Information System Management (COMP 1006) – Fall – 17 –CW2 (Case Study)-All – QP
In Semester Case Study
and Presentation
Module: Information System Management (COMP1006)
Level: 2
th
Submission Date: 13 Week
Max. Marks: 100
Learning Outcomes:
1. Formulate the business rationale for an information system.
2. Explain how organizations’ can be managed better by intelligent use of information systems.
3. Understanding information system security and reliability of the organization.
Instructions:
You are given 5 case studies. Choose any one of them and answer questions at the end of the chosen case
study. Each case study has 5 questions, each one carries 15 marks. Every student should submit work
proposal related to his/her case study till the end of 10th week (16th December 2017, 11:59pm). For
more information about marks, please consult marking grid at the end.
1. Wyoming Medical Center, Los Angeles County, and Raymond
James: End-Point Security Gets Complicated
Users say protecting network end points is becoming more difficult as the type of endpoint devices—
desktops, laptops, smartphones—grow, making security a complex moving target. The problem is
compounded by the range of what groups within corporations do on these devices, which translates into
different levels of protection for classes of users on myriad devices. “Deciding the appropriate device
defense becomes the No. 1 job of endpoint security specialists,” says Jennifer Jabbush, CISO of Carolina
Advanced Digital consultancy. Depending on the device and the user’s role, end points need to be locked
down to a greater or lesser degree. For instance, Wyoming Medical Center in Casper, Wyoming, has four
classifications of PCs: “open PCs in hallways for staff use; PCs at nursing stations; PCs in offices; and PCs
on wheels that move between patient rooms and handle very specific, limited applications,” says Rob
Pettigrew, manager of technical systems and help desk for the center.
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Pettigrew is deploying Novell ZenWorks to 850 of the center’s 900 PCs in order to make sure each
class has the right software. With 110 applications and 40 major medical software systems, that makes a
huge matrix of machine types and restrictions to contend with, he says. In addition, physicians in
affiliated clinics can access via SSL VPN (a kind of VPN that is accessible over Web browsers), but they are
limited to reaching Web servers in a physician’s portal, which is protected from the hospital data
network. Some Citrix thin clients are also used to protect data from leaving the network but overall the
strategy for unmanaged machines is a work in progress, Pettigrew says. “We’re hoping to get more help
desk to deal with the external physicians,” he says. One concern that can be addressed by endpoint
security is data privacy, which is paramount for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services in
California, says Don Zimmer, information security officer for the department. He supports about 18,000
desktops and laptops and operates under the restrictions of Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. “That means disk encryption,” he says. “If it’s not encrypted and
there is a breach, then we have to start calling people,” he says.
To avoid violating patients’ privacy and a loss of public trust, the department encrypts the drives
of all the PC end points with software from PointSec. Equally important is keeping sensitive information
off movable media that can plug into USB ports. The department uses Safend’s USB Port Protector
product that either denies access to sensitive documents or requires that they be encrypted and
password-protected before being placed on the removable device. Everyone’s talking about the insider
threat. But protecting data can’t supersede the requirement to give users the access they need to do
their jobs—otherwise, soon you’ll have neither business data nor employees to worry about. Striking a
balance between access and protection isn’t easy, however.
In an InformationWeek Analytics/DarkReading.com endpoint security survey of 384 business
technology pros, 43 percent classify their organizations as “trusting,” allowing data to be copied to USB
drives or other devices with no restrictions or protective measures. Still, IT is aware of the need to move
from a stance of securing end points to assuming that laptops and smartphones will be lost, good
employees will go bad, and virtual machines will be compromised. Instead of focusing on end points, let
fortifications follow the data: Decide what must be protected, find out everywhere it lives, and lock it
down against both inside and outside threats, whether via encryption, multitier security suites, or new
technologies like data loss prevention (DLP). DLP suites combine network scanning and host-based tools
to collect, categorize, and protect corporate intellectual property. These products can maintain an archive
of data and documents, along with associated permissions by group, individual, and other policies. They
then actively scan internal networks and external connections looking for anomalies. This takes data
protection beyond perimeter or endpoint protection; DLP facilitates internal safety checks, allowing
“eyes-only” data to remain eyes only and minimizing the risk that sensitive data will be viewed by the
wrong folks, even in-house.
Zimmer says he is looking into DLP software as well that can restrict the access individual devices
have to data. Although the technology can be effective, it also requires that businesses locate and classify
their data so they can set policies surrounding it—a job that can seem insurmountable, depending on
how data have been stored. For Pettigrew, this means finding the 5 percent of sensitive data stored
outside the medical center’s electronic medical records system. Rather than deal with many vendors for
specific endpoint protection products, some businesses opt for endpoint security suites, such as those
that evolved from the antivirus roots of vendors, including McAfee and Symantec.
Sam Ghelfi, chief security officer at financial firm Raymond James, opted for Sophos’s Endpoint
Protection and Data Security Suite, which offers firewall, antivirus, data loss prevention, antispyware,
encryption, and network access control (NAC). The company wants tight control over the Web content
that is available to users to minimize the malware coming in via basic Web browsing. The company uses a
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Sophos Web proxy that filters sites based on reputation, but also the content that sites return. Mobile
devices that could contain confidential company information are disk encrypted, again using Sophos
agents. If a device is lost or stolen, the encryption key is wiped out, making it impossible to decrypt the
contents of the hard drive. Ghelfi says he believes in personal firewalls on individual machines because
they can stop groups of devices from talking to other groups. “Centrally managed, they can reveal
network traffic patterns,” he says. He doesn’t use all of the features of the Sophos suite, though. For
instance, he is just getting around to implementing NAC to let unmanaged guest machines get on the
network but still minimize risk that they are infected. That will clear them based on authentication, access
method and type of machine, but for contractors that require access to the main network, he also insists
that they install the Sophos suite. Other unmanaged machines, such as those of guests, are allowed
access only through a dedicated wireless network that leads to a limited set of servers in a network
segment flanked by firewalls, he says. “Such endpoint security suites can be attractive
financially,” Jabbusch says, “because customers can wind up with reduced agent, license and support fees
and less management overhead.” There may be a certain amount of convenience if customers decide to
layer on more applications within a suite. The newest class of devices—smartphones—is presenting
ongoing challenges as organizations figure out how to deal with them. Particularly dicey is whether to
allow employees to use their personally owned devices for business and to access the business network.
