ACC508, Informatics and Financial Applications

Background
The ability to understand and present information clearly and professionally is an important skill.
Your manager has asked you to investigate some information systems concepts, of decision support systems and cloud computing.Your target audience is executive business people. Your assignment will be marked out of 100 marks and represent 20% of your final grade.
Assignment Requirements and Deliverables
Question 1: Report                                                                                          75 marks
 
In this report you will be demonstrating your skill in academic writing and presentation skills. We will be carefully looking at your word skills in this report.  In this report you will be reporting on financial applications and information systems.  Please pick an industry such as Banking, retailing etc. and discuss the following sections with reference to this industry.  If you are unsure what industry to choose, please choose Retail.  If you prefer you could pick one organisation.
This report should contain
A title page and should include the below.

1. The name of the course
2. The assignment number and description (that is, Assignment one)
3. Your name and student number
4. A picture illustrating your reports content

An executive summary containing a short summary of the report. This summary should be no more than 200 words.

1. A Table of Contents – This must be generated by word and not created manually.
2. A Table of Figures – This must be generated by word and not created manually.
3. The body of the report with the following sections.
   1. An introduction, explaining the contents of your report. Please note you need to make sure that this section can be read easily as a section and should be around 150 words long.
   2. Decision Support Systems (DSS) and business. In this section you should briefly talk how DSS might be used in modern business. Please note that in this section you may choose any problem that you think fits this issue. You should include at least two references and use Microsoft Word capabilities to include these in the bibliography.  Please include at least one figure and use cross-referencing to refer to this figure in your text. This section should be no more than 250 words long.
   3. Cloud Computing and Business. In this section you should discuss the opportunities that cloud computing might bring to your industry.  Please include a graph in this section that you have constructed yourself rather than cut and pasted from someone else’s material. This section should be no more than 250 words long.
   4. A conclusion section.
4. In the report you need to include a header section showing the name of the course and the description of this assignment. Please note this section is not to show on the title page.
5. In the report you need to include a footer section, containing
   1. Your name – justified left
   2. Your student number in the centre
   3. The page number – justified right. Please note a page number should not be shown on the title page, page numbers before the body of the report should be shown in roman numerals and page numbers in the body of the report should start at 1.
6. The figures included in the report should be presented with captions and must be referred to in the report and should be cross-referenced.

Question 2: PowerPoint                                                                                              25 marks
 
Your manager has asked you to present your report to a group of business people and produce a five (5) slide PowerPoint presentation.  The individual slides should be pasted into an appendix of the report.
 
Your PowerPoint is to consist of the following slides;
 
Slide 1: Title slide
This slide must contain;

1. The name of the course
2. The assignment number and description (that is, Assignment one)
3. Your name and student number
4. The name of the organisation you are investigating
5. A picture illustrating your organisation’s business activity

 
 
Slide 2: Background information slide
This slide must contain;

1. A title
2. A brief summary of your introduction from your report, consisting of four (4) dot-points, each dot-point to be six words or less.

 
Slide 3: Digital data and business
This slide must contain;

1. A title
2. A copy of your figure from section B in your report and some points.

Please note: the graph must have a title, named axis and a key/legend.
Slide 4: Data and business intelligence
This slide must contain;

1. A title
2. A graph drawn from section C.

Please note: the graph must have a title, named axis and a key.
Slide 5: Summary slide
This slide must contain;

1. A title
2. A brief summary of what your presentation showed, consisting of four (4) dot-points, each dot-point to be six words or less summarising your conclusion.
3. The last dot-point should show the web-site address of an industry organisation; this website address should be a hyperlink