辅导案例-COMP3760/6760-Assignment 1
Department of Computing Semester 2, 2020 COMP3760/6760: Enterprise Systems Integration Assignment 1 (10% of the semester) eCommerce/eBusiness and ePayments Dr. Peter Busch Due 11:55 pm Tuesday - 18th August, 2020 COMP3760/6760 Assignment 1 Semester 2, 2020 Page 2 A 700 word report on the following topic. “Our performance reaffirms our product’s utility to consumers looking for a smarter way to budget their personal finances and the overall market shift to e-commerce.” Nearly 100 per cent of Sezzle’s transactions occur via e-commerce, making the company “well-positioned” for the increasing online retail trend. “Our strong performance in the second quarter is reflective of an improving consumer profile combined with an accelerated adoption of e-commerce due to the pandemic,” Mr Youakim said. “The undercurrent of organic growth that we are experiencing is exciting to see as our business matures” (source: appendix 1). There has clearly been a trend toward online payment for the last couple of decades. Enterprise systems integration (i.e. COMP3760/6760) is concerned with both the business and technology principles behind eBusiness/eCommerce - including online payment systems. For this assignment: - discuss examples of online payments, focusing on the history of such payment systems and/or - the ePayment issues businesses need to consider when conducting eCommerce/eBusiness. 1. Use academic writing approaches (see appendix 2) 2. There ‘should’ be 3-4 references in your reference list which you have drawn upon to write the report (again see appendix 2).1 2 3. About 100 words each for your introduction and conclusion, means the main body of the assignment is about 500 words (examples of ePayments and issues relating to eCommerce, eBusiness etc.). Deliverable and submission Soft copy only 1. One PDF document (PDF only) submitted on iLearn. DATE DUE: 11.55 pm, Tuesday 18th August - Week 4 References Chaffey, D., (2015) Digital Business and e-Commerce Management: Strategy, Implementation and Practice Pearson Harlow U.K. Papazoglou, M., (2012) Web Services & SOA: Principles and Technology 2nd ed. Pearson U.K. Papazoglou, M., Georgakapoulos, G., (2003) “Introduction to the Special Issue about Service-Oriented Computing” Communications of the ACM 46(10) October pp: 24-28. Papazoglou, M., Ribbers, P., (2006) e-Business: Organizational and Technical Foundations John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Chichester West Sussex U.K. Other references you find (e.g. the library databases). 1 Hint – consult https://www.mq.edu.au/about/campus-services-and-facilities/library#tab-4-databases – using subject areas such as ‘computing’ or ‘business’ to find relevant papers. 2 And of course you may use the two references provided in appendix 1 if you wish! COMP3760/6760 Assignment 1 Semester 2, 2020 Page 3 Appendix 1 Sezzle thrives in the pandemic 7th July 2020 (source: Bailey, S., (2020) “Sezzle thrives in the pandemic” The Australian Newspaper https://www.theaustralian. com.au/business/financial-services/sezzle-thrives-in-the-pandemic/news-story/918465682a454a1ed2374b9674 5b3b60 published: 7/7/20). Founders of buy now, pay later company Sezzle (L-R) CEO Charlie Youakim and Chief Revenue Officer Paul Paradis. Shares in Sezzle shot up nearly 25 per cent on Tuesday after the buy-now, pay-later platform told the market it’s poised to capitalise from its pivot to e-commerce in North America as the shutdown resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Active consumers using the platform jumped 28 per cent to 1.48 million for the quarter to June 30, while active merchants jumped 27 per cent compared to the prior quarter, Sezzle said in a quarterly update to the ASX. The Afterpay competitor said it now expects underlying merchant sales to reach an annualised pace of $US1bn ($1.43bn) by the end of 2020. “In these uncertain times, we are fortunate to announce record quarter two results across a number of our key metrics,” executive chairman and chief executive Charlie Youakim said. “Our performance reaffirms our product’s utility to consumers looking for a smarter way to budget their personal finances and the overall market shift to e-commerce.” Nearly 100 per cent of Sezzle’s transactions occur via e-commerce, making the company “well-positioned” for the increasing online retail trend. “Our strong performance in the second quarter is reflective of an improving consumer profile combined with an accelerated adoption of e-commerce due to the