Faculty of Business and Enterprise

Department of Information Systems

INF20012 Enterprise Systems

Assignment 1: Case Study Research Report
Due Date: Friday, 11th April 2014 @ 5.00pm
Required Length: 4000 5000 words
Assignment Type: Group (3 Students per Group)
Overall Allocation: 25%
Total marks: 100
Submission Procedure: Please submit a soft copy on Blackboard via the linktitled
Assignment 1 SAP Research Report in the Assessments section. Please note
that marks will be deducted if the assignment fails to comply with
specifications above!
Assignment Objective:
The main core element of this assignment is the analysis of large multinational
companys motivations for and experiences with SAP. Your task is to review the full
transcript of three customer presentations and answer the questions below. This
analysis will help you understand the rationale for implementing enterprise systems
(ES), the complexities of implementing an ES, the lessons learned from such an
exercise. Importantly, this assignment is to help you understand the implementation
issues of an enterprise system as an ongoing process. Underlying, this assignment
is your understanding of how organisations are utilising SAP to be effective in
changing the way in which organisations operate.

Faculty of Business and Enterprise

Department of Information Systems

As a group, you are to select any three companies who have implemented SAP. You
are free to use any online resource. However, the preferable way is to explore
sessions and presentations from SAP SapphireNow conference, May 2013 and
SAP TechEd conference, Oct 2013 and review the video and PowerPoint
presentations.
Ensure that you have selected to presentations that allow you to compare and
contrast. Please review the marking guide to understand the types of things that
need to be addressed through the presentation of your final report. Ultimately, the
selection of the presentations will have a great bearing on the overall product that
your group will present.
Using the customer part of your three presentations answer the following questions:
1. What SAP product/modules are focused in your three presentations?
2. What SAP modules has the company currently implemented?
3. What motivated your companies to move to an ERP (ES) system or to the
particular software discussed during the presentation?
4. What benefits have resulted from implementing the software?
5. What lessons were learned from implementation of the software?
6. What are the companies future SAP plans?
Please note that the best reports will analyse and integrate concepts from the three
presentations, not simply repeat information on a company-by-company basis. It
may be useful, therefore, to set up a table with the key points you are looking for. For
example:

Also note that in some presentations, an SAP representative/expert may introduce

the SAP software and speaker. You should only include the customer presenter not
the SAP presenter in your analysis. Using this table, you will then be able to
summarise and consolidate the information for your report. Please note, do not
submit the table as your report, it is simply a tool to help you extract information from
the presentations.
However, you may like to include the table as an appendix.
Marks will be awarded based upon effort employed in clearly and concisely
answering each of the six questions; integration of concepts and ideas as opposed
to discussing each company singularly; clarity of answer; and professionalism.

Faculty of Business and Enterprise

Department of Information Systems
Please provide detailed information about each of the company's presentation
including a URL to the presentation webpage.
Formatting Requirements:
The report needs to be constructed professionally.
File format: It is recommended that Microsoft Word or equivalent be used to
complete the assignment. Figures and Tables: All figures and Tables should be
reported in the body and should be named appropriately References: All quotations,
important points should be referenced using Harvard Reference Style.
Please refer to this link http://www.swinburne.edu.au/lib/researchhelp/harvard_style.html
Students should use the marking guide as reference to complete this assignment.
However, in marking the assignment I will have discretion in varying marks per
person depending on the quality and effort that they provide to this assignment. In
this group assignment I expect all students to contribute equally.

Faculty of Business and Enterprise

Department of Information Systems

Faculty of Business and Enterprise

Department of Information Systems