CS782 Assignment No.

3 ~ Building Enterprise Workflow

Revised: 8-25-2024

Assignment Summary:

This assignment asks you to apply ideas from enterprise system workflows to an example
company.

AtTheEdge is a fictitious organization that creates IoT (Internet of Things) devices and manages
them through a mobile application. You make this company up!

You are the Director for IT at AtTheEdge. The organization allows consumers to purchase
home assistant devices and connect them to their larger eco-systems (i.e., smart lamps, smart
cars, etc.).

AtTheEdge has a direct order e-commerce and m-commerce presence and sells in many retail
stores (i.e., Best Buy, Target, Walmart).

AtTheEdge:

1. Is within existing retail stores, focusing on stores that sell technology (i.e., BestBuy)
2. Has headquarters in the US and also has a presence in India, China, and Russia
3. Has strong relationships with other eco-system vendors such as Google, Amazon,
Blink, Phillips
4. Has an e-commerce and m-commerce representation to their customers where
they can buy direct from the organization
5. Has a mobile-based application to manage their home assistant IoT devices

You are free to add assumptions and details concerning AtTheEdge if they are consistent
with the description above and if you specify them.

Assignment Expectations:

There are two parts to this assignment.

1. Part A, which is an internal e-mail to the CEO and CFO (formatting provided
below).
2. Part B, which is a PowerPoint presentation.

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 Part A

As the Director for IT at AtTheEdge and you are expected to improve the operational and
competitive aspects of the organization. The organization has existing workflows in place which
streamline their operations. You will want to add how AI / ML can help improve these
workflows.

You have been asked to drive operational changes to make the organization more operationally
efficient to improve their competitive advantage. Therefore, you need to recommend how to
improve the following workflows:

1. The streamlining of operations of product delivery through the e-commerce

process.
2. The streamlining of operations for delivery of the mobile application.
3. Improving decision making to compete more effectively using AI / ML.
4. Improve communication and collaboration with your customers, suppliers, and
alliance partners using AI / ML.

Today, the organization has these workflows in-place; you need to clearly outline what that
workflow looks like and then how you would transform them.

You will be expected to write a professional internal e-mail, which include(s):

 Brief overview and introduction of the company’s history of issues you are addressing.

You will then address several major ways in which the organization can compete more
effectively and drive operational efficiency.

1. Identify a set of strategies and approaches that will drive competition for the
organization and improve its operational efficiency.
a. We suggest starting with an association of the topics to the competitive
strategies and approaches that we covered in Module 1. (i.e., differentiation
as a strategy with a decision-based approach).

2. Identify how the workflows listed above work today. You can keep this at a high level
(you do not need to get into the specifics around implementation), but you can either
describe the ways in which those workflows function or diagram how they function and
describe them.

3. Identify four (4) of the topics from the list below that you believe will help drive
competition and operational efficiency forward and describe how they will improve each
workflow.
a. You need to tie together four (4) of the topics below to outline how you will
drive the strategy and approach. Focus on how a set of topics, together, would
provide competitive or operational advantages for the organization.

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 4. For each workflow, you will want to describe the “relevance” and “application”
of each topic(s). Describe the application of the technology that you would use
in driving the competitive advantage or operational efficiency forward. You will
also want to (in your own words) describe the relevance and application of the
four (4) topics in how they pertain to the improvement of the workflow.

Topics -- Each workflow above should have at least 1 or more associated topic!

1. Web Services/REST
2. Big Data
3. DevOps
4. Customer Relationship Management Systems
5. Supply Chain Management Systems
6. Business Intelligence
7. Data Mining

In your response, seek material additional to the online notes through research that
supports each topic and backs up your assertions.

Formatting an Internal E-mail:

TO: (CE0, CFO, etc.)

FROM: (You, CIO)
RE: (Subject)
DATE: (date)
1. Executive Overview & Introduction
2. Section 1 – Strategic direction -- covering the organization and outlining competitive
strategies and approaches from Module 1 which are driving your technology choices.
3. Section 2 – Workflows and why you think that the following four topics are most
important competitively and operationally for IT4You.com IT and how they work
together to drive competitive advantage.
4. Section 3 Topic 1 – deep dive into that specific technology and how it applies to the
organization. Outline the relevance and application of the technology
5. Section 4 Topic 2 – deep dive into that specific technology and how it applies to the
organization. Outline the relevance and application of the technology
6. Section 5 Topic 3 – deep dive into that specific technology and how it applies to the
organization. Outline the relevance and application of the technology
7. Section 6 Topic 4 – deep dive into that specific technology and how it applies to the
organization. Outline the relevance and application of the technology
8. Section 7 – Actions Required & Conclusion
9. References (Bibliography)

Part B

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 In addition to the e-mail, create roughly 5-6 slides that summarize your results in part A.
This is principally a practice run for those not familiar with creating PowerPoint
materials: we do not require sophisticated slides. Include a graphical element: figure or
image. Leverage the notes section of PowerPoint and describe the content as through
you were giving a quick presentation. Cover the same / similar sections of your paper,
but in a more concise, direct manner.

This will be 10% of your overall assignment grade.

Assignment Guidelines

Number the sections in your internal e-mail 1 through 7. After making an introduction as
section 1, section 2 should outline how the topics you chose together, facilitate the
workflows above and improve them. Provide a proposal as to how these technologies will
work together!

Make sections 3 though 6 the same headings as in the list you select. Finally, make section 7
your conclusion.

Each section after should provide details around how the topic improves the workflow either
competitively and/or operationally.

There is a page limit maximum of 3 pages, single spaced or 1.5 spaced of 11-point type for
part A.

The average size paper for this assignment is 1-2 pages of core content. However, we are far
more concerned with the quality of your paper rather than the exact page length. A major
part of this is cohesiveness, so please make sure that you have a cohesive story regarding
these topics.

Assignment Extra Credit:

Many times, in business, you will need to provide an overview of your documentation either
through a walk through or a PowerPoint presentation.

For 5 points of extra credit for this assignment, you can record yourself going through the
PowerPoint presentation and upload the recording either separately or as part of the
presentation. This must include video to achieve the 5 points of extra credit!

The recording only needs to be 5-7 minutes or less. More time going through your assignment is
fine but is not necessary to earn the extra credit.

End with a list of references following the standard reference format, as described in the
References and Citations document.

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 Use the Ask Your Facilitator Discussion Board if you have any questions regarding the objectives
of the assignment or how to approach the assignment.

Save your assignment as LastnameFirstname_assign3.doc and submit it in the Assignments

section of the course.

© Trustees of Boston University. Materials contained within this course are subject to copyright protection.

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