pandemic,” Mr Youakim said. “The undercurrent of organic growth that we are experiencing is exciting to see as our business matures.” Sezzle shares surged 24.6 per cent to $5.07 each on Tuesday, following the announcement. Royal Bank of Canada analyst Tim Piper said that the flagged underlying merchant sales figure of an annualised pace of $US1bn by the end of this calendar year was ahead of the bank’s estimates. “Sezzle appears to be tracking ahead of our expectations as current structural tailwinds benefit, while there remains the possibility of a further stimulus package in the US, which would likely again bolster short-term consumer spending,” he said in a note to clients. “We have seen strong trends in app download data and other lead indicators and believe the update well represents early trends.” The company last year made what was seen as an unusual decision for a US outfit to list on the ASX. In March, the group said it would double down on merchant fees and branding in a bid to fend off rival Afterpay, which is revving up its own US expansion. Of the fees Sezzle charges, more than 80 per cent of them are to merchants. The company has also recently undertaken a brand overhaul in an attempt to align itself with the values of Generation Z and Millennials, in an attempt to differentiate itself from Afterpay. COMP3760/6760 Assignment 1 Semester 2, 2020 Page 4 Samantha Bailey - Business Reporter Samantha Bailey (nee Woodhill) is a business reporter. Prior to joining The Australian, she worked as a digital journalist and producer for Sky News, and as editor of a legal trade magazine. She has a Masters in Journalism from UTS. Sezzle’s star rising in buy now, pay later land grab 11th July 2020 (source: Griffith, C., Yeo, M., (2020) “Sezzle’s star rising in buy now, pay later land grab” The Australian Newspaper https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/sezzles-star-rising-but-balanced-on-economy/news-stor y/33976231ed36308ce7e727d37d89445a published: 7/7/20) Sezzle has emerged as the new star of Australia’s fast-growing “buy now, pay later” players, but the white-hot run of the tech sector threatens to be derailed by the stalling of consumer spending habits. Sezzle is the latest to tap the market, on Friday launching an $87m placement and share purchase plan after its shares soared to record highs of $6.95 — a surge of almost 800 per cent since April 1, with the payments company yet to turn a profit. The recent price surge also compared to COMP3760/6760 Assignment 1 Semester 2, 2020 Page 5 the $1.22 IPO price in July last year. If Afterpay’s recent oversubscribed $650m institutional placement, or the other three BNPL equity raisings in the past three months, are anything to go by, the Australian-listed, Minneapolis-based Sezzle will have little to worry about. The $5 floor price for its bookbuild represents a 28 per cent discount to the stock’s last trading price. The majority of Sezzle stock is owned in house, with co-founder and chief executive Charlie Youakim owning 49.55 per cent (which at current prices is worth $586m), while fellow co-founder and company president Paul Paradis owns a 5.6 per cent, which is valued at $66m. Youakim is an engineer and software developer who before Sezzle built a parking and transit mobile payments company in Minneapolis called Passport. That was in 2010. Paradis has more than 10 years of sales, marketing and operations experience, working in the payments, management consulting, medical device and entertainment industries. A large share of the Sezzle placement proceeds have been slated for sales and marketing, as the firm jostles for market share in an increasingly crowded sector. But competition is rising — this week credit card giant American Express joined the BNPL fold, announcing its new Plan It feature that allows credit card holders to choose up to 10 purchases of $100 or more to combine into a payment plan with a fixed monthly fee. At the same time, global payments giant Visa last year said it was planning its own “buy now, pay later” service. As Afterpay has itself become a verb, so too is Sezzle pushing for consumers to “Sezzle it”. Still, there’s no shortage of backers for BNPL, which targets millennials’ aversion to credit cards and proclivity to spend no matter the economic circumstances. While the sector is riding high, consumer experts warn that the market for “buy now, pay later” services could drastically soften with changing economic circumstances. “(The services) are no less susceptible to an economic downturn than merchandise itself, so once people buy less, then they will also use these services less,” said Kai Riemer from the University of Sydney Business School. “In the short term, if people are pressed for cash in the pandemic, they (the companies) might actually benefit from the current situation. There’s no guarantee in the middle or long term that they might do well.” He said the termination of government payments such as JobKeeper may pose a problem, but Bell Direct’s Jess Amir pointed out that not all instalment services were created equal. Across the six ASX-listed services, including Zip, Openpay, FlexiGroup and Splitit, she notes that there are a broad spread of product offerings. “The rapid growth trajectory of the BNPL sector is expected to continue, snatching market share from credit cards and PayPal,” Amir said. “Lockdowns and the shift to online shopping is a huge tailwind, but with reward there is of course risk, with the underlying credit profile of the users of their services. “Still, Afterpay’s recent capital raising will be enough to cover bad debts. Keep in mind Afterpay has a very small bad and doubtful debt provision, given the service is not used on big-ticket items, whereas Zip and Splitit are prone to more risk, given customers are able to splurge on larger items.” Of Sezzle’s raising outlined on Friday, $11.5m is to be used to bolster the group’s balance sheet, including costs for potential debt facility refinancing and to increase cash reserves. Lead manager of Sezzle’s raising, Ord Minnett, says it has increased the company’s revenue estimates by 8-16 per cent and its valuation to $5.95 a share. “Sezzle is highly exposed to the rapid increase in market share for e-commerce, and its recent growth numbers highlight this, along with first-rate execution,” the brokerage said in a note to clients. RBC’s Tim Piper has an outperform rating on the stock, highlighting its focus on product innovation with Sezzle Up, Sezzle Spend and Sezzle Anywhere products due to roll out in coming months. “The raising provides additional capital to accelerate growth in Sezzle’s key markets,” he said. “Our forecasts on profitability is not until 2023, which may see upside risk if loss rates continue current trajectories, and/or operational expenditure growth comes in lower than RBC estimates.” The question of value and profitability in the sector is one that has plagued many an investor, as even the $20bn Afterpay is yet to notch a profit. Chris Griffith - Technology Reporter Sydney COMP3760/6760 Assignment 1 Semester 2, 2020 Page 6 Chris Griffith is one of Australia's most experienced technology reporters, with an involvement in the computer industry spanning almost 50 years. He learned to program in the late 1960s, studied computer science in the early 70s, worked on mainframes, taught programming, and ran a business networking PCs in the 80s. In journalism, he has worked in print, radio and television, been a columnist and commentator, and is an award winning feature writer. Apart from being The Australian's senior technology reporter, he discusses technology trends weekly on Sky Business channel's TECH.biz program. Melissa Yeo - Markets Reporter Sydney Melissa Yeo is a markets reporter. Prior to joining The Australian, she worked as a digital journalist covering small cap stocks for Stockhead, and as a rural reporter in Queensland. COMP3760/6760 Assignment 1 Semester 2, 2020 Page 7 Appendix 2 Writing at university level means academic writing. Academic writing is not like writing a novel. Informal writing styles are not encouraged. You are required to substantiate what you write/say in your academic and professional lives. It is only in rare instances where you will be permitted to write works of fiction at university, it is also for similar reasons that the first person singular (I feel, I think, I did, My feeling is …), is generally to be avoided in writing university assignments (there are some exceptions to this rule, for example law faculties often adopt the first-person-singular in their writing style). As insulting as this may seem, as a student you are not considered to be an expert at anything (that usually comes with the title Dr. and then later Professor). The point is you need to state the source of your information in assignments. Furthermore it is generally considered politically-correct to avoid gender-specific writing styles; in other words don’t refer to authors/people/whoever as he, unless they actually are male - examine the