INFO20000D | Business Information Systems | Individual Case Study Assignment (Part 1)

Little Corp.

This case assignment is separated into two interrelated parts. Part 1 draws from the Information Technology
Concepts module on Database Systems (Chapter 3). Its purpose is to provide you with experience in analyzing
the data and information needs of organizations and logically structuring these needs in a manner that can be
understood and used by relevant organizational stakeholders to create information systems that deliver
maximum organizational value. Part 2 draws from the Business Information Systems and the Systems
Acquisition and Development modules (Chapters 5 to 8). Its purpose is to provide you with experience in
analyzing organizational information systems, making recommendations to improve these systems, and
formulating a plan to execute on your recommendations.

Questions (Case Study Assignment Part 1) (30 marks)

1. Describe the approach to data management that Little Corp. is currently using. What are the main
problems with this method of data management, citing specific examples from the case? What
approach to data management do you recommend Little Corp. should be using? (5 marks)
2. Analyze the information needs of Little Corp. and construct a logical database design (Entity-
Relationship (ER) diagram) that is consistent with data modeling principles and conventions. For each
entity, describe 4 attributes that will need to be captured, including the attribute that you would use as
the primary key for each entity in the physical database. You may either include the attributes and
primary keys on the ER Diagram, or in a separate table. (15 marks)
3. Describe how your proposed database design supports the ability of Little Corp. to generate and
capture business value from the data when your proposed new database system is implemented. You
need to describe this value for each of the entities included in your ER Diagram. Be both practical and
creative in describing ways which Little Corp. can potentially use and benefit from the new database
system. Try not to simply think about the value of each entity on it own, but rather the value that can
be gained from the entity and its relationships with other entities. (10 marks)

Formatting
For the ER Diagram, you may use MS Visio, PowerPoint or any other graphics program. You can also create the
ER Diagram by hand (make sure it is on a blank unlined piece of paper and is neatly drawn), and then scan the
page to include it electronically in the main body of your Word document. Regardless of how you create the ER
Diagram, you must insert the ER Diagram in your Word document, and not include it as a separate file
submission. For the written portion of the report, use 12 pt. Arial or Calibri font and be sure to include page
numbers on every page. In preparing your submission you must abide by Sheridan policies and procedures
governing academic integrity. Be sure to use APA style referencing when you incorporate ideas and content that
are not your own.

Submission

Submit an electronic copy of your final report as either a Word document (.docx) or PDF file (.pdf) to the Slate
“Case Study Assignment (Part 1)” Assignment Dropbox before the deadline. Late assignments will be penalized
by a grade reduction of 10% for every 24 hours that the assignment is late. Assignments submitted more than 96
hours (4 days) late will be assigned a grade of zero.

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Little Corp.

Resources
Completion of this assignment can be supported through effective use of the following resources:
• PowerPoint, MS Visio or any other electronic tools that support the creation of ER Diagrams. Although
MS Visio provides a template that uses “Crow’s Foot Database Notation” for creating ER diagrams, you
are welcome to use other suitable notations should you prefer (note: include a legend to identify the
types of relationships in your ER Diagram).
• The course textbook (Chapter 3 in particular) and class discussions (week 5 in particular) which provide
important background information on data modeling, the process of creating ER diagrams, and ER
diagram notations
• Any other relevant online or library resources that you identify.

The Case – Part 1

Little Corp., a bicycle manufacturer located in Burlington, Ontario was a medium sized business that consisted of
just over 200 employees. Of these employees, approximately 50 worked in the office while the remaining 150
employees worked in the manufacturing and warehouse facilities. Little Corp. designed, manufactured,
assembled and shipped high-end bicycles (both road bikes as well as mountain bikes) both directly to end
consumers as well as to retailers across North America. In the last year, Little Corp. sold over 30,000 bicycles at
an average price of $1,000.

When Little Corp. was first starting out, employees kept track of most of their work on Excel spreadsheets. Sales
and Marketing kept spreadsheets on customers, both individual consumers who purchased bicycles directly
from Little Corp. as well as retailers. Customer Service kept spreadsheets on all customers, including end-users
who bought directly from Little Corp. as well as those who registered their bikes after purchasing them from
retailers. Employees in the Customer Service department were finding it increasingly difficult to maintain these
spreadsheet records, which also included all customer inquiries related to problems with their bicycles and
warranty part replacement and repair. Sales kept spreadsheets with invoice information and then manually
created invoices based on the spreadsheet data.

In the manufacturing and assembling facility, employees maintained spreadsheets that included all of the bicycle
parts Little Corp. purchased from suppliers as well as the specialized parts that Little Corp. manufactured in-
house. The design team kept spreadsheets that listed all of the parts used in each of the models of bicycles that
Little Corp. manufactured. They also kept spreadsheets noting the model number and serial number of each
bicycle produced, and sent this once per week to Sales and Marketing as well as Customer Service, but they did
not know if Sales and Marketing used this information when bicycles were sold or if the Customer Service
department used this information when they tracked customers.

Over time, as employees came and went from Little Corp., multiple versions of many of these spreadsheets
were evident in all of the departments, with employees often not knowing which were the latest and correct
versions of the data. To make matters worse, employees did not keep these spreadsheets on the corporate
servers, but rather kept them on their own computers and emailed them to other employees when the files
were needed. Some employees backed up their data onto USB flash drives, while others did no backups at all.
Approximately 6 months ago, an employee had their laptop stolen, and along with it, the most recent version of

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Little Corp.

the customer database. Fortunately, they were able to recover most of the data, but it was unknown how much
data was not recovered (i.e., data that had been entered on the stolen laptop after the last backup). Finally,
with multiple versions of the spreadsheet files and multiple employees entering and maintaining the data, many
different spellings of supplier and retailer names were evident in the different spreadsheets, making reporting
tremendously difficult.

Catherine Kuijpers, the founder of Little Corp. realized that something drastic needed to be done to solve their
data problems, but was unsure of what to do and where to start. She realized that they needed a better way to
keep track of customers, parts, suppliers, retailers, bikes and all of the data associated with these things, but
how could she do this, and how could she ensure the successful transfer of the data they currently had in
spreadsheet form, as she did not want to lose this and be forced to re-enter all of the information again.

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