The jury is still out, at least among state government chief information officers. A recent survey by the
National Association of State Chief Information Officers says that of 36 states responding to a survey, 39
percent say they allow personal smartphones if they are protected by state security measures. Twentyseven percent say they don’t allow personal smartphones on their networks, 17 percent say they are
reviewing state policy, and 17 percent say they don’t have statewide control—each agency sets its own
policies. A separate Forrester Research survey says that 73 percent of businesses surveyed are at least
somewhat concerned about smartphones being authorized for business use.
According to DeviceLock, its survey of more than 1000 IT professionals found that fewer than 40
percent of respondents said yes to the question: “Have you taken any steps to secure your business
against the security threat posed by iPhones? “Analyzing the responses by region, researchers found that
only 25 percent of respondents in North America and Western Europe said yes to the question,
suggesting this is a “back burner” security issue, says the endpoint data leak-prevention
specialist. Jabbush says the type of smartphone is a factor. “I can’t imagine allowing an iPhone,” she says.
“A BlackBerry is somewhat better” because BlackBerries have a management infrastructure and the
devices can be locked down to corporate policies. Mobile device security is one of those areas that should
get more attention. However, it is likely that this topic will remain buried—until a lost or stolen iPhone
leads to a visible and costly security breach.
CASE STUDY QUESTIONS
1. Explain why the endpoint security is not so much successful in business organizations. What should be
the option for companies to overcome this issue in order to save their data and information? Describe the
issues and their solutions in detail with appropriate examples. Support your answer with valid points.
2. Due to vulnerable nature of end-point security, the business organizations have adopted alternative
approaches to endpoint security. Identify and explain the most common approaches used by
multinational companies in 2014. Support your answer with at least 3 examples.
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3. The business organizations come across new challenges to implement appropriate security measures
in their information systems. Identify and explain the possible security challenges and their effects which
any business organization may face in 2015. Support your answer with examples.
4. Some analysts argue that employees should be allowed to use mobile phones on organizations’
network while some analysts do not favour this point of view. As a student which point of view you
support, explain your answer with appropriate points.
5. Go online and find out which security technologies will be popular in 2015 for multinational companies.
Explain your answer in terms of advantages, disadvantages, information system security and privacy.
2. DLA Piper, MetLife, PepsiCo, and Others: Telepresence Is Finally
Coming of Age
Sprawling international law firm DLA Piper has upgraded from videoconferencing to telepresence, which
will save the firm nearly $1 million per year in reduced travel costs and lost productivity. The
conferencing gear that simulates across-the-table meetings has “a provable and achievable return on
investment over five years, and may actually pay for itself before then,” says Don Jaycox, CIO of DLA Piper
U.S. This involves an “immersive video experience,” or technology that provides high-end, high-definition
visual and audio communications in a completely integrated environment. The goal is to make anyone
involved in these meetings feel as if they’re actually in the room with the other meeting participants,
regardless of where everyone is physically based. “Rescheduling half the firm’s in-person board meetings
as telepresence conferences and relying on at least two attorneys per week to use telepresence rather
than travel accounts for significant savings when lost productivity for travel time is factored in,”
says Jaycox. “If I look at my total telepresence project cost, which includes equipment, room construction,
implementation services, maintenance contract, financing costs, etc., then amortize that over the
expected five-year life of the system, it works out to be just a hair under $500,000 per year for our six U.S.
sites,” he says. “Our early experience suggests that a more accurate number of avoided trips is closer to
four or five per week, so the $970,000 projection almost certainly underestimates our actual savings,” he
notes. The sites were selected so they put 80 percent of the attorneys within a one-hour drive of
a telepresence room.
Jaycox says he has observed attorneys working together via telepresence conferences, and he was
struck to see two workgroups formed at either end of the telepresence table, just as they might be if they
were all working around the same physical table. “You had the sense all these people were in the same
strategy room,” he says. With the economy in a downturn, it’s no surprise that companies have been
slashing travel budgets. But at MetLife, officials say the focus is also on employees’ quality of life, keeping
them home as much as possible. As a result, the insurance giant has recently made a big push
into telepresence technology.
MetLife is using Cisco Telepresence in three dedicated conference rooms in Chicago, New York,
and New Jersey, and soon plans to expand to other offices nationally and internationally. “Instead of
having to take people away from their families, you walk down to the room and turn on the lights and
have your three-hour meeting and it’s extremely effective,” says Anthony Nugent, executive vice
president of employee benefits sales. He regularly uses telepresence to communicate with his direct
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reports in Chicago and Somerset, New Jersey, and the clarity is so good that he says with a laugh,
“Everyone jokes around that they can reach a Coke across the table” from one location to another.
MetLife has seen a direct cost savings as well as better employee time efficiency and a way to help
the company meet its “green initiative” goal of reducing its carbon emissions by 20 percent this year, says
Nugent. The company finished its initial telepresence rollout a year ago and hasn’t yet determined an
exact savings, but Nugent estimates the use of the systems will provide double-digit ROI in travel savings
alone. At MetLife, the three Cisco telepresence systems cost just under $1 million to install, according to
Paul Galvin, vice president of enterprise services in the information technology group. Nugent says he
uses both videoconferencing and telepresence, depending on his needs. Videoconferencing is a better
choice for one-on-one situations, such as “if someone is going to do a quick presentation to me,” he says,
but telepresence is
ideal
for
meetings
where
participants are
located
in
multiple
offices. Telepresence gives him face-to-face contact with a broader group, “So it allows me to get to know
people better,” Nugent says. He runs an organization with people based all around the country and used
to require that his direct reports come to New York for quarterly reviews. Now they can stay in their
offices and he can discuss business with a wider range of employees. “Using telepresence allows me to
see and virtually interact with more people on my team instead of just my direct reports,” says Nugent.
“When we use telepresence for meetings, people who wouldn’t normally be asked to travel to New York
have the opportunity to make presentations and get valuable exposure to executive management. It
really facilitates face-to-face interaction with a broader cross-section of employees on an economically
efficient basis.” MetLife is considering putting a telepresence system at a business processing plant in
India to avoid having employees fly over to see it. The company is also looking at ways to
utilize telepresence with salespeople across the country. The idea is to have as many people using the
system as possible, Nugent says. “Flying out of Boston for a meeting when I was 20 sounded great, but
the sales pitch I always give is we’re respecting the time of the employee,” he says. “So if we can give a
person the effectiveness of being there and then be home with his family, it’s two wins.” PepsiCo is
deploying Cisco Telepresence systems in its major offices worldwide. PepsiCo CIO Robert Dixon says that
using telepresence “will reinvent the way we work” while cutting down on travel, which, in turn,
improves productivity and reduces the company’s environmental footprint. “In this day and age, it’s
simply a smarter way of going about our business,” he adds. PepsiCo sells products from 18 different
product lines in 200 countries and employs nearly 200,000 workers. The law firm of Lathrop & Gage, LLP,
is using both high-definition videoconferencing and telepresence. Employees conduct more than 300
meetings every month at the firm’s Kansas City, Missouri, headquarters. “It’s a more meaningful way to
conduct meetings than over the phone,” says CEO Joel Voran, who uses the system about three times a
week. Although he still tries to make it to all of the firm’s offices twice a year, Voran says use of
the Polycom systems has significantly reduced the need for lawyers to fly to Kansas City.
