General Information about the assignment
This assignment is to assess learning outcomes four, five and six of the unit. Students will be asked to accomplish two-staged project simulating tasks, processes and challenges as would be required from an accountant or an IS practitioner in the real business world. The project reflects typical work in ERP and ICT applications for an enterprise. The scope of the project is set based on the TCA10 Schedule in the 2021 CPA’s and CAANZ’s Accreditation Guidelines, covering a field of practice interweaving themes of ERP, ICT, database, ethics and professional skills. The deliverables are a business essay at Stage I and a data modelling work document at Stage II.
The resources useful for accomplishing the project are provided in the unit’s Moodle site. Additional materials will be distributed or referred to by the lecturer during classes. Alternatively, most of the information that is needed for addressing the issues and solving the problems can be found on the Internet.
Stage I (30 marks, an essay required)
Budget Auto Parts (BAP) is a company wholesaling and distributing Japanese car parts and accessories. The company has 90 employees and an annual turnover of about 60 million dollars. BAP has 12 stores in five cities of Australia. Most of its stock are for cars that have been produced in last ten years. The parts for older cars are supplied on customer orders.
BAP operates its business in a highly competitive market. There are five larger companies and many smaller businesses competing with BAP. New technologies such as electric and fuel hybridisation, computer visioning and autonomous emergency braking are upgrading cars rapidly, speeding up obsolescence of some BAP’s stock and making its prices volatile.
The company is using MYOB for accounting and financial reporting and Smart Store, an inhouse system, to administrate business operations. The two standalone systems had satisfied the company’s information needs for a period of time; recently, however, they are causing problems in many areas, exposing that they are unfit for competitions. For example, stock values in Smart Store and in MYOB are updated at times that are not synchronised. The discrepancies lead to incidences such as a sale is made with no profit, a price is quoted higher than BAP’s competitors and a credit note is created wrongly in processing a warranty claim.
Ellen, BAP’s CEO, has recently approached you, the business administration manager. She is interested in using an integrated system to address the current and potential issues associated with standalone systems, and improve the company’s business operations overall. She mentions two ERP systems, SAP and Oracle, and is seeking your advice about their suitability if one was applied to BAP.
As expected by Ellen, your advice will be addressing strategic, analytical and implementation issues in a format of business essay for a presentation to the Board of Directors. More specifically, your essay should be in about 2,500 words answering questions in the following six dimensions:
1. What are the key issues that a car parts wholesale company has to address in order to compete in the Australian market? How can an ERP system help address these issues?
2. Which system, SAP or Oracle, would you recommend BAP to use? Why?
3. What are the risks associated with implementation of the system? How can the risks be controlled?
4. What modern ICTs, such as AI, Cloud computing and RPA, can be used to enhance the ERP system so that BAP will continue to run the business successfully?
5. How can the sensitive data stored in the ERP system, such as the company’s financials, customers list and business operation secrets, be protected from unauthorized access both inside and outside the company?
6. What are the salient issues in ethics and legal compliance that are associated with applying modern ICTs to the ERP system? How can these issues be addressed?
For providing objective and persuasive advice, you need to study the materials provided on Moodle and in classes, read extensively on the Internet and critically analyse the information. You also need to cross-examine your thoughts and ideas with other members in the class. Moreover, you need to reference the ideas, judgements and information if they are borrowed from others. Altogether, at least 12 references are from credible sources that are typical academic journals, textbooks and official releases (Note: your references must be sighted in both the body of your essay and the reference list; you also need to use the Harvard Referencing Style in referencing).
As a general guide, for each question, you need to consider or invoke at least three factors in your discussion. When appropriate, you need to apply theories or theoretical frameworks that you find from reading academic journals such as Google Scholar, ProQuest and EBSCO to justify your analysis and judgement.
| Question /Grade | 80% to 100% |
| QS 1 (5 marks) | • 3 issues identified to suit the company • 3 dimensions explaining ERP addressing the issues appropriately • 5 sources of information used critically • Referencing format used correctly • No spelling and grammatical errors |
| QS 2 (5 marks) | • 3 dimensions chosen appropriately • Dimensions compared and contrasted appropriately |
| | • 3 sources of information used critically • Referencing format used correctly • No spelling and grammatical errors |
| QS 3 (5 marks) | • 3 risks identified to suit the system • Control activities applied appropriately • Theory/theoretical framework used appropriately • Academic journals used critically • Referencing format used correctly |
| QS 4 (5 marks) | • 3 issues identified to suit the company • 3 dimensions explaining ICT addressing the issues appropriately • 5 sources of information used critically • Referencing format used correctly • No spelling and grammatical errors |
| QS 5 (5 marks) | • 3 solutions created appropriately • 3 sources of information used critically • Referencing format used correctly • No spelling and grammatical errors |
| QS 6 (5 marks) | • 3 issues identified to suit the system • Recommendations made appropriately • Academic journals used critically • Referencing format used correctly |