link at the foot of the page.3 For the purposes of this assignment, we will use the Harvard referencing style, although if you are comfortable with footnoting, please do so. Citing vs. quoting 1. Where an idea is ‘adopted/adapted’ from an author but restated in your words one uses citing as a means of establishing where the information was derived from. For example …… Smith (1990) was inclined to believe that … blah blah blah, … (where blah blah blah are your words, but the author’s ideas). No page number needs to be included for citing authors (but you must include the author’s surname, and date of publication of the reference where you have derived the information from). No, you cannot cite your friends (or lecture/tutorial/practical material). 2. Where the words have simply been lifted/copied directly by you, is referred to as quoting someone. For example ….. it was felt that “of all the database schemas, the object relational approach is …..” (Zhang, 1990 p. 53). In this case quotation marks are used as well as a page number stating where the information directly came from. Where you have quote that is longer than say 20 words, you indent these as a separate paragraph from the main body of your text and you single space the block quote, like so When faced with a small problem domain, system development can be all about modeling of user functional requirements. However, when faced with a large problem domain, such as with an enterprise information system, system development must recognize the demands placed on it by the non-functional system qualities. The quality of interest in this paper is supportability (Maciaszek and Liong, 2003; Maciaszek et al., 2004). Supportability is really the combination of three qualities – understandability, maintainability and scalability. An unsupportable system is a legacy system (Maciaszek, 2005 p. 17). …. Note, no quote marks are necessary, but you still include author surname, year of publication and page number. You do not need to italicise block quotes (or normal quotes for that matter). Lecture notes/course notes DO NOT count as references!! These are not to be referred to in written assignments/reports (this is considered amateur-ish). Report structure The word processed report will include - table of contents - sub-titles 3 http://www.uq.edu.au/about/non-discriminatory-language (MQ used to have a set of guidelines too, however I cannot find a link). COMP3760/6760 Assignment 1 Semester 2, 2020 Page 8 - list of references OR bibliography4 The assignment should be space and a half or double-spaced. The reference list or bibliography should be single-spaced. Your paragraphs may either be left-aligned or justified. Bibliography/Reference list The minimum level of detail for each book/journal reference used in either a list of references or bibliography is as follows. For a book: Busch, P., (2008) Tacit Knowledge in Organizational Learning IGI-Global Hershey Pennsylvania U.S.A. For a journal article/conference paper: Venkitachalam, K., Busch, P., (2012) "Tacit Knowledge: Review and Possible Research Directions" Journal of Knowledge Management 16(2) pp: 357-372. For electronic publications (e.g. ones from the internet): Busch, P., (2006) "Organisation Design and Tacit Knowledge Transferal: An Examination of Three IT Firms" Journal of Knowledge Management Practice 7(2) URL: http://www.tlainc.com/ articl111.htm (accessed 12/7/20). At the end of your assignment, you simply place all types of references together in alphabetical order of author surname. You do not list them separately by book, conference paper and electronic publication. Marking Rubric Developing (Borderline Fail-Pass) Functional (Pass) Proficient (Credit) Advanced (Distinction-High Distinction) Writing and Analysis Perhaps 1 or more references, but little cohesion in writing. No link between one concept to the next. References lacking at the end of the assignment. Perhaps 2-4 sources considered, basic presentation of concepts but lacking good synthesis of arguments. Good range of literature consulted (3-4+ references). Case well argued. Some flaws in analysis. Excellent understanding of the concepts with very sound synthesis of the literature (typically 6+ references cited/quoted). 4 A list of references includes just those specific references you cited and/or quoted from, whereas a bibliography includes the references as well as any other texts (electronic or paper) you may have used in producing the assignment (e.g. you may have looked up a word in a dictionary).