“The clarity has been impressive,” Voran says. “At one of our very first meetings at one of our
offices I could see the brand of the beverage someone was drinking and that made the partner sit up and
take notice.” “This is a billable-hour profession,” notes Ben Weinberger, CIO at Lathrop & Gage, who adds
that one attorney alone can save more than $1,500 in travel expenses and productivity loss by not having
to fly somewhere to attend a meeting. Because many lawyers travel monthly, the Polycom system could
represent a savings of more than $30,000 in annual travel expenses and productivity loss for a single
attorney, he estimates. Weinberger differentiates between high-end videoconferencing
and telepresence by the size of the screens. The rooms that have 50-plus-inch screens and run highquality, high-definition cameras are utilizing telepresence, he says. Making it possible for far-flung
attorneys to work closely together via telepresence helps emphasize that the firm has offices around the
world and should have an international focus—a benefit of the system that can’t be quantified in dollars
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and cents. “When you work in one location, you tend to draw inward. We want people to think globally,”
says Jaycox.
CASE STUDY QUESTIONS
1. The telepresence has many advantages and disadvantages in addition to high installation price. Identify
the possible benefits telepresence can bring for large scale organizations. Discuss your answer in terms of
performance and productivity. Support your answer with valid points.
2. Despite having great features, the utilization of telepresence is quite slow in large scale organizations.
As an information system student, identify and describe the possible reasons which are causing
slow telepresence utilization in multinational companies. Explain your answer with reasonable points.
3. “The telepresence systems can be deployed to create a virtual environment where researchers around
the world can share knowledge with each other about various research projects to promote research
culture”. As an information system student, identify the possible benefits which can be achieved by
deploying telepresence in education sector. Explain your answer with examples.
4. Go online and find out the top 5 most popular telepresence systems in 2015. Provide details of each
system with appropriate points. Discuss your answer in terms of price, features, advantages and
disadvantages.
5. The security is one of the biggest concern in telepresence systems. Therefore, it is prime responsibility
of information system managers to have appropriate measures in place in order to avoid any security
issues in telepresence systems. Identify appropriate methods, measures or techniques which you
consider are necessary for the security of telepresence systems. Illustrate your answer with appropriate
details.
3. Cisco Systems, Black & Decker, and O’Reilly Auto Parts:
Adapting Supply Chains to Tough Times
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Whether it’s a truck, a tsunami, or an economic downturn, the same general rule applies: You’re better
off if you can see it coming from a safe distance. There aren’t many companies that understand this
notion better than Cisco Systems Inc. White-hot during the 1990s, the company was pummeled after
its vaunted inventory forecasting system could not—or did not—predict the dot-com bubble’s collapse.
The result of this miscalculation was that sales were halved, the company lost 25 percent of its
customers in a matter of weeks, and it ultimately wrote off more than $2 billion in inventory. After that
experience, Cisco’s supply chain team vowed that it would never get blindsided again. “There is a huge
difference cutting head count between now and 2001,” says Karl Braitberg, Cisco’s vice president of
customer value chain management. Back then, Cisco’s supply chain model was built on a “push”
system, where products were made and inventory was built up in anticipation of market demand
based on best-guess forecasts. “Then, when demand dropped, the supply chain froze. Nothing
happened,” Braitberg says. “We knew we had to build a new system that reacts better than just
‘push.’” Every company is tasked with matching its supply to consumer demand. In a normal business
cycle, how well that job is accomplished determines whether the company is profitable. But this
current economic downturn is anything but normal, and businesses are struggling to simply stay liquid.
There are various strategies to help preserve working capital, including cutting head count, outlets, and
manufacturing lines. But for most companies, the key to capital preservation will be how well they can
reduce their inventory levels.
Largely, companies are in survival mode, and they’re looking to their supply chain management
team to free up precious capital to help them do that. While it may not fall directly on IT executives to
make that happen, their role in the equation is very strategic. With globalization, outsourcing, and
increased compliance and security concerns, managing supply chain operations becomes increasingly
complex. And shorter, more frequent product cycles argeting more-sophisticated markets create a
need to manage more products and parts from remote locations. Add the pressure of shorter cash-tocash cycles—the time from when a business extends credit to build inventory until the time it gets
paid—into the equation, and the need for an intelligent, nimble, and timely flow of information
becomes critical. To have visibility as well as command and control, supply chain operations must be
tightly integrated with the IT infrastructure. That isn’t the case at many companies, and yet it may be
the factor that determines success or failure as they endure and emerge from this downturn. Like
bloodletting, reducing inventory is a delicate matter that most people would prefer to avoid. Inventory
can range from materials, to parts, to fully assembled products.
Nobody wants to run out. If there’s too little, customers won’t get orders in a timely manner
and market opportunities will be missed. Yet if a company carries too much and demand drops, then
the inventory must be “bled down,” or reduced in price, until it has a buyer. During a strong economy
and when cash flow is loosened, many companies can get by without rigorous inventory management
practices, says Larry Lapide, director of demand management at the MIT Center for Transportation &
Logistics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But during a recession, he adds, “companies had better bleed
down inventory to reflect the downturn in sales. If they don’t, it just sits there.” Inventory optimization
is so critical now because of its impact on available cash, Lapide says. In accounting terms, inventory is
an asset.
