I have a task with e-business I need help with

MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY

Faculty of Science and Engineering

Department of Computing

ISYS301 Enterprise Systems Integration

2015 - Semester 2

ASSIGNMENT 2

20 marks/20% of the semester

Due: 11th September 2015 (Friday) 5:00pm

To be submitted electronically using iLearn

For Office Use only – Submit online in iLearn.

Student Id#:

Name:

Office Use Only:

Task 1 5

Task 2 5

Task 3 10

Total mark

ISYS301 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2015

Page 2

Task 1 – eBusiness and Big Data (5 marks)

IBM estimated in 2013 that every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. This rate of

growth means that 90% of data in the world today has been created in the past two years alone!

By comparison, all of the Earth’s oceans contain 352 quintillion gallons of water; if bytes were

buckets it would take only about 20 weeks to fill the seas … The growth in the volume of data

enabled by Big Data has become possible through more forms of instrumentation that captures

‘events’ through time, according to Eaton et al., (2012) which can be integrated in to systems.

This instrumentation can be simply data collection where the events are a sequence of customer

interactions with a business through its desktop or mobile site or social media, for example

through web analytics or social analytics …. A key design issue is how the information about

these transactions can usefully be applied to improve the effectiveness and business contribution

of these systems. … While independent analytics systems are available, larger companies are

increasingly finding that to apply the insights available they have to integrate web analytics

information with internal sales and ordering systems to form data warehouses (Chaffey, 2015

pp. 533, 534, 536).

- What is the relevance of this ‘Big Data’ to eBusiness? - What as Chief Information Officer (CIO) would you do to handle this Big Data for your company?

Ideally you would find references to support your arguments! (@700 words).

Task 2 – Internet and Competition (5 marks)

As discussed in weeks 1 and 2, the internet forms the backbone of much eBusiness today because of its

ubiquity and the ability of businesses/developers to use languages such as XML to support eBusiness

processes.

At the same time we explored (Michael) Porter’s 5-Forces Model in chapter 2 and the ‘lens’ it provides to

organisations, by providing a way of determining if an idea or business proposition is going to be viable.

What is the impact of the internet on the five competitive forces? Explore how the internet has ‘changed the

game’ through the 5 dimensions of Porter’s 5 forces model.

Again, where relevant use academic writing approaches (@700 words).

ISYS301 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2015

Page 3

Task 3 – Business Process Modelling (10 marks)

The Governor’s office (source: Templenuevo, 2015)

The Philippines is comprised of three main geographical divisions - Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. These

islands are categorized into 18 regions, 81 provinces, 144 cities, 1,490 municipalities, and 42,029 barangays

(National Statistical Coordination Board, 2014). The Province of Aklan is situated on the middle island of

Visayas.

IT branch of the Governor

The Aklan Provincial Government’s (PGA) office aims to improve the generation of revenue and the overall

efficiency of business operations. The Management Information System Division (MISD) manages the

systems and is chaired by a Supervising Administrative Officer (SAO). There are a number of staff in the

MISD with a Business Analyst (BA), a Technical Analyst (TA) and four programmers in the staff of six that

can deliver systems analysis and design. An Executive Information System (EIS) is part of the list of

information systems to be established for the PGA, but not yet implemented. The EIS is a management

information system that will assist the Governor on carrying out appropriate administrative practices by

consolidating data in a concise format. Relevant outputs from different information systems are summarized

from various management and transaction based information systems and delivered to the Governor’s

workstation. The general process description is described in table 1 below. Note this is a general process

description! You are encouraged to start with this scenario and consider as a BA how you would suggest

changing the process to the SAO.

Table 1. Business Process Description (source: Templenuevo, 2015 p. 14-15).

ISYS301 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2015

Page 4

A graphical representation of the general steps in the process to deliver reports to the governor is provided in

figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Business Process Flow Diagram (source: Templenuevo, 2015 p. 16)

The overall system description from the point of view of the governor, is given in table 2 below. Figure 3

below provides a functional model in the form of a simple data flow diagram. Table 3 below provides the

basic ‘As-Is’ processes and costs for the above activity. Although it may appear that the above exercise is

without cost, this is not the case. Quite a few of the ‘As Is’ processes in place are outdated. Processes could

be made more efficient through re-engineering and/or taking certain processes and making them even more

electronic in format (‘To Be’).

ISYS301 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2015

Page 5

Make some interpretive judgements as to how the processes can be better routed to deliver the reports to

the governor. Although table 3 provides the actors in the system, the basic tasks, current media in use and

timeframes, you are free as ‘business analysts’ to re-work these processes and the routing of media

between the actors.

