ASSIGNMENT BMIT5103

JANUARY SEMESTER 2011

BMIT5103 - INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FOR MANAGERS
INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT (50%)

This individual assignment is composed of TWO tasks:

1. Write and submit a Business Plan 30%

2. Develop, publish and present a prototype of the Business Portal based on the proposed
business in Part 1 20%

PART 1 - Business Plan (30%)

Assume that you intend to set up a new company that will deal with a Business-to-Consumers
(B2C) trading. B2C commerce is a business model in which a business's main customers are
consumers. Common B2C web sites include online stores selling books, music, videos as well
as services.

Prepare a business proposal of how your company might leverage IT to generate higher profit
for your company. You should demonstrate solutions for the key questions related to each of the
business model components depicted in Table 1.

Table 1: Key Ingredients of a Business Model

Business Model Key Questions

Components
Value Proposition Why should the customer buy from your
company?

Revenue model How will you earn money?

Market opportunity What marketspace do you intend to serve,

and what is its size?
Competitive environment Who else occupies your intended
marketspace?
Competitive advantage What special advantages does your
firm/company bring to the marketspace?
Market strategy How do you plan to promote your products
to attract customer?
Organizational What types of organizational structures
development within the firm are necessary to carry out the
business plan?
Management team What kinds of experiences and background
are important for the companys leaders to
have?

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You are required to prepare and submit a business plan for the new company that you are
setting up. Your business proposal should also include the profit and loss forecast for the next 5
years by taking into account the start-up cost, the recurring cost and the expected sales.

Report Writing Guidelines for Part 1

1. Your report should be of 20 to 25 pages long including figures and tables, 1.5 spaced in a
normal font (12 point Arial or Times Roman).

2. Incorrect spelling and grammar are simply inexcusable and will be penalized.

3. Remember that this class is designed to help you understand how organizations use
Information Technology to transform their business model. The focus of your business plan
should be about how you as a manager utilize IT to facilitate business transformation.

4. Margins should be on either side of the page - at least 3cm on the left hand side and at the
top of the page. Pages should be numbered.

5. Your business plan report should consist of the:

a. Title Page
b. Acknowledgements
c. Abstract
d. Table of contents
e. Main body
f. References
g. Appendices (if necessary) - Included here should be material, graphs, tables, even
perhaps a glossary, so that the information can be readily accessed by the reader
without interfering with the logical flow of the main text or narrative.

Your grade will be based on the report of the business plan (80%) and the presentation (20%).
The presentation will be done together with Part 2.

PART 2 Develop and Publish a Business Portal (20%)

Refer to the business plan that you have created in Part 1. Design and develop a prototype
business portal that will be used as a platform to implement your business plan. The associated
links do not necessarily function (you may suggest them as under construction). Your business
portal should contain:

a. Consistent, easy-to-use interface: Portals typically have a consistent interface which flows
from the home page down through every area of the portal. The interface is typically
designed specifically to make using the portal very easy.

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b. Good Navigation: The website should have good navigation. Without a good navigation, the
visitors won't be able to find the content they are looking for. If you have a lot of pages, you
should list the main categories on the homepage. In this way, the visitor can easily find their
way to the pages under the different categories. If your site only has a few pages, you can
list the links to them on the homepage. For example, if your site contains 5 pages, you can
list them on the top of the site navigation.

c. Web Page Storefront: Your main page is the storefront for your business and should
specifically let your visitors know exactly what you're offering. If your potential customer can't
find your product or service, they definitely won't waste a lot of time looking for it.

d. Good Content: Your web site should focus on the proposed business and it must provide a
variety of information that relates to the subject. For example, if you are selling local
handicrafts, you must provide pages such as About Us, Product, New Arrival, Special Offer,
and Contact Us.

e. Other features: You may provide additional features in your web site such as search button,
forums/discussions, customer reviews, blogs, hot links and sitemaps.

Prepare a 15 minutes slide presentation to illustrate and describe your business plan and your
business portal.

You are required to submit a CD containing a softcopy of the portal and publish your business
portal to an Internet site. Use the free web hosting services for this purpose.

Your grade for this part will be based on the presentation (20%) and the design of your
published portal (80%).