So inventory that is on the books through manufacturing, assembly, and distribution represents
credit-funded inventory. With credit at a premium, it’s in a company’s best interest not only to keep
inventory levels tight, but also to sell goods as soon as possible. Reducing costs and squeezing
maximum utility out of fixed assets is nothing new to Black & Decker Corp.’s Hardware and Home
Improvement Group in Lake Forest, California. The unit supplies hardware to big-box retailers that
have responded to the economic downturn with new low-price strategies. It now falls on Scott
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Strickland, vice president of IS, to help the group squeeze down its own costs and maintain profit
margins. “We had been loath to drive inventory down to this level,” Strickland says. However, the
company had gained invaluable experience by deploying an integrated inventory management system
prior to the downturn. The result was that the key decision makers throughout its supply chain were
operating with the same information, planners focused only on exceptions, and supplier and material
issues were quickly resolved. The system, Strickland says, does the heavy lifting, and as a result, the
unit has cut planning cycles from weeks to days and improved forecast accuracy by 10.4 percent. “If
someone had told us nine months ago that we could lower inventory as fast as we could to address a
sales decline, we would not have believed it was possible,” Strickland says.
However, “because of the impetus on freeing up working capital, we have been focused on
lowering our inventory and levels. We figured we could do this, and it turned out to not be the bad
experience we had imagined.” The effort to lower inventory levels to free up working capital has
proved so effective that the Black & Decker unit and its partners are jointly considering making it
standard practice even after the economy recovers, Strickland says.
O’Reilly Auto Parts Inc. in Springfield, Missouri, uses inventory as a competitive differentiator, says
Greg Beck, vice president of purchasing. One of the largest specialty retailers of automotive
aftermarket parts, tools, supplies, and accessories in the United States, O’Reilly is responding to the
recession differently than many other companies. “Business is increasing because of the downturn,”
Beck says. “People aren’t buying new cars but instead are putting
more money into fixing old cars.” This isn’t to say that O’Reilly lacks supply chain challenges or that it
can let down its guard. As the result of an acquisition last year, the company increased its total store
count to more than 3,300 and now operates in 38 states. To bolster its competitive advantage,
O’Reilly’s strategy is to increase customer service levels and replenish inventory on a nightly basis,
while at the same time managing an increasing number of products. The partnership between the
supply chain operation and IT was critical to O’Reilly’s strategy. The company is using Manhattan
Associates Inc.’s replenishment software to collect product data information on the half-hour, while
updates from the distribution centers are transmitted nightly. The replenishment system uses this data
to determine the forecast for these products. As a result, O’Reilly has increased inventory turns by 44
percent, and it still manages to fulfill 97 percent of customer requests immediately, with 3 percent
handled through separate channels. At the same time, the company reduced its inventory levels,
freeing up $60 million.
Companies say that driving costs out of the supply chain is an important goal, but the big
question is whether—especially during a recession—they can afford to invest in their supply chain IT
infrastructures to help make that happen. Dwight Klappich, an analyst at Gartner Inc., calls that a shortsighted and, in the long term, costly approach. “If this trend continues,” Klappich stated in a report,
“this myopic focus on short-term tactical issues, while necessary for many businesses, could widen the
gap between the best-performing organizations and lower-performing organizations.”
Cisco understands this. After the 2001 downturn, it made major system investments to
transform its “push-driven,” siloed supply chain model into an integrated “pull system” that can extract
timely data from suppliers and downstream partners. This reorder data is sent to Cisco after being
triggered by specified parameters and algorithms, to shape “demand signals.” The system doesn’t
operate in a vacuum. Cisco has optimized its forecasting algorithms by bringing together
representatives from its marketing, finance, sales, supply chain, and IT departments, and from key
customers. As part of its sales and operations planning process, this group collaborates to create a
common view of demand signals. This input drives an agreed-upon plan of action to align
manufacturing capacity and inventory deployment and meet customer service levels. In short, they
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work together with the same data to optimally match supply and demand. “Now, if there are no pull
signals, nothing gets brought into the system,” says Cisco’s Braitberg.
Manufacturers don’t continue to source and build inventory that may sit in some warehouse waiting
for customers who may never buy it. Cash is freed up for other purposes. While Braitberg
acknowledges that even past history can’t be used as a template for this downturn, Cisco is confident
that it has better visibility into market demand when it goes down, and that it will be ready when the
green shoots emerge. “We now have the techniques in place to be hypersensitive to demand changes,”
Braitberg says, “and we can manage our way through a downturn.”
CASE STUDY QUESTIONS
1. The supply chain management consists of all activities undertaken to finish a quality product on time
to provide to the customer. Identify the guidelines which can be used by business organizations to
achieve favorable levels of supply chains.
2. The multinational companies invest to achieve their strategic goals. In an era of economic downturn,
do you think the business organizations should keep on investing in their IT infrastructure so that they
can get optimum levels of sales, customer service etc. Support your answer with few real examples
where information system might have played a pivotal role in this regard.
3. Describe different approaches for inventory management taken by business organizations these
days. Your answer must cover at least two most popular approaches. Compare both of them and
identify which one you will prefer and why. Support your answer with real life examples from industry.
4. The political unrest, civil war, natural disaster etc. can damage supply lines for multinational
companies which will result in loss of growth, jobs, higher demand etc. Describe the guidelines which
can be used by Cisco Systems, Starbucks Coffee etc. to maintain their optimum levels of supply chains.
5. Describe the role of supply chain management professionals, how they can prioritize, plan and
organize their responsibilities under pressure and competitive customers who demands quick and
speedy solution in global business environment.
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4.Valero Energy, Elkay Manufacturing, J&J, and Overstock.com : The
Move Toward Fact-Based Decision Making
It’s 7a.m. in San Antonio, Texas, and Rich Marcogliese, chief operating officer of Valero Energy, is holding
his usual morning meeting with the plant managers of 16 major refineries throughout the United States
and Canada. On the walls of the HQ operations center are a series of monitors centered by a giant screen
with a live display of the company’s Refining Dashboard. Whether the executives are in the room or
connected remotely, all eyes are trained on the Web-accessible gauges and charts, which are refreshed
with the latest data every five minutes. “They review how each plant and unit is performing compared to
the plan,” says Valero CIO Hal Zesch, “and if there is any deviation, the manager explains what’s going on
at their plant.” For Valero, a surprisingly little-known Fortune 10 (that’s right, one zero) company with
more than $118 billion (with a “b”) in revenue, just one dashboard needle moving from green to red
might signal millions of dollars at stake. The point of the dashboard isn’t to call managers out; it’s to give
executives timely information so they can take corrective action. Valero’s Refining Dashboard is just the
sort of cutting-edge decision-support tool that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of companies are now
attempting to create. Those companies have embraced the idea that decisions based on fact will
consistently beat those based on gut. Business bestsellers including “Competing on Analytics,” “Super
Crunchers,” and “The Numerati” have documented that it’s an approach that works. Financial analysts,
board members, and even the news media increasingly expect sound, data-backed analyses from top
management. And when things go wrong, regulators—and in some cases, even district attorneys—follow
the numbers to trace bad decisions.
