Systems Analysis Consulting Roleplay
Choose an organization (headquartered in the US, even in the case of being a multinational company), this can be some business or institution (governmental/non-profit/etc.) that you have direct knowledge of via employment, friends, family, your professional network, or merely being a knowledgable customer. This should not be a holding company (e.g., Berkshire Hathaway). You may find it useful to interview members of executive management to find some of these facts, in addition to web searches, financial filings, published articles, interviews, podcasts, etc. This will be the "Client" for your fictional IT Systems Design consulting service.
You will be required to do some research into this entity in order to understand the organization and it's business/operational challenges, and how information systems design activities can produce more favorable outcomes. Cite specific sources when available.
Answer the following questions:
- Entity Name and location
- Business type
- Sole proprietor
- LLC
- S-Corp
- Corp
- Non-profit Organization (e.g., 501c3)
- NGO
- Other
- Sector
- Industry
- Product(s) and/or Service(s)
- Annual sales (Gross) and/or funding sources in USD, and estimated size of the customer base.
- B2B, B2C, or both?
- What are the pain points or major challenges facing the entity?
- Best estimate of the number of employees/workforce
- Are staffing levels or the expertise of the existing employees sufficient to address the challenges in item 8?
- What existing information systems does the entity already have in production use? Identify specifics as well as you can, for example, major vendors, managed service providers, employee desktop OS environment, and commercial, off-the shelf (COTS) software used on a regular basis. For each item, state if it can be directly observable, common knowledge via published vendor relationships, merely anecdotal, or speculative. Please format this as a table.
- Characterize the systems in item 11 as made in-house, purchased outright from a vendor, or leased/licensed on a recurring basis.
- Identify competitive advantages and weaknesses in the activities that comprise core operations to the business.
- What specific information systems could be added or changed to lead to an improvement in those activities? You can describe these as vaguely or specifically as you like, such as "an online marketing retargeting system to increase market share" or "move X (specific application) to a cloud vendor to reduce operational cost".