Individual Project by serving your local community

Many class projects involve case studies or simulations involving fictional companies or organizations. To create a database for a fictional company, students would face hypothetical problems, but a student would not have the experience of dealing with real people or the real-world problems of an organization.

In this service learning based project, you are expected to identify a local small business (for example, a grocery store) in your community, and apply your knowledge about IT and business to analyze the role of IT for this business, and develop an IT Plan for it. The plan would specify (at a high level) the key IT applications that the business should focus on, the underlying infrastructure technologies necessary to support these applications, how to go about achieving this (e.g., sequencing the introduction of major applications), whether services should be delivered via in-house resources or outsources, etc. Explain how the IT plan is consistent with (and whether it suggests changes to) the business needs, financial resources, competitive position etc.

You can assume that you are hired by a local small business company as an IT consultant. You are given 500-10,000 dollars to improve or setup its information systems. What is your Information System plan for the company?

A useful way to structure your research and project results is the following.

1. Introduce the context: the small business company introduction, its products, markets, and mission.
2. Discuss the problems with its current information processing abilities – analyze whether it is inadequate in satisfying computing requirements, misaligned with firm strategy, not cost effective etc.
3. Develop and justify your proposed IT strategy. What new technologies should be introduced? What applications would they support, and who would use them to do what differently?
4. Summary.

The report of the project will be at least 6 pages (Double Space) excluding references, summary, and title page.

All references and sources must be listed.

Your paper should follow the following structure.

1. Title Page
2. Introduction
3. Current Problems
4. Proposed Solutions
5. Price Estimation
6. Final Recommendation
7. References

The first page is your title page. You need to provide your project title, your full name, your contact information and this course title.

The second page starts with your introduction. You need to introduce the background of your project customer such as business name, location, business, its customers, picture of the business store.

The Current Problems section will present the current information systems used by this business and the problems.

The proposed solutions section will present how you upgrade or design the information systems.

The Price Estimation will present the prices of your solutions’ price. You need to make at least two price options for your customer to choose.

The final section will be your final recommendation.

This would be the template:

1. INTRODUCTION

[In this section, you need to introduce the background of your target customer such as business name (5 points), mailing address (5 points), business, its customers, picture of the business store (5 points). Please make sure the business company is a local small business: 60 points. ]

2. CURRENT PROBLEMS

[The Current Problems section will present the current information system used by this business company and the problems caused by the old system.] (35 points)

3. PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

[The proposed solutions section will present how you upgrade or design a new information system for this business company. You need to explain why you choose the recommended vendors and products (60 points)]

4. PRICE ESTIMATION

[The Price Estimation will present the prices of your solutions. You need to make at least two price options for your customer to choose. You need to use a table to summarize the prices (60points)]

5. CONCLUSION

[The final section will be your final recommendation] (30points)