Plenty of obstacles stand in the way of better decision support, from backward-looking metrics
and ill-advised goals to antiquated budgeting approaches and technophobic executives. For management
teams that can make use of the data—and these days there’s always plenty of data—there are huge
opportunities to improve efficiency, develop innovative products, get closer to customers, and outsell
competitors. Valero rolled out its dashboard in early 2008 at the behest of COO Marcogliese. He had
launched a Commitment to Excellence program aimed at improving performance, and he wanted to see
real-time data related to plant and equipment reliability, inventory management, safety, and energy
consumption. Real-time performance data are compared against daily and monthly targets, and there are
executive-level, refinery-level, and even individual system-operator-level dashboard views. It’s rare
among business intelligence deployments to get fresh data every five minutes, but Valero has tapped
directly into “process historian” systems at each plant in a six-month deployment of SAP’s Manufacturing
Integration and Intelligence application. A major focus of Valero’s Commitment to Excellence program is
reducing energy consumption, so the company is rolling out separate dashboards that show detailed
statistics on power consumption by unit and plant. “Based on the data, managers can share best practices
and make changes in operations to reduce energy consumption while maintaining production levels,”
CIO Zesch explains. Estimated savings to date: $140 million per year for the seven plants where the
dashboards are in use, with expected total savings of $230 million per year once the dashboards are
rolled out at all 16 refineries. The terms “scorecard” and “dashboard” are often used interchangeably, but
there’s an important distinction. Scorecards are all about tracking against defined metrics, and most
scorecards are attached to a methodology, such as the Balanced Scorecard or TQM, says Mychelle Mollot,
VP of worldwide marketing, analytics, and performance management at IBM. “Top executives have
actually laid out a map for where they want to drive the business, and they’ve created metrics that will
drive the behavior that will get them there,” Mollot says. Whether they call their decision-support tools
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Information System Management (COMP 1006) – Fall – 17 –CW2 (Case Study)-All – QP
scorecards or dashboards, only a small percentage of leading companies have actually mapped out
enterprise wide goals with a formal methodology. Some companies come up with their own
methodologies, but the key question is whether it’s a comparative decision support interface: Does it
track performance trends relative to predefined goals? A much larger chunk of companies use dashboardstyle interfaces that simply monitor the health of the business. “These types of decision-support tools
aren’t often attached to a grand methodology or linked down to the bottom of the
organization,” Mollot says.
At Elkay Manufacturing, a $1 billion plumbing fixture and cabinetry maker, the CFO has led the
company to embrace new approaches toward evaluation and reporting. The conventional budgeting
process, by contrast, often takes too long, it’s a fixed contract, and “compensation schemes tied to it tend
to encourage all sorts of bad behavior, like people sandbagging or just budgeting amounts based on last
year’s budget,” says Adam Bauer, corporate planning manager at Elkay. Elkay’s stated strategy is to grow
profitably, so its sales related scorecards and dashboards include profit metrics so salespeople don’t just
drive revenue at the expense of the bottom line. Controller John Hrudicka says the company’s decisionsupport tools have identified initiatives that produced more than $13 million in hard-dollar profit
improvements while “helping us transform our culture to a profit mind-set.” Elkay put most of its
decision-support technologies in place over the last two years. It tapped Host Analytics’ software-as-aservice financial performance management system, which it uses for budgeting, planning, reporting, and
end-of-quarter financial consolidation. The system also supported the move, completed in September, to
18 month budgeting and planning cycles. Elkay chose Acorn Performance Analyzer software for activity
based costing: analyses that reveal the true cost of delivering products (including manufacturing,
distribution, sales and marketing, and warranty claims), as well as the true cost of sustaining customers
(including products purchased, discounts applied, and ongoing service and support costs). For decision
support, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition pulls information from multiple enterprise
systems to deliver multilevel scorecards and dashboards. “It starts with the corporate scorecard and it
rolls down from there to the divisions and all the way down to individual-employee goals that affect
bonuses at the end of the year,” Bauer says. Bottom-up feedback, he says, is gathered during quarterly
strategy reviews. Few companies have worked as hard or as long at data driven decision making as
Johnson & Johnson. There is an iterative process of assessing opportunities, developing goals,
implementing improvements, and then monitoring their success with the aid of decision-support tools.
Indeed, fact-based decision making is now “part of the culture at J&J,” says Karl Schmidt, vice president of
business improvement, who leads a nine-person internal management consulting group. J&J is
decentralized, so there’s no single, overarching corporate dashboard. There are separate dashboards—or
in some cases, balanced scorecards—within the pharmaceutical, consumer, and medical device and
diagnostics product divisions, as well as the dozens of companies in each of those groups.
The key performance indicators include a mix of financial metrics (revenue, net income, cash
flow); customer metrics (satisfaction, loyalty, market share); internal process metrics (product
development, manufacturing efficiency, fulfillment); and employee metrics (engagement, satisfaction). “It
comes down to fact-based decision making,” he says. “In tough economic times, you want the best
available data and analysis to make better decisions.”
Some of the most decision-support-savvy executives can be found in e-commerce. For example,
Patrick Byrne, CEOof Overstock.com , is said to use dashboards to help set his daily schedule. If the
problem of the day is gross profit margins, that will drive who he calls in for a discussion. “If you get
invited into a meeting with that kind of metrics-oriented CEO, you better have your hands on the data,
including the detail at the next level down,” says David Schrader, director of strategy and marketing at
Teradata, the vendor behind Overstock’s data warehousing environment. Overstock can roll up its profit
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Information System Management (COMP 1006) – Fall – 17 –CW2 (Case Study)-All – QP
and loss statement every two hours, “which is absolutely world class,” Schrader says. That capability gives
executives accurate, up-to-date insight into the financial results they can expect, and it also drives
operational decisions such as spot buys of TV advertising. Whether a company is an e-commerce
powerhouse or not, digital marketing channels like e-mail, social media, and online advertising networks
are increasingly important. Thus, top executives should be watching forward-looking, upstream measures
such as Web site performance, Web driven lead generation, and sales pipeline information. Here, again,
you must be careful to select the right metrics. “A lot of people are measuring the wrong thing, like how
many people came in the door,” Schrader says. “What you really want to measure is how many people
came in the door and became qualified leads.”