Table 2. Required System Description (source: Templenuevo, 2015 p. 17)

ISYS301 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2015

Page 6

Figure 2. EIS System Data Flow Model (source: Templenuevo, 2015 p.18)

Table 3: Brief Process/cost table for one ‘As-Is’ cycle

Entities, Tasks, Decisions Current Document

Type Process Times Person responsible Total Cost

$

Elapsed

(min) Working

(min)

Governor’s office

Governor requests assistant to

contact SAO for production of a

report

Personal

communication 30 15 Governor 100

Assistant communicates with

SAO over governor’s request for

a report

Personal

communication 20 15 Assistant 40

MISD

SAO talks to BA to see if MISD

can prioritise the production of a

report for the governor

Personal

communication 30 15 SAO 80

BA checks to see that report does

not already exist in the system

Checks filing

cabinets 120 90 BA 320

BA confirms with SAO - either

form already exists - in which

case the report is delivered back

to SAO - who passes back to

governor’s assistant to give to

the governor

Verbal

communication and

in person 30 20 BA 80

If report does not exist then BA

confers with TA regarding

logistics of commissioning a

report for the governor

Verbal

communication 45 30 BA 100

TA confers with programming

team to see what would be

involved in creating an

automated report from the

system

Verbal

communication 120 90 TA 320

ISYS301 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2015

Page 7

At least one programmer

considers what is involved in

automating the process of

producing a report that could be

electronic and sent via email

straight to the governor

Querying the

database 40 30 Programmer 100

The remaining three

programmers in combination

with the TA consider the creation

of an interface in the form of a

simple EIS to keep the governor

happy. Team meeting -

verbal 180 140

TA and at least three

programmers 500

A top level system specification

is produced by one of the

programmers with the TA to give

to the SAO Meeting 240 180 TA and SAO 350

Governor

SAO hands overall specification

to the governor for his approval In person 20 10 SAO 70

Governor authorizes

development of a simple EIS

interface for existing database In person with SAO 60 15 Governor 200

Now implement the above scenario in either BPM 4.2 or in Adonis. And then start to modify the processes!

Contemplate figures 1 and 2 and any missing aspects you may wish to add to the processes given in table 3.

You are free to add to the processes above.

As a BA how would you improve the processes? What would you add, what would you take away? Clearly

too much is manual/paper/verbal, but what else would you recommend as a BA?

Explain your assumptions.

Bibliography

Chaffey, D., (2015) Digital Business and E-Commerce Management: Strategy, Implementation and Practice

6th ed. Pearson Harlow U.K.

Eaton, C., Deroos, D., Deutsch, T., Lapis. G., Zikopoulos, P., (2012) Understanding Big Data: Analytics for

Enterprise Class Hadoop and Streaming Data McGraw Hill N.Y.

Macquarie Dictionary (1997) 3rd ed. Macquarie University Australia

National Statistical Coordination Board (2014) Philippine Standard Geographic Code PSGC Interactive.

(URL: http://www.nscb.gov.ph/activestats/psgc/PSA-Makati_PSGC_SUMMARY_Dec2014.

pdf (accessed: 7/8/15).

Papazoglou, M., (2012) Web Services & SOA: Principles and Technology 2nd ed. Pearson Harlow U.K.

Papazoglou, M., Ribbers, P., (2006) e-Business: Organizational and Technical Foundations John Wiley &

Sons West Sussex England

Templonuevo, G., (2015) Systems Analysis and Design of an Executive Information System for the

Provincial Government of Aklan Unpublished MIT project Macquarie University, Australia.

ISYS301 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2015

Page 8

Algorithm

1. Read pages 335-340 (section 12.6 - 12.7) with regard to BPMN (Papazoglou and Ribbers, 2006). These

pages are included with this assignment.

2. The existing processes (table 3) are to be modeled as the ‘As-Is’ Process (along the lines shown in figure

3 below) using IBM BPM Workbench Version 4.2, and a ‘To-Be’ process model (ADF Diagram)

produced.

a. Comparative metrics such as process cost and time are to be derived for both processes.1

b. You can make the following assumptions:

• ‘As-Is’ and ‘To-Be’ process is typical of one ‘cycle’ of producing a report. • Costs in the ‘To-Be’ process are only a preliminary feasibility and do not have to be highly

accurate.

c. You can use your initiative to modify processes – document your reasons.

HINT:

a. Calculate the average costs for As-Is and To-Be

b. Determine the cost savings (As-Is – To-Be)

- If the To-Be cost is not cheaper than the As-Is, then redesign it!

You will save the results of this process as your <.org> BPM file. Provide some examples of the metric (tabulated) data calculated in BPM as well. Screen dump (PrtSc) the results of this process into the appropriate section of the <.doc> file AS WELL.

Figure 3: Sample ‘As Is’ Order Items Process

1 You can determine the cost and time for your metrics, along the lines of the practicals from weeks 2-5.

ISYS301 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2015

Page 9

Deliverables

Soft copy only

1. The BPM <.org> model as a zipped file

2. One <pdf> file

a. Answer questions 1 and 2 and include these along with task 3 in the single <pdf> document.

b. This assignment report as a <pdf> file should include detailed calculations or supporting data which

ideally could be relegated to appendices.

b. Use connectors in your ADF diagrams and export to your document using screen shots (PrtSc).

Submission

3. Place your soft copies (2 files) in the appropriate areas on iLearn.

DATE DUE: 5:00 pm, Friday 11th September.