BUS368 - Innovation Management and Digital Transformation

Assignment Task

Case Scenario

The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the business of Secure Systems Pte Ltd (SSPL). A supplier of integrated building access security systems, the company had been selling and installing turnstile access systems along with security cameras to track customer traffic in malls and retail shops. Business was good in pre-COVID days due to new malls being opened and existing malls being re-developed.

And, during the COVID circuit-breaker years of 2020 and 2021, the company was shrewd to pivot its business towards the sale of automated safe management measure (SMM) gates that could scan the government-sponsored Trace-Together (TT) app and dongle for enforcing vaccination-differentiated visitor entry into malls and other public spaces. Fast forward to 2022. By the middle of the year, Singapore had moved into the endemic phase of living with COVID-19. SMM requirements are no longer required. All businesses could resume normal operations. Such changes have rendered the automated SMM gates irrelevant! James Tan, the CEO of SSPL, was deeply concerned. He called for an urgent meeting of his key product managers and senior engineers. Looking grim, he announced: “It is great that virtually all COVID SMMs are now removed. It is almost business-as-usual for many malls and shops. But this is bad news for us.

Our flagship SMM gate product is now effectively killed! Our strength is in security systems. When we pivoted to SMM products, we also gained deep competencies in mobile app development, computer networking, cloud deployment and server integration. As we search for our next flagship product, we should leverage on this know-how that we have worked so hard to acquire. I am sure all of us in this room have read in the news about countless scams on unsuspecting victims causing many to lose cumulatively tens of millions of dollars. For some, their lifesavings are wiped out in a matter of hours. They have been tricked by messages and phone calls received on their mobile phones. The authorities have been publicising these attacks and sharing precautionary advice on how to cope with such attacks.

Yet, these scams continue to proliferate! This presents a major opportunity for us. Indeed, our business survival may just depend on it. I am wondering if we could use our knowledge of security systems, networks, mobile app and server development to address mobile and online scams. In my mind, I see a security-based app that can be installed on all the major smartphones that will alert users to potential scam calls and messages such as those from SMS, WhatsApp, WeChat and Telegram. Our app will intelligently scan all messages, voice recordings, phone numbers and URLs to detect current and evolving scam risks.

It will analyse and aggregate knowledge from all these inputs from its user base using Artificial Intelligence to alert its users in real-time or near real-time. Every crisis brings with it unique opportunities. I would like all of you to form an Anti-Scam App project team to brainstorm on creative product and service ideas that will help us define our next flagship product. Scams are a global threat. This is our golden opportunity to expand globally beyond the narrow confines of Singapore!” Imagine that you are a member