And once prospects become customers, you’ll want to know if they are good or bad customers. That’s
where analyses such as activity-based costing and customer segmentation come in. Lessons learned
should come full circle and be reapplied to lead-generation campaigns and marketing offers. Considering
all the IT systems now in place, the growing dominance of Internet-based marketing, and the intensely
digital nature of services-based industries, there’s no doubt that data-driven decision making is the way
forward. But the key questions are: How prepared are these organizations to synthesize and share key
performance indicators? How prepared are executives to draw insight from information?
CASE STUDY QUESTIONS
1- Explain the importance of decision making in business organizations. How decision discuss support
systems can be used to achieve strategic goals for organizations. Explain your answer with examples.
2- Appropriate decision making requires exact information from all departments in multinational
companies. Identify other components which must be used for successful decision making. Explain your
answer in terms of society, culture, human resources and technology.
3- The multinational organizations initiate different projects to bring improvement in their decisionmaking and business analysis systems. Each year many organizations start various projects aimed at
ensuring accuracy of information. Explain the mostly widely used tools for accurate information analysis
in business enterprises. Discuss your answer with examples.
4- Decision support systems have many types which are used in corporate world. As an information
system student, identify the most commonly used decision support system for choosing different options
available for a problem. Discuss your answer in terms of decision analysis, scheduling and deployment of
such systems.
5- Explain the features of executive support system. Explain your answer in terms of its components,
features, advantages, disadvantages etc. Explain your answer with examples.
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Information System Management (COMP 1006) – Fall – 17 –CW2 (Case Study)-All – QP
5. Cogent Communications, Intel, and Others: Mergers Go
More Smoothly When Your Data Are Ready
When Cogent Communications eyes a company to acquire, it goes into battle mode. Two miles north of
the entagon, across the Potomac in Washington, Cogent sets up what it calls the War Room, where it
marshals eight top executives to evaluate the target company. Among those on the due diligence
squad are the IS director and IT infrastructure manager. Cogent, a midsize Internet service provider,
understands what far too many companies do not: Its ability to integrate and, in some cases, adopt an
acquired company’s IT systems and operations can determine whether a merger flourishes or
founders. For one thing, unanticipated IT integration costs can offset merger savings. Imagine the
business lost when orders vanish, accounts payable go uncollected, and customer information goes
AWOL because the acquiring company gave short shrift to the IT challenge ahead.
As 2006 came to a close, it broke records for the number of mergers and acquisitions, but now
IT managers have to step up and make sure their data centers can help make those deals a reality. “A
well-run data center with reduced complexity makes mergers and acquisitions much easier,”says Andi
Mann, senior analyst at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). More than 11,700 deals were done.
As the dust clears, experts and IT managers agree that companies will feel the full impact of this
merger and acquisition (M&A) frenzy directly in their data centers. So they advise organizations to prep
now or risk experiencing downtime if they have to merge mission-critical assets. “Today, the most
downtime companies can afford for critical data center infrastructure is measured in minutes.” Merged
and acquired infrastructure “has to be available right away,” says Ryan Osborn of AFCOM, a data
center industry group.Observers agree that the key to M&A success from a data center perspective is
to focus on virtualization, documentation, and logistics.
Osborn says these three areas will help companies get ahead of the game and turn a time of
crisis into one of opportunity. “You won’t spend your time just moving infrastructure from one data
center to another. You can actually do a technology refresh, get newer equipment and come out
ahead,” he says.For John Musilli, data center operations manager at Intel in Santa Clara, California, the
most critical piece is knowing about basic logistics. “I don’t always have to know what a server does,
but I do have to know how to keep it alive,” he says. “It’s getting something moved from Point A to
Point B and it doesn’t matter whether the logistics deals with putting servers on a truck or transferring
data over a line.” Musilli has been through a handful of acquisitions in his eight years at Intel, and he
says that he has it down to a science. “As part of the acquiring company, it’s my job to provide the
skeletal environment to accept any company’s assets that come to us,” he says. As such, he keeps a
healthy amount of generic racking, generic cabling, extra bandwidth on the network, and generic
power. “I go generic because I probably won’t know what servers, how many slots, or what type of
power we’ll need beforehand.
With generic, I can configure whatever I need in minutes, he says. For instance, he uses a
universal busway for power so that he doesn’t have to be concerned about the particular electrical
needs of the acquired equipment. “We acquired a company and needed to integrate them in a short
period of time because their building lease was up and they had to get out of there,” Musilli says. One
team was sent ahead of time and spent a year trying to identify each server on 30–40 racks. “None of
their applications matched our operating systems,” he says. As time dwindled, Musilli told them to
pack up all the servers and send them to him. “In the end, it took two mandays to move them intact
and get them up and running in our data center,” he says.
As companies begin to contemplate future mergers or acquisitions, they must look inward at
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Information System Management (COMP 1006) – Fall – 17 –CW2 (Case Study)-All – QP
their own processes and procedures. “Just as important as technology is documentation of processes—
you have to know what people are doing with the systems,” says EMA’s Mann. He warns that one of
the first obstacles to having a successful merger or acquisition is the reliance on what he refers to as
tribal knowledge. Companies that have data centers where the employees hold all the knowledge
suffer greatly when, after a merger or acquisition, those people are let go.
“You have to document the knowledge from those people and figure out how to make the
processes work with only a handful of employees,” he says. Mann recommends creating a workflow
chart that outlines who’s responsible for each part of the data center. He suggests considering who
handles network management, systems management, application management, and storage. “This will
also help you spot redundancies in skill sets or areas where you are lacking in the event of a merger,”
he says. John Burke, senior analyst at Nemertes Research in Minneapolis, says that in addition to
knowing who is responsible, IT groups must know which systems perform which processes. “You have
to have really good information about what goes on in your data center in terms of systems and how
they interact with each other and how they interface with the business. You should always know what
services you offer and how much it costs to offer them, “ Burke says. As part of this effort, many
organizations employ a configuration management database and asset management tool to help track
elements within the data center. “You need a clear and concise view of the data flow within the data
center. If you don’t know what has to move together, you might disrupt business during a merger or
acquisition,” he says.
Companies must also develop guidelines for governance to be referenced during a merger. For
instance, if two law firms are merging and have competing clients, then IT groups must ensure that
data are protected and there is sufficient access control. AFCOM’s Osborn says that good
documentation helps the discovery process that companies go through before a merger or acquisition.
