New ICT Service For ABC Enterprise Intranet: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities And Threats

STRENGTHS

Task A

You are required in your new role as an Enterprise Architect (EA) to do a SWOT Analysis of a current ICT service in an organization. The default organization is Charles Sturt University, but you can substitute another known entity such as your current workplace.

SWOT is an acronym for questioning the Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat and helps with the analysis needed to identify the internal (S, W) and external (O, T) positives and negatives as indicated in Fig.1. Such a process can be informative and help the Enterprise Architect (you) to identify the issues and problems, set goals develop an action plan and help strategic IT Infrastructure planning and decision-making.

Task B 

Your attention in this paper can be focused on any of the following topics covered in our text:

· Information Management / IT Architecture.

· Database, Data, Warehouse, and Data Mining.

· Networks, Collaboration, and Sustainability.

· CyberSecurity, Compliance, and Business Continuity.

· E-Business & E-Commerce Models and Strategies.

· Mobile Technologies and Commerce.

· Social Media.

· Enterprise Systems and Applications.

· Performance Management Using Data Visualization, Mashups, and Mobile Intelligence.

Subtopics and supporting argument: write a series of body paragraphs with sub-points;

Conclusion: Many students get confused between the conclusion and the abstract. In the conclusion, you can reflect on how your topic relates to larger issues; evaluate the concepts you have presented; issue a call for action on the part of your audience; ask questions generated by your findings; make predictions, recommend a solution or give a personal statement about the topic.

With your structure in order, you have a skeleton for your paper: you can now begin by writing out your analyses of the passages you have chosen. As you write and revise, you may have the need to add to your analyses or to re-order your chosen arguments. Using a structure as the skeleton for a paper in this way can carry you more than halfway to a completed draft.

Task C 

1. Generate a Turnitin originality report and submit this report via Turnitin;

2. Submit an early draft to Turnitin for self-checking, then look carefully at all the matches marked in bold font and various colours in the self-check/originality report.

3. Answer the following questions to interpret the Turnitin originality report

a) Are any of the bold, coloured text matches in my self-check report missing in-text references?

b) Do any of the bold, coloured text matches in my self-check report include more than three words in a row copied from the original source without quotation marks?

c) Do direct quotations take up more than 10% of the essay?

d) Are any of the bold, coloured text matches in my originality report purely coincidental? 

e) Do any of the short strings of matching text indicate that my attempts at paraphrasing were not completely successful?

f) Have I synthesised all of the sources ideas into my essay by introducing each piece of source information with a signal phrase and by adding my own comments or interpretation to it in the following sentence?

STRENGTHS

Organization	ABC Enterprise
Date
Description of new ICT service	Company Intranet
STRENGTHS	WEAKNESS
· The new ICT service shall make the company able to stand strong in front of those competitors, who have been using the practice of intranet as a strategy that shall ensure a competitive advantage. · The ICT service proves to economic, effective in terms of cost as well as it results in enhanced productivity. The result is such due to the reason that the new ICT service contributes in the improved way of gathering as well as sharing the information. · The service takes in account the exploitation of the applications that are web based and also ensures that the assets of the company such as the printers, scanners, fax machine etc. is being used. This proves in cost savings. · The service results in enhancing efficiency and effectiveness as it establishes a connection with the database of the company. ·  The cost incurred has to be of installing a new system as well as new software. Apart from this, the company already is equipped with the systems and also has an access to the service of internet; this makes the implementation of the service, cost effective.	· The design and development of a successful and effective service of intranet is difficult. · Also, a large number of employees are being needed in order to maintain and ensure the effectiveness of the intranet. · The cost of starting up the intranet services is higher as the cost constitutes of planning, maintaining, implementing and also training the employees. · However, the company has a low preference regarding the intranet services, when it comes to communication. · There is a need to train the employees as well as the users, as they have no skills and knowledge regarding the use of the intranet services. · The intranet services results in increased stress. This is so because the excessive insignificant database, leads to overloaded information.
OPPORTUNITIES	THREATS
· In order to have an access to the information all the time, the services can be linked with internet. · It assists in cultivating and enhancing the corporate culture. · In order to understand the usage of the intranet services, the company can focus on providing training avenues for the employees. · The ICT service of intranet has the ability to serve the users better and hence, the company has the opportunity to enhance its competitiveness.	· The service of intranet has the threat related with security concerns in context of access authorization. The access can be unauthorized through the means of weak and easy passwords, as well as the connection of internet through BYOD. · It has an impact on the privacy of information. As there are certain pieces of information that are not affordable to be missed or leaked. Moreover, there is a need to have a proper flow of communication in the organization. · Moreover, leakage of confidential information is another threat due to intranet services. · Further, there are various cyber related crimes that can destroy the company's confidential and relevant information.

