buisness information system

BACC211 Accounting Information Systems

Semester 2, 2017

OVERALL ASSESSMENT: 30% of the overall assessment.

DUE DATE: Monday 23/10/2017 11:55pm

PARTICIPATION AND SUBMISSION

REQUIREMENTS: This is a team assignment of 3 (three, unless approved by subject lecturer). All assignments must be submitted as a hardcopy with an assignment cover sheet attached. Prior to submission of your assignment you will be required to check for authenticity and originality using the “Turnitin” facility. Submission of Late Assignments incur a penalty of 10% of total marks per day after the due date UNLESS a request in writing has been submitted by the due date together with relevant documentation including a medical certificate where appropriate.

PLAGIARISM AND OTHER

COMPLIANCE ISSUES: Plagiarism is the inclusion of another person’s work within your submission without acknowledgment or permission. While limited amounts of information and concepts expressed by others may be included as part of your work, each inclusion must be identified by appropriate referencing and acknowledgement to the original author. Plagiarism is regarded as a form of cheating, the penalties associated with misconduct are severe, and plagiarism may result in failure or variation of grade in the unit.

Ensure that you research thoroughly and back up any ideas with referenced facts and referenced using Harvard Referencing

Business reports are a major tool in business.  The ability to produce business reports, in terms of content and format is hence an important skill for anyone intending to be successful in business. 

Purpose and aims:

In a professional context, this assessment task is designed to apply the knowledge and skills developed by you to undertake systems analysis, proposal and implementation.  You also need to develop your business communication skills in the form of a business report of your findings.  Additionally as team work is often used in business as a way of achieving success in task accomplishment, you will need to attempt this assignment as a team member.

Scenario:

David's Used Cars is a used car dealership owned and operated by David Steele.  Steele has about 200 cars in stock and sells or buys an average of 10 cars per day.  Steele buys cars that are trade-ins from new car dealers, repossessions from banks, and cars sold at auctions by municipal towing yards and insurance companies.  Steele currently employs two full-time salespeople as well as five full-time mechanics who repair and prepare the cars for resale. Steele and the salespersons are located in an office at the front of the car yard, while the mechanics worked in a shed at the back of the yard.  Steele rarely accepts a car in trade as part of the payment for a car he is selling. Steele uses the following procedures relative to the purchase and sale of used cars.

Steele creates a paper folder for every car that he purchases. He accumulates information on a car in the folder. The folders are maintained in a filing cabinet alphabetically by car make and model. Each car and corresponding folder is assigned a five-digit sequence number for accurate identification on the lot and in advertisements.  Each folder contains a pre-printed master sheet. Initially, Steele enters the make, model, and year of the car, the purchase date, the name and address of the owner, the price paid, the odometer reading, the car lot parking space number, and the check number used to pay for the car. Steele and one of the mechanics then prepare a second form, a checklist of 25 descriptive criteria used to evaluate the car's condition. Each criterion is evaluated as poor, fair, good, or excellent. Steele then enters onto the master sheet the selling price he would want for the car if no repairs were made. He also makes out a price sticker and attaches it to the windshield of the car.

If a repair is made, the mechanic fills out a repair description that contains a detail of the repairs, the cost, and the estimated retail value of the repairs based on a price list of industry averages for various standard repairs. Steele files this in the appropriate folder and enters the cost and retail values onto the master sheet. If the repair affects any of the evaluation criteria, he makes the appropriate adjustment to the affected criteria and to the price sticker on the car.  When a car is sold, Steele enters the date, selling price, salesperson, and customer name and address onto the master sheet.

Steele approves all sales. All sales are for cash or cashier's check. Steele has a checking account used solely for car sales and purchase transactions. He uses another account for all other expenses. He transfers money to the second account from the sales and purchase account. After a car is sold, Steele places the corresponding folder in a drawer in his desk. Every Friday, he calculates the salespeople's commissions based on the selling price recorded in the folder. He pays commissions for sales from the previous Friday to Thursday of the current week.  He then files the folders by sequence number in the closed car file.

