destroy IIBS because reputations is important in the investment banking business. If you were in Staci's situation, what would you do?