As a leader in IT management, you must be able to appropriately communicate information in a concise and effective manner to executives.
For Task 3, assume that you are the IT Manager of Sparkit Technologies Corporation (or Sparkit) and have been tasked with procuring goods or services.
You are working on a project to obtain new engineering workstations. In creating a procurement plan for the engineering workstations, the following steps have been completed:
1. The ITD procurement team has created a Request for Proposal (RFP) that incorporates the specifications for the engineering workstations.
2. The RFP has been sent to five suppliers that manufacture engineering workstations that Sparkit technical experts believe align with the specifications.
3. All five suppliers have responded with proposals for engineering workstations that they believe meet the specifications.
4. Sparkit technical experts have evaluated the five suppliers’ proposals and selected two suppliers that they feel offer engineering workstations that best align with the RFP specifications.
5. The two suppliers selected are as follows:
a. Dellberg Computer Corporation
b. Lexiplus Computer Corporation
Scenario
Sparkit Technologies Corporation is a diversified advanced technology company with headquarters in Houston, Texas, and offices and manufacturing plants throughout North America. Sparkit designs, manufactures, and markets advanced electronics, robotics, subassemblies, engines, and other types of systems for automotive, medical, aerospace, manufacturing, defense, governmental, and other applications.
At the end of 2022, Sparkit had 45,000 total employees, an annual revenue of about $60 billion, an annual net income of about $3.8 billion, and an annual IT budget of about $2.4 million. Sparkit is organized in a traditional hierarchical management structure with divisions structured according to function. The information technology department (ITD) is responsible for all IT functions within the firm.
Right before signing off on obtaining new workstations from one of these suppliers, the Sparkit chief technology officer (CTO) informs you that you need to cut IT spending by 10% due to organization-wide budget reduction. With the new directive to reduce spending by 10%, both suppliers will fall outside of the requested budget parameters. This means that you may be unable to complete the planned replacement of the engineering workstations. However, if you present a compelling case for why these workstations are important to organizational success, the CTO will renegotiate the budget constraint for the IT department with the chief executive officer (CEO) and request that the project of obtaining new workstations be continued.
Review the “Request for Proposal for Sparkit Procurement Plan.” Then review both the “Dellberg Computer Corporation Proposal” and “Lexiplus Computer Corporation Propsal” and decide which one would best fit Sparkit needs.
1. Consider the different components.
2. Consider the pricing.
3. Consider volume discounts/ price breaks.
As you prepare your case, consider the following Sparkit business strategic goals:
1. Sparkit wants to decrease costs by 10%.
2. Sparkit wants to increase revenue by 6%.
3. Sparkit wants to improve product development.
Requirements
Your submission must be your original work. No more than a combined total of 30% of the submission and no more than a 10% match to any one individual source can be directly quoted or closely paraphrased from sources, even if cited correctly. The similarity report that is provided when you submit your task can be used as a guide.
You must use the rubric to direct the creation of your submission because it provides detailed criteria that will be used to evaluate your work. Each requirement below may be evaluated by more than one rubric aspect. The rubric aspect titles may contain hyperlinks to relevant portions of the course.
Tasks may not be submitted as cloud links, such as links to Google Docs, Google Slides, OneDrive, etc., unless specified in the task requirements. All other submissions must be file types that are uploaded and submitted as attachments (e.g., .docx, .pdf, .ppt).
A. Create a business case by doing the following:
1. Briefly describe two benefits resulting from how one of the RFP supplier’s proposals aligns with one of the business strategic goals in the scenario.
2. Explain two to four examples of the technology benefits of the components you selected from the RFP.
3. Create an executive summary highlighting parts A1 and A2, including a compelling case as to why the purchase of the workstations is important to organizational success based on the scenario.
B. Acknowledge sources, using in-text citations and references, for content that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.
C. Demonstrate professional communication in the content and presentation of your submission.
File Restrictions
File name may contain only letters, numbers, spaces, and these symbols: ! – _ . * ‘ ( )
File size limit: 200 MB
File types allowed: doc, docx, rtf, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, odt, pdf, csv, txt, qt, mov, mpg, avi, mp3, wav, mp4, wma, flv, asf, mpeg, wmv, m4v, svg, tif, tiff, jpeg, jpg, gif, png, zip, rar, tar, 7z