“If the company you are acquiring has good documentation and good processes in place, the
acquisition goes much more smoothly,” he says. “In some cases, you might be able to lower your
software costs if you use a more robust server with fewer processors, but if the application license
doesn’t allow for that, then you can’t,” Osborn says, and adds: “How much money you’re going to have
to spend to merge technology can weigh heavily on the decision to acquire a company.” Nemertes’
Burke suggests that one major step to M&A success is to make sure your data center has virtualization
tools running on both servers and storage. Virtualization is important not only for scaling the data
center but also for creating a standardized execution environment. “With a well-virtualized data
center, you can hide the fact that things are moving around multiple servers and storage devices,”
Burke says. Rob Laurie, CEO at virtualization-software provider Dunes Technologies in Stamford,
Connecticutt, says that virtualization is useful for companies that want to test application and
infrastructure integration before they put their merged or acquired assets into production. It’s also
helpful for companies that must integrate assets that can’t be physically moved, he says. He warns,
however, that for virtualization to be most effective, merging companies must decide on a uniform
platform for their virtual environment. “That way, whatever is virtualized in one company could run in
the other company’s data center without problems,” he says. If they don’t have the same environment,
they must at least have a compatible data format to gain any benefit. Intel’s Musilli suggests that IT’s
natural attention to detail can sometimes overcomplicate matters. “Mergers and acquisitions aren’t
always as difficult as people make them. They’re simply about the ability to assimilate any two
environments,” he says. M&As create stress for both acquirer and acquiree, but early involvement by
IT can minimize the trauma. Otherwise, you’ll need to do too much in too little time. As software
engineering guru Frederick Brooks once said, “You can’t make a baby in a month using nine women.
Plan ahead.”
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Information System Management (COMP 1006) – Fall – 17 –CW2 (Case Study)-All – QP
CASE STUDY QUESTIONS
1. Explain the data protection and access control measures which must be taken when companies
merge. Identify those measures in detail. Explain your answer with examples.
2. Early IT involvement is critical in merging organizations to ensure smooth merger execution. Explain
the role IT can play in all activities of merger and acquisition from premerger to post-merger. Explain
your answer with examples.
3. Different companies have different processes for their operations. When companies merge, it
becomes really important to integrate those processes in underlying business processes. Identify the
role of IT in business processes integration, how IT can ensure smooth business processes integration.
Explain your answer with examples.
4. The documentation of underlying business processes in important for companies. If the company
which is to be acquired has good documentation, the acquisition process goes quickly. Discuss the
guidelines which can be used to make good documentation for underlying business processes.
5. Virtualization is an important part of data centers in business organizations because it provides
scaling and creating standard execution environment across organizations. Explain the role of
virtualization in business organizations. Explain your answer with reference to hardware and software
cost and infrastructure integration.
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Information System Management (COMP 1006) – Fall – 17 –CW2 (Case Study)-All – QP
Provide the following information in the report:
Description of all cases relevant to the chosen case study
Appropriate details with example(s) should be provided
The literature should be correct, accurate and up to the date
Diagrams, tables, figures, metrics etc. can be provided
Appropriate number of Harvard style references should be provided
Assignment evaluation criteria
Students will be evaluated on the following points
* Case study work proposal submission:
Submit a work proposal for this case study by the end of week 10th, which
must include:
* Selection of Case Study
* Understanding of deliverables – a detail description of deliverables
* General overview of proposed plan - initial understanding of solution to all the
tasks
* Resources identified
* Each student will submit the Case Study work proposal in the form of word
document in Moodle.
Originality of answer, i.e. Writing i n your o w n w o r d s with some amount of
referenced material
Correct information and presentation in document form
Adequate referencing and citation provided
The last submission date is 13th Week.
Case Study/Presentation: Ca s e s t u d y a n d p r e s e n t a t i o n marks are based on the
presentation/VIVA which will be conducted upon submission of assignment. ZERO marks
will be awarded to the student if he/she is absent for Case Study Presentation and VIVA.
Good performance on presentation and VIVA would result in good marks. The students
must come for presentation and VIVA in or before week 14th. After this, no presentation
will be held and zero marks will be awarded to the students. For presentation students
should prepare 10-12 slides. Duration of presentation is about 15-20 minutes.
GUIDELINES
The report should have 5000-6000 words approximately. Each answer should have 10001200 words
The document should be well presented and neatly done
Assignment should be computer typed using Calibri 12 font and the soft copy should
be submitted through Moodle, duly checked by TurnItIn to check the similarity of work.
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Information System Management (COMP 1006) – Fall – 17 –CW2 (Case Study)-All – QP
Please note the time mentioned above and also go through the Middle East College
plagiarism policy given below.
The report must have a Title Page, table of contents (optional), reference/bibliography and
page number. Every page must have header & footer.
Proper Har va rd style refer ences sh ou ld be used .
References should be from research papers, white papers,
articles and from other related case studies.
Heading should be with Font Size 14, Bold, and Underline.
You are welcome to discuss about the assignment with the lecturer in his/her office hours.
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PLAGIARISM POLICY
Clarification on Plagiarism Policy
As per MEC policy, any form of violation of academic integrity will invite severe penalty. Plagiarised documents, in
part or in whole, submitted by the students will be subject to this policy. A. First offence of plagiarism
a. A student will be allowed to re-submit the assignment once, within a maximum period of one week. However, a
penalty of deduction of 25% of the marks obtained for the resubmitted work will be imposed.
b. Mark deduction: When the work is resubmitted, the marking will be undertaken according to the marking
criteria. In compliance with this policy, the 25% deduction is then made on the marks obtained. For example, in an
assessment that carries a maximum of 50 marks, suppose a student were to obtain 30 marks for the resubmitted
work, the final marks for that assessment will be 22.5 (after deducting 25% of the marks actually obtained for the
resubmitted work).
c. Period of resubmission: The student will have to resubmit the work one week from the date he or she is advised
to resubmit. For example, if the formal advice to resubmit was communicated to the student on a Sunday (latest
by 5 pm), the student will have to resubmit the work latest by next Sunday 5 pm.
d. If the re-submitted work is also detected to be plagiarized, then the work will be awarded a zero.
e. Resubmission of the work beyond the maximum period of one week will not be accepted and the work will be
awarded a zero.
B. Any further offence of plagiarism
a. If any student is again caught in an act of plagiarism during his/her course of study (either in the same module,
same semester or in any other semester), the student will directly be awarded zero for the work in which
plagiarism is detected. In such cases, the student will not be allowed to resubmit the work.
