27 Mar CS782 Assignment No. 1 ~ Understanding Business Models

CS782 Assignment No. 1 ~ Understanding Business Models

Revised: 2-18-2024

Assignment Summary:

This week, you are exploring business models and competitive strategies as a prelude to studying the role and functioning of IT. Choose a publicly traded, for-profit business, with at least 500 employees that you know reasonably well or one where you can obtain reasonably detailed information. Choose in such a way that you will be able answer the questions posed below very effectively.  

We would like you to choose from the following industries/areas only:

• Data-focused (supporting, capturing, buying, selling data)

• Brick and mortar / e-commerce / m-commerce retail companies

• Healthcare

Later in the course (Assignment 6), we will return to the business example that you choose and the business evolution that you chose.

• It’s acceptable if you work with or work for the company; just make sure that you do not disclose proprietary information. 

• You may learn more if you pick a company which does not dominate its industry, and where there are a fair number of competitors. 

If you choose a large organization such as Microsoft or Amazon, we suggest you focus on an aspect of their business, such as “AWS” or “Xbox” and not the entirety of their business.

Assignment Expectations:

You will be expected to write a professional paper (see module 0), which include(s):

• Cover Page

• Table of Contents (optional)

• Abstract (optional)

• Introduction   

You will then address the following segments throughout the paper:

1. Business Model: Describe key aspects of its business model.  

 

Keeping the following questions in mind will help your response.

• What’s the name of the company, how large is it, what industry segment is it in, and what does the company do? 

• Is the company primarily a product or a service business, or some kind of hybrid? 

• What are its offerings (i.e., its products and/or services)? What is its market position? What are its value propositions (perhaps offer-specific)?  Using graphics in this section can be very powerful.

• How does the business earn revenue (including the pricing of its offerings) and make a profit? 

• What other features of its market model, operational model, or financial model are significant, unusual, or distinctive?

• Does the organization follow a cloud computing model?  Are there aspects of those models in the organization that you choose?

2. Competitive Forces and Challenges: Consider each of Porter’s five Competitive Forces.  For each of the five forces:

• Prioritize the five forces as they pertain to the organization.

• List and describe the relevant actual competitive challenges (if any) that the company faces (or is likely to face soon).  

• List and describe competitive challenges the company faces (or is likely to face soon) as a result of other changes in the business environment (e.g., economic, regulatory, etc.)

 

3. Competitive Strategies and Approaches: For the most significant competitive forces/challenges, choose the top 2 that the company faces, describe, what you believe the company’s competitive strategies should be for addressing that challenge.   Use the strategies and approaches from Module 1 as the basis for your answer.

 

You should discuss how the company has (or similar companies have) addressed that challenge in the past, or how you believe it should address the challenge.  

 

What approach will the organization need to take in order to sustain an advantage; or will it need to change approaches? 

 

Indicate whether you believe the strategy will work or not and why.

 

4. Business Model Evolution: Outline 3 ideas in which you believe will expand the organizations business model.  Start with the business strategy from module 1 with the approach that you think they should take for each business model evolution!  This is critically important as everything must start with a business strategy!  

 

Then outline, what should they do next?  What other lines of businesses should they jump into?  

Consider those ideas you have for how the company’s business model could evolve, and what might drive the business to evolve in that way:

• How might the company enhance its products and services, and why? 

• How might the organization improve internal processes to become more efficient or effective?

• How might the company expand into new related products and services, new territories, or new market segments, and why? 

• How might the company extend into new lines of business or new business models? Why would they do so? (Include mostly non-e-commerce initiatives if possible) 

 

5. Best IT-Supported Proposal: Identify the best proposed idea you have listed in Section 4 above that can also be supported by IT in a substantial way. For that proposal, provide the following:

• Justification: Explain why you believe this is a particularly good proposal — i.e., how and why will it enable the company to more effectively compete? 

• Role of IT: Describe the most essential ways in which IT could be used to support the proposal.

Assignment Guidelines:

Write the following five sections (above) about the company you chose and try to keep the assignment to a maximum of 8 pages of core content, single spaced or 1.5 spaced of 12-point type. 

These core pages count does NOT include the cover page, references, and other supplemental material (i.e., table of contents, abstract, etc.).    

On average the core of the papers are roughly 5-6 pages of content; however, we are far more concerned with the quality of your papers as opposed to the page count.  You may follow this with appendices if you wish.

Appendices will be read only as needed by the reader and the evaluation is not based upon them.  Respond to the bullet points where relevant and use your judgment as to their relative importance for the business that you have selected.  Describe the organization, forces, challenges, strategies, evolution, and best supported proposal in your own words!  

Make sure to use references and examples from research to back up your assertions! Please see Module 0 for how to format and write a paper at the executive level.

You have a significant amount of latitude in this paper, especially from starting from segments 2 forward.  Our major focus is that you are providing contextual information and providing clear justifications for your position based upon research both internally (within the course material / readings) and externally from various sources.

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 walking through the document (no extra PowerPoint presentation necessary) and upload it as well 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 minutes or less.  More time going through your assignment is fine but is not necessary to earn the extra credit.

 

Hints:

You could include a PEST analysis to guide your overall thinking (not required).

We don’t expect you to be a business genius.  What we do expect is that you fully appreciate the challenges of business and how IT must be supportive of them.

 

Keep the evaluation criteria in mind as described in the syllabus.  

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

 

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_assign1.doc and submit it in the Assignments section of the course.