IT Lifecycle
As a manager in a business, you will often have to decide which of several alternative products to purchase. A Weighted Scoring Model can help you make a reasoned decision and justify your choice made. For evaluation purposes the Total Cost of Ownership is more important than the purchase price, so this needs to be included in your model Assume that you are a manager working for an international, software company with a team of sales executives who need to be in constant contact with Head Office. The Head Office is in your own country, and there is a group of managers based there. Some staff will need to use their netbooks worldwide. The primary use of the devices by the sales executives include accessing Company resources and data over a private network; access updated product information to negotiate price and complete sales transactions, demo cloud-based software solutions to clients; perform real-time updates of sales data in the field; access customer reports / address customer inquiries promptly prepare monthly/quarterly sales and target reports. You have been tasked to evaluate a range of netbooks with built-in email and other office productivity functionality (eg, camera, media player, organiser, browser, GPS) to determine which is the best one for the company to purchase for all its managers and sales executives. You should also consider the usability and functionality of the system, both now and in the future, and the Total Cost of Ownership. Task Outline: Task 1: 1. Provide a discussion on a minimum of five (5) factors / criteria to be used in the evaluation of the netbooks. Your discussion should include an explanation on why each factor is important to the company for the evaluation. You MUST include the Total Cost of Ownership of the chosen netbooks as one of the criteria. You should illustrate how the TCO figures for each of the netbooks have been derived i.e., show formula. 2. Perform an objective evaluation of at least three (3) competing netbooks using the weighted-score evaluation model. You are to utilize the factors defined above in Task 1.1 to perform this assessment. Completion of Task achieves Loz] Task 2: Make a recommendation based on the above evaluation and justify the cost and benefits of the chosen IT product and/or service, explaining how this cost can be controlled. Completion of Task achieves L03)