Recommendations: The implications of the intranet services during and after the implementation have been provided by the SWOT analysis. The analysis has emphasized on the possible strength and weaknesses along with the opportunities and threats that are likely to be impacted on the attainment of the company's strategic objectives. After the analysis, the company ATIT, will be able to:

• Enhance and cultivate its corporate culture, in accordance with the goals of the company.  
• The company will be able to lower down its competitor's advantages by giving them equally tough competition.
• Enhanced communication network, data accessibility as well as resource sharing helps in making the company cost effective as well as enhances the productivity of the employees.
• New strategies can be formulated or the existing ones can be altered in order to nullify the effects of the threats and the weaknesses.
• The customer satisfaction has been enhanced by serving the customers' right. The users have the access to information all the time that is 24/7. Also the employees are provided with online training.

Short term (now)Currently, the company is in a phase, where the priority is to have a complete focus on the completion of the project for intranet services. The aim of the company is to attain the approval from management and initiate for the further procedures. Once the management gives the approval to carry out the further procedures, the next focus of the company is to recruit and select as well as establish a team for project management which will be responsible to take the actions for the purpose of planning, executing, implementing as well as monitoring the ICT services of intranet. Establishing a dedicated project management team shall enable the company to achieve the goals by ensuring effective formulation of the course of actions for planning, implementing and monitoring of the intranet services.

Mid-term (12 months) Depending on the current situation and position of the company, the objectives and action plans can be decided for the next 12 months that the project management team shall:

• Initiate with the launching of the intranet services. The launching shall be on the basis of the planning as well as implementation.
• Coordination with the stakeholders shall help the project management team to have an idea regarding the success factor of the project that whether the project is able to successfully face the threats and weaknesses or not. The threats and weaknesses that has to faced are the design of the intranet has to be contacted out, employment of the required employees who have the skills related to IT, planning an estimated budget for the possible expenditures, influencing the team who are resisting the changes, employee training and many more.
• The project management team shall be focusing on the initiation of the training and development session of the employees. The training sessions shall be focusing on providing guidance regarding the use of the intranet services.
• The company will have to implement the service of intranet, provide internet connection, implementation of the changes and have to make sure that the intranet is capable of meeting the requirements as well as the policies in order to maintain the privacy, and safeguard the company's confidentiality.

Long term (next 3 to 5 years)Talking about the long term achievement plans, the company has to:

• Monitor and evaluate the requirements related to legislations as well as the focus on upgrading and altering the policies of the company in order to provide protection related to privacy.
• The company must analyze the performance of the intranet service.
• The SWOT analysis of the intranet service must be done regularly, in order to have a record of the performance. This will help the company in determining the upcoming opportunities as well as threats, and the project management team can formulate the strategies, accordingly.  

• The company has to formulate the strategies in relation to overcome the threats and weaknesses.
• The risk of privacy and security has to be addressed by formulating the required policies as well as the use of the intranet services has to be understood by the users and the employees.
• The employees who face certain issues related to the features of the intranet must be given proper training in order to make the service more users friendly.

As the business market is expanding, so is expanding the quantity of information that is being processed by the systems at the organization (AIIM, 2017). This is so because information provides the base on the basis of which the future course of actions as well as the future goals are depended upon. And this is the reason that the organizations do not mind in investing large amount on the software that is for the processing and maintaining of the information (BusinessDictionary, 2017). The organizations are investing in the information technology because it helps to bring economic value, which further contributes to enhance the revenue, profitability, productivity as well as competitiveness (Holloway, 2012). The process of information management is considered to be a cycled process which has the main intention to manage the relevant as well confidential information of the organization, effectively. The process starts with acquiring the information from certain or various sources. These sources can be internal as well external to the organization. After the collecting or gathering of data the maintenance as well as custodianship of the piece of information is marked to be the next step after collecting from various sources. After the information is being acquired and maintained, the information is now being distributed to the users who need it. The information shared is according to their needs and requirements (EDQ, 2017). A full access to the information has the risk of getting leaked and misused. The aim of information management is to manage the information the so effectively so that at the time of decision making, only the required, relevant and correct data is being provided to the decision makers in order to reduces their efforts, and ensure quick as well as effective decision making.

WEAKNESSES

The issue related with information managementWith the growing needs for the business towards the information, the risk of getting distorted and misused has also increased, over the years (Markgarf, 2017). The information over which there is an access is exposed to a large number of risks as well as threats which is concerned distribution of the information for the unauthorized access, which has the capability to have an adverse impact on the privacy and confidentiality of the relevant and correct information (Silk, 1989).