2 C. Guidelines
a. Type 1: In case plagiarism is detected in any component or part submission (submitted at different times) of
one assessment (assignment), the deduction in marks will be applicable for the whole assessment (assignment),
even if only the component or part submission alone needs to be resubmitted.
b. Type 2: In case plagiarism is detected in a group assessment, all students of the group will be considered as
having committed an act of plagiarism irrespective of whether plagiarism is on account of the act of all or a few or
only one member. The policy will then be applied to all students.
c. Type 3: Combination of Type 1 and Type 2: In case plagiarism is detected in any component or part submission
(submitted at different times) of a group assessment (assignment), the deduction in marks will be applicable for
the whole assessment (assignment), even if only the component or part submission alone needs to be
resubmitted. All students of the group would be considered as having committed an act of plagiarism irrespective
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Page 18 of 20
of whether plagiarism is on account of the act of all or a few or only one member. The policy will then be applied
to all the students of the group.
d. Type 4: Variation of Type 1 and Type 2: In cases where the assessment consists of components or part
submissions that could be a group assessment component (e.g. group assignment) and an individual assessment
component (e.g. individual reflection), the following will be applicable:
1. If plagiarism is detected in the group assessment component, all students of the group will be considered as
having committed an act of plagiarism, irrespective of whether plagiarism is on account of the act of all or a few or
only one member. The policy will then be applied to all students of the group. In such cases the group assessment
component will be resubmitted as per the policy.
2. If plagiarism is detected in the individual assessment component, the individual assessment component will be
resubmitted as per the policy. The policy will then be applied to that student
alone.
3. In both cases (a) and/or (b), the deduction in marks will be applicable for the whole assessment (assignment).
3 D. Amount of similar material
a. The total amount of similar material in any form of student work from all sources put together should not
exceed 30% (including direct quotations).
b. The total amount of quoted material (direct quotations) in any form of student work from all sources put
together should not exceed 10%.
c. The total amount of similar material in any form of student work from a single source should not exceed 7
percent. However, cases having a similarity of less than 7 percent in such cases may still be investigated by the
faculty depending on the seriousness of the case.
d. If faculty member find enough merit in the case of a student work with a similarity (with a single source) of
more than 7 percent as not a case of plagiarism, the faculty member should provide detailed comments/remarks
to justify the case.
Late Submission policy:
Penalty for late submission - 5% of the maximum mark specified for the assessment will be deducted for each
working day.
Assessment documents submitted beyond a period of one week after the last date of submission will not be
accepted and will be marked as zero for that assessment.
Rules & Regulations
If two assignments are similar in all aspects then marks will be deducted from both the assignments.
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Page 18 of 20
Your source of information should be mentioned in the reference page clearly. (For example: If it is from book,
you have to mention the full details of the book with title, author name, and edition and publishers name. or if it
is from internet you have to mention the correct complete URL).
FEEDBACK TO STUDENTS
Feedback on assignment, will be provided to the students (through moodle/emails/oral) within
ONE week, after the submission date.
RULES & REGULATION
If two assignments/essays are similar in all aspects then marks will be deducted from both
assignments.
Your source of information should be mentioned in the
reference page clearly.
(For
example: If it's from book, you have to mention the full details of the book with title,
author name, and edition and publishers name. Or if it is from internet you have to
mention the correct complete URL)
Note: If you have any questions, please ask (during class timings or office hours).
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Information System Management (COMP 1006) – Fall – 16 –CW2 (Case Study)-All – QP
In Semester Case Study Presentation Fall 2017
Module: Information System Management (COMP 1006)
ID:
Name:
Deliverables
Question 1: Discussed
according to the case
study with appropriate
details
Deliverables
Question 2: Discussed
according to the case
study with appropriate
details
0
1-3
4-5
Max. Marks: 100
6-8
Acceptable
explanation,
literature
needs
more
1
details,
example given
Good explanation,
information need more
accuracy, at least 1
example is given
0
Incomple
te/
Plagiariz
ed
4-5
Few details are given which
are not enough, the literature
needs more details, no
examples given
6-8
Acceptable
explanation,
literature needs
more details, 1
example given
9-12
Good explanation,
information need more
accuracy, at least 1
example is given
1-3
Poor description,
the information
are not to the
point
13-15
9-12
Incomplete Poor description, Few details are given which
/
the information are not enough the literature
Plagiarized are not to the needs more details, no
examples given
point
Deliverables
Question 3:
Discussed according
to the case study
with appropriate
details
0
1-3
Incomplet Poor
e/
description, the
Plagiarize information are
not to the point
d
4-5
Few details are given which
are not enough, the literature
needs more details, no
examples given
6-8
Acceptable
explanation,
literature needs
more details, 1
example given
9-12
Good explanation,
information need more
accuracy, at least 1
example is given
Deliverables
Question 4: Discussed
according to the case
study with appropriate
details
0
Incompl
ete/
Plagiari
zed
1-3
Poor
description, the
information are
not to the point
4-5
Few details are given which
are not enough, the literature
needs more details, no
examples given
6-8
Acceptable
explanation,
literature needs
more details, 1
example given
9-12
Good explanation,
information need more
accuracy, at least 1
example is given
Deliverables
Question 5: Discussed
according to the case
study with appropriate
details
0
Incompl
ete/
Plagiari
zed
1-3
Poor
description, the
information are
not to the point
4-5
Few details are given which
are not enough, the literature
needs more details, no
examples given
6-8
Acceptable
explanation,
literature
needs more
details, 1
example
given
9-12
Good explanation,
information need more
accuracy, at least 1
example is given
13-15
13-15
15
Perfectly explained
literature supported with
appropriate examples
and properly referenced.
Information are correct
and up to the point.
13-15
15
Perfectly explained
literature supported with
appropriate examples
and properly referenced.
Information are correct
and up to the point.
15
13-15
Perfectly explained
literature supported with
appropriate examples
and properly referenced.
Information are correct
and up to the point.
0
Presentation
Incorrect
answers
Deliverables
Work Proposal
0-10
Objectives of the Case Study clearly identified, Initial understanding of all the tasks, Sources of data are clearly identified,
credibility of the research sources are established , time line given
0
1
2
3-5
Deliverables
Proper referencing,
literature review,
conclusion and report
format
Incomplete
/Poor
3-4
Poor
Average
Average/Good
5-6
7-8
Good
Very Good
Very Good
Total Marks
Penalty
Marks Final
Comp(1006)
15
Perfectly explained
literature supported with
appropriate examples
and properly referenced.
Information are correct
and up to the point.
Deliverables
1-2
15
Perfectly explained
literature supported with
appropriate examples
and properly referenced.
Information are correct
and up to the point.
9-10
10
Excellent
Excellent
10
05
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