RECENT ASSIGNMENT

Case Study
You are the CIO of a successful accounting firm with offices in cities across the nation. You recently attended a technology seminar on BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). It occurred to you that this would offer potential benefits to your organisation and would be well-received by staff.

At the seminar you learnt there were many issues to consider, policies to be developed or modified, and new investments to be made to manage a BYOD environment. These included upgrading your ICT Data Security System to accommodate BYOD to protect clients’ and your firm’s data; this needs to synchronise and ensure the integrity of data on servers and end-user devices.

You plan to present your vision for BYOD to your CEO, Board and executives. You are required to research the background for a project to implement and manage BYOD, use Microsoft Excel to model a business plan, perform sensitivity analysis to validate assumptions, and create a presentation to seek funding and authorisation from senior management to implement and manage BYOD.

As Board members and executives are dispersed across the nation you plan to use YouTube for your presentation.

Activity A: Journal (maximum 500 words)
Prepare a journal which records your activities and progress related to completing this assignment. In date order, clearly list the following:
? Date of research activity/discussion
? Topic researched or discussed
? Time duration
? Brief description of research activity/discussion.

Submit this journal as a separate report. Your journal must provide all these activity details to be awarded marks.

A sample of the journal will be provided in the Study Desk.

Activity B: Presentation to Senior Management

NOTE: If you are unfamiliar with the business case and sensitivity analysis concepts you should make an effort to read appropriate material, including those from the Internet, to learn about them.

Before you commence this assignment ensure you have completed Hands-on MIS Project # 1 to 5 in Appendix S.1 in the Study Book. These exercises are designed to familiarise you with the software, techniques and methods used in the assignment.

Part 1: Research the background for the BYOD project
Conduct an Internet search to gather relevant background information of BYOD. In particular, you should address the following:
1.How BYOD is utilised and its associated risks
2.Experiences of other companies
3.Advantages and disadvantages
4.The infrastructure required, and
5.Best-practice for how BYOD should be managed.

Part 2: Develop the Excel model of the business case
Once you have completed Part 1, develop a spread-sheet model of your business costs. Some of the materials provided in the MIS Projects may help you to come up with a simple modelling. For the purpose of modelling, assume a discount rate of 10 per cent. Your business model should include the following analysis to ascertain the financial viability of the project:
1.Payback period
2.Net present value (NPV)
3.Internal rate of return (IRR), and
4.Profitability index

HINTS: To obtain the payback period you would first need to calculate the cumulative net cash flow. Use the NPV and IRR functions provided in Microsoft Excel. You may need to search the Internet for information if you are not familiar with how to use these functions.
Interpret your results. Use the note in MIS Project #4 - Capital Budgeting Methods for Information System Investments to guide you.

Part 3: Perform a sensitivity analysis for the business case
Using the results you obtained in Part 2 as the base case, conduct a sensitivity analysis to examine the impact of the critical cost and benefit variables on the viability of the BYOD project. Provide three specific scenarios of consideration. You must clearly specify the basis of the three scenarios i.e. which critical cost variables they are examining in the sensitivity analysis

Carefully analyse your results and make appropriate recommendations to the company’s senior management as to how the critical cost variables should be managed to ensure that the BYOD project is both viable and sustainable in the long term.

Part 4: Create a presentation to senior management
4.1Consolidate and cross-analyse your results and findings from Part 1, 2 and 3. Then prepare a presentation to the company’s senior management to seek their financial support and authorisation to embark on the project.

All projects must submit a recorded audio/visual Presentation of their project. Examples for type of presentation:
1.MP4 video of live or Skype presentation or
2.MP4 video of PowerPoint presentation or
3.Powerpoint presentation.

YouTube is the preferred mode for submission; if you are in a country that does not have access to YouTube or there are other issues preventing you from posting to YouTube then you must submit a PowerPoint presentation with embedded autoplaying audio through EASE.