Assessment Task – Case Study

Learning Outcomes

Learning Outcomes:

After completing the module, you should be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of information needs within different functional areas of organisations.
2. Identify and compare information systems within different functional areas of organisations.
3. Use information systems to produce management information at middle and senior management levels of organisations.
4. Identify and examine the legal implications associated with information handling and security.

Graduate attributes:

5. Identify and examine the ethical implications associated with information handling and security.

Responsible Global Citizen - Understand global issues and their place in a globalised economy, ethical decision-making and accountability. Adopt self-awareness, openness and sensitivity to diversity in culture.

Please note that exceeding the word count by over 10% will result in a reduction in grade by the same percentage that the word count is exceeded.

You must not include your name in your submission because Arden University operates anonymous marking, which means that markers should not be aware of the identity of the student. However, please do not forget to include your STU number.

Assessment Task – Case Study

You have been engaged as a MIS consultant for the following organization.

“Secure Asset Management” – often known as SAM - specialize in ultra-high secure data storage and digital asset management. Their clients are primarily in the banking and financial services industries – but not exclusively. SAM is not a bank or traditional financial institution. It does not store money in any form. However, it does store something even more important – sensitive corporate data. Examples of such data include: internal accounts (as opposed to publicly disclosed accounts), auditing reports, staff and salary data, back-ups and archives of operational data, regulatory & legal data, corporate strategy data including market share, competitor analysis and take-over/merger & acquisition target data. Not the kind of stuff their clients want floating around on the internet.

At present, the company have several major concerns:

1. The safety and security of ‘on-premise’ data storage, backup and recovery and business continuity in the case of a catastrophic data loss at one of the sites – even allowing for the mirroring across both data centres.
2. The current weakness in using data more strategically to plan the future growth of the business. For example, the board would like to know which clients are least/most profitable? Which types of service and data are most common and which are most/least profitable? Are there any patterns or trends hidden in the vast amount of data they store?
3. The impact of the new GDPR data protection legislation coming into effect. The company are very sensitive to data leaks and reputational damage – probably more than most companies – for obvious reasons. Staff vetting, secure data storage and data transit are vital.
4. The lack of in-house IT skills and due to the central London location of the company HQ (where the small IT department is based) – they are worried about the cost of recruiting and retaining the required new IT skills in such a competitive IT recruitment market.
5. The company wants secure 24 x 7 off-site access to the London HQ systems by HQ staff – perhaps because they are working at home or away seeing a client. For security reasons, only the staff physically inside the London HQ can access the two data centres and so remote access to DC1 and DC2 is not needed.

The above is simply an outline of the company and you will need to make your own assumptions and interpret or even extend the scenario as you go. Use your imagination as you see fit, but you must clearly document all assumptions and extensions.

The specific tasks you need to satisfy are listed below This assessment is worth 100% of the total marks for the module.

Task 1

For the specified case study, use the information provided, plus your own research into similar organizations, to list and describe the various functional business units that you deem necessary for it to carry out its business. Take care to describe not only the primary purpose and function of each unit, but also the in-going and out-going types of data to that functional unit. To what end is that data used within each business unit?

It is recommended that you support your discussion with a fully annotated structure chart and one or more data flow diagrams to represent how these various business units relate to each other and how data flows in, out and around the organization.

Task 2

For the specified case study, explain to the company board, in your role as an MIS consultant, the key concepts and differences between:

• Operational data
• Tactical data
• Strategic data

You should clarify how these three levels relate to the hierarchy of business units you described in Task 1 and identify and compare information systems within different functional areas of this organisation. It is recommended, for ease of comparison, that you present this analysis as a table or matrix. Well-annotated diagrams are also a good idea.

Task 3

For the specified case study, by conducting suitable, fully referenced research, advise the board, in your role as MIS consultant, on suitable technological solutions to implement the following ideas:

• Operational database and CRM technologies and products
• Data warehousing, data mining and data analytics (‘big data’) options
• Cloud-based and out-sourced data management platforms & services
• Web-based and mobile (24 x 7) access to all these platforms

For each category, describe the key concepts, applications and business benefits before looking in detail at least one specific real-world example from each category. Be sure to include a website image and the full web address of each product.

Whereabouts in this case study organization will each of these technologies be best used? Who will use them and for what purpose?

Task 4

Your final task is to advise the board of this case study on the professional, ethical, legal and social considerations of implementing and using MIS platforms, or indeed, of any IT system. To this end, conduct appropriate research - fully referenced using the Harvard system - and summarize the key points. The following sources may be useful: