Twitter's Strategy and Value Chain Players

1 INSY 2301 – Information Systems 2 – Spring 2019 Group Project (10% of course grade) Due: April 23, 2019 BEFORE 11:00 PM ET Overview: This group project combines two of the main topics of this semester—the Strategic Use of Information Technology and Information (Database) Management, while following-up on last semester's focus on Business Analytics. There are four steps in this project. In Step One, your team will select a company to study in terms of its Strategic Use of IT in Step Two. Step Three is not directly connected to the first two steps, but addresses the challenges of managing a business organization’s information (database) and is often an important element of the Strategic Use of IT. Read Step Four for submission guidelines. Step One: Choose a Company for Research Go to one of the following two websites and select a company that will be the focus of your project. Note, some companies may be richer choices than others so this is an important phase of your project. You may want to divide your team into working groups to consider a number of companies. Use the following case study repositories to find a suitable company. • Microsoft Azure’s case studies: https://azure(dot)microsoft(dot)com/en-us/case-studies/ Azure is Microsoft’s enterprise cloud computing platform. To choose a case study, click the “Solution” tab and then from the dropdown list select either Big Data and Analytics or Business Intelligence. • Teradata’s case studies: http://www(dot)teradata(dot)com/Resources/case-studies/ Teradata offers database and data warehousing products. To find analytics-related case studies, choose “Case Study” under “Asset Type” and select “Big Data Analytics” or “Data Driven Business” (or another topic that seems relevant) under “Solutions.” Before choosing a company, you should read through the entire project description and search business news articles about the companies under consideration to make sure the company you choose will enable you to address all of the project requirements well. 2 Step Two: Investigate the Strategic Role of IT at the Company You Selected Based on the case study from one of the two sites, AS WELL AS your team's own, independent research on this company, discuss how this firm uses IT strategically. You should NOT limit yourself to just one strategic use of IT, but if the company has many such strategic initiatives you MAY limit yourself to just a few. In particular, your analysis should include the strategic role of Business Analytics/Big Data but should not be limited to Business Analytics. Your analysis should include (but, again, not be limited to) the following: • An overview of your company (industry, size, performance, competitors, challenges) • How your company's use of IT relates to its overall strategy (Be sure to describe what it is about IT that provides the strategic benefit.) • What is the role of "Information" in implementing the IT-based strategy? For instance what information is needed (by whom, when, and where)? Where does the information come from? What challenges does this pose? • The role of the solution provider (i.e., either Microsoft or Teradata) in implementing the company's strategy • Applying Porter's Five Forces appropriately • Other specific concepts from class and from Gallaugher as appropriate (e.g., Value Chain Analysis, Resource-Based View of the Firm, network, platform, social, and mobile). You don’t have to use all of these—choose the ones that are appropriate for your case. • The risks your company faces with respect to its IT-related strategies (i.e., what could go wrong) and what you can do to mitigate those risks (The consequences of IT are not necessarily positive AND actions matter!) • Proposing strategic roles for IT other than those that the company currently addresses. Step Three: Design and Develop a Database The third step of the project is not directly connected to the first two. It illustrates the challenges involved in designing a database for an organization. Because database design is both complex and consequential, and because how you store information affects how you can retrieve it, corporate databases are typically designed by teams of individuals. Your team's challenge is to take your knowledge of database design in general, and Microsoft Access in particular, to design a database for a company that sells a variety of products. You are provided with a "flat file"—an unstructured list of information in an Excel worksheet—and you must design an appropriate Microsoft Access database and import the data from the worksheet into it. 3 The Excel workbook "INSY 2301 - Group Project Source File Spring 2019.xlsx" can be found on Blackboard. There are 16 columns in the file, as follows: Purchase Order ID Purchase Order Date Purchase Order Status Employee ID Employee First Name Employee Last Name Employee Title Ordered Details ID Ordered Product Quantity Ordered Product Cost Product ID Product Name Product Inventory Target Product Packaging Product Category ID Product Category Description Each row in the file represents an order for a single product that one of our employees placed with one of our suppliers (who are not included in any way in the database). A single purchase order has an id, a date, a status, and the identity of the employee who placed the order and may include orders for multiple products. Information for each item (product) ordered on a given purchase order includes such details as the quantity ordered and the cost of that item. Note that the cost of a given product may vary (be different) from one order to another order. For each product, we keep track of the product's name, our target inventory for that product, how the product is packaged, and the category of products to which it belongs. Your team needs to: • Determine how many different entities are involved in this database. Since each entity will need its own Microsoft Access table, also determine which fields (columns or attributes) pertain to each entity (table). • Once your database tables are created, import data into each of the tables. (Note: This will also be more complex than when you imported data from Excel during the tutorial modules and cases found in the Lab Manual. Since you have one Excel spreadsheet that will be the source of data for several different tables, you will probably need to create different subsets of that spreadsheet (subsets of the rows and of the columns) for importing into different tables. This can get a bit messy so be careful.) 4 • Create the appropriate one-to-many relationships by adding foreign keys as needed to the tables and creating the relationships (enforcing referential integrity). Note: This will be more complex than the Comprehensive Access Assignment, which had only two tables and one relationship. • Create three QUERIES: • a query qryPOTotal that calculates the total of each purchase order (product cost times quantity). • a query qryPOPlaced that shows for each employee the (a) first name, (b) last name, and (c) number of purchase orders he or she placed. • a query qryCategoryInfo that shows for each category of products (a) the category name, (b) the number of orders involving that category, and (c) the average price of products in that category • What additional tables would be needed to keep track of new shipments of products from the suppliers? What new fields would be required? What new relationships would connect the new tables with other tables? You can assume that each product is supplied by only one supplier. Note: This question will require some thought. Answer this question in the Word document (see below), not the Access database. Step Four: Prepare and Submit the Project Deliverables One member of your team should upload to Blackboard: • A double-spaced Word document with 12-point font and one-inch margins (i.e., INSY 2301 Group Project Report.doc) • An Access Database (i.e., INSY 2301 Group Project Database.accdb) Ensure the Word document contains the following: 1. A cover page containing the names of the team members 2. An Executive Summary of no more than one page summarizing the background, approaches, and findings of your Step Two analysis (that is, the highlights and key points). 3. [Step Two Analysis] Reporting on your analysis performed in Step Two of the strategic role of IT at the company you selected. This should consist of no more than 6 pages 5 4. [Step Three Analysis] Reporting your team’s design suggestion on expanding the database capability for keeping track of products in each order. 5. A separate page of references. For example, cite the case study that this project is based on and list all library databases and news outlets researched.