Steele's system is not without problems. Sometimes Steele forgets to change the prices on the car stickers to reflect repairs that have been made. This error frequently is not discovered until an agreement to sell a car to a customer has been reached. He occasionally files the current Friday's folders for cars sold this week in the closed car file, along with the folders for cars on which the sales commissions already have been paid. As a result, the salespeople do not receive their proper commission for the cars they sold in the most recent week. He also has found that some cars are on display on the lot for a long time before they are sold. However, Steele has not had the time to look at this problem closely enough to identify all such cars and to get them sold.  In spite of occasional help from his daughter, Steele still spends a lot of time on paperwork. This frustrates him because the information is still frequently inaccurate and processing the paperwork takes time away from managing the business and selling more cars. He believes that the inefficient use of his time is costing him money.

Steele has had no formal business education and has never used a computer.  The thought of having to learn about computers scares him. However, he has read about how well computers can simplify manual clerical operations. He has also read that once a computer system has information stored in it, information can be used to generate all kinds of reports that would be useful for analysing a business and improving cash flow. Steele has hired you to help determine what functions could be automated and how the information would have to be organized to perform those functions.

Adapted from U. Gelinas, S. Sutton and  J. Fedorowicz, Business Processes and Information Technology, Thompson South-Western, 2004

Required:

Given the above information you are required to work with your team to prepare a business report addressing:

·         Defining the problem(s) faced by David's Used Cars:

o   operational deficiencies in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and security of resources

o   information system integrity

·         Solutions and controls for the above problems

·         Proposed new system ( assume an off-the-shelf approach)

o   costing of acquisition and implementation

·         Implementation issues:

o   organisational structure and procedures

o   staff behaviour

·         Existing System Survey

o   list of nine (12 if group consists of 4 members) questions your team would like David Steele to answer before you have a meeting with you.

The business report is to consist of the following sections:

The above table shows the approximate word requirement for each group size; spread over the required business report structure.

Concurrent Requirements:

·         The report is to include at least one graph in the body of the report.  The graph must be of a suitable type for the data being presented, properly labelled, and, integrated into the discussion with which the graph is meant to support. 

·         The report is to be prepared as a team activity. Each team is to consist of three members( teams of 4 may be enabled due to class numbers and lecturer approval).  Members need to establish their group on the LMS.  Complete the Group Registration Form (available on the LMS) and submit on the LMS.  Registration of a group will establish a forum on the LMS limited to those group members for this assignment.  The forum can be used as a place of communication and storage of working papers during the drafting of the report.  The group will submit a single copy of the report with each group member being awarded the mark determined for the report.

·         The report is to include at least three direct quotes from different textbooks; not appearing on the subject’s LMS site. If the group consists of more than three group member, the number of required direct quotes must equal the number of group members.  The direct quotes must be integrated into the discussion with which the quote is meant to support and suitable reference using the Harvard style. The La Trobe University’s  Academic Referencing Tool (ART) provides detailed examples of the Harvard style.

Due Date:       23/10/17, 11:55 pm

Submission:

·         The report must be produced as a “Word” document.

·         The file must be named as “Group ## BUS5AFS Business Report Assignment”,  where “##” is replaced by your group number on the LMS.  For example Group 3 would name their assignment “Group 03 BUS5AFS Business Report Assignment”, while group 28 would be “Group 28 BUS5AFS Business Report Assignment”.

·         The correctly named report is to be uploaded on the LMS via TURNITIN.

Report Format:

·         The report is to be typed in “Times New Roman” size 12 font and 1.5 line spacing on A4 paper size.

·         Assume the report is to be printed in black and white; do not develop graphs or design features using colour.

Marking:

·         This assignment represents 15 per cent of total marks of the subject: BACC211: Accounting Information Systems.