Case Study:
Easywear PLC has recently acquired the department store, Selfridges, for £10bn. The new
management would like to implement few changes to make the company more competitive
and add competitive advantages. Few revenue generating areas for New Look are
women’s footwear, men’s trousers, and women’s accessories. Imagine they have hired
you as CIO. In this role you will face a lot of difficulties and you will need to come up with
plans to make the business successful. This assignment will now introduce you to different
situations. Based upon the situation, present your approach to handle these problems.
You are required to address the part A and part B of this case study.
A. A written report which demonstrates the following:
1. What are the key difficulties in terms of data inventory of the goods in store and
stock, and data governance around this?
2. Considering the clothing business only what are the advantages does the company
could achieve by using the fastest available internet connection. Explain few
technical problems that may encounter and why?
3. To keep the smooth running of the business what are the key analytical tools you
would implement in their clothing business and why?
4. Explain two Ethics and Privacy issues that the company could encounter and how
to resolve them?
5. Could information resources held by the company could be vulnerable? If yes,
describe one way this could be protected.
6. Do a research and present a short case where the company could apply social
marketing to gain more customers.
7. The company wants to completely redesign the business-to-consumer experience.
List three key steps that you would take and why?
8. Discuss the importance of transaction processing system for the company and
explain three key areas where it could impact the company?
9. As a CIO the company asked you to implement a completely new supply chain
management and information system infrastructure. Discuss your action of
implementing it. What competitive advantage/s you would be able to achieve.
B. A database which demonstrates the following (attach all your database
diagrams/snapshots at the bottom of the written report – after part 9 A):
I. A suitable Entity-relationship model created for the given business, showing
relationship among all entities. Also list all attributes and highlight primary and
foreign keys in each entity. Resolve any many-many relationships in the ER model.
II. Implement the database design in Access. Populate the database with the
sample data of your own.
III. Access tables built from entity-relationship diagram.
IV. A relational Access database model/diagram.
V. Samples of database reports and forms (e, g. create Form to allow a new product
record to be entered into the database. Create Form to edit a product record.
Create a report that generates an invoice for a specific product.)
VI. An example of QBE: Query By Example (e.g. create queries to: List all products
in a certain group or order).