Need for Information ManagementThe aim of information management is to manage the information the so effectively so that at the time of decision making, only the required, relevant and correct data is being provided to the decision makers in order to reduces their efforts, and ensure quick as well as effective decision making (Australian Government, 2017). It has become an essential to maintain the information in order to guide the formulation of plans. It is now considered as a base on which the future activities as well as the attainment of goals is being depended. The processed information enables the organization to have a better understanding regarding the nature of the system of revenue within the company as well as the country (Gatling, 2012). It enables to develop such indicators or key factors that have the ability to immediately respond to the growing business issues, and also to the changing trends, as and when they arise.

Principles of Information ManagementThe information management is being guided by various principles; which enhances the privacy as well as security of the information (Ho, 2017). Such principles are:

• Realizing as well as maintaining the complications involved in the information management.
• After the processing of information, the results or information provided must be tangible and also the benefits must be visible.
• Prioritizing of the information is needed. This means only that much information is to provided that is needed or demanded by the business.
• The information management must be able to reduce the intensity of risk, as the risk factor cannot be eliminated, but can be reduced. (The National Archives, 2017).

Information Management and the Information Security Along with the management of the information there is a need to secure the information of the company (Rouse, 2017). The security of information is also an essential in order to maintain the information free form the risk of getting an access by an unauthorized link. It consists of all the plans and strategies that shall be needed to prevent the data from the risk from digital as well as non-digital sources (Technopedia, 2017). The need for the security of the information is there in order to diminish the effects of the cyber threats. There are various ways to provide information security (ETHZurich, 2012). These methods include designing of a safe system, developing of a strong password, training the employees in order to be effective in securing and managing the software for information security and management, and distinguishing between the regular and confidential information (Technopark Corp, 2017). The regular analysis of the security of the information is essential. This is so, as to have the records of the information that is being needed by the users and also to have a look that the data is not getting exposed to an unauthorized link.

Conclusion: 

It can be concluded that the information management is an essential, in the organizations. It includes collection, custody and distribution of the right information to the decision makers. The security is susceptible to threats and risk due to the inappropriate access of the information within the organization. The threats can be internal as well external. To secure the information, the organization should adopt the various ways to protect the information of the organization.

References:

AIIM. (2017). What is Information Management? Retrieved from Aiim.org: https://www.aiim.org/Resources/Glossary/Information-Management#Australian Government. (2017). Why information management is important. Retrieved from Ato.gov.au: https://www.ato.gov.au/about-ato/access,-accountability-and-reporting/information-management/why-information-management-is-important/BuisnessDictionary. (2017). Information . Retrieved from https://www.businessdictionary.com: https://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/information.htmlBusinessDictionary. (2017). Information management. Retrieved from Businessdictionary.com: https://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/information-management.htmlEDQ. (2017). Experian data quality. Retrieved from www.edq.com: https://www.edq.com/uk/glossary/information-management-process/ETHZurich. (2012). Formal Methods for Information Security. Retrieved from Infsec.ethz.ch: https://www.infsec.ethz.ch/education/ss2012/fmsec.htmlGatling, G. (2012, march 22). Digitalist. Retrieved from www.digitalistmag.com: https://www.digitalistmag.com/technologies/analytics/2012/03/22/information-management-01494Ho, L. (2017). 10 principles of effective information management. Retrieved from Lifehack.org: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/10-principles-of-effective-information-management.htmlHolloway, S. (2012, may 8). Bloor. Retrieved from https://www.bloorresearch.com: https://www.bloorresearch.com/analysis/process-information-management/Investopedia. (2017). Information Management Technology (IMT). Retrieved from Investopedia.com: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/information-management-technology-imt.aspMarkgarf, B. (2017). Common Problems in Management Information Systems. Retrieved from Smallbusiness.chron.com: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/common-problems-management-information-systems-63376.htmlRouse, M. (2017). Information security (infosec) . Retrieved from TechTarget: https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/information-security-infosecSilk, D. (1989). Current issues in information management. International Journal of Information Management, 9(2), 85-89.Technopark Corp. (2017). Methods Of Information Protection. Retrieved from Technoparkcorp.com: https://www.technoparkcorp.com/process/ipr/security/Technopedia. (2017). Information Security (IS) . Retrieved from Techopedia.com: https://www.techopedia.com/definition/10282/information-security-isThe National Archives. (2017). Information principles . Retrieved from https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/manage-information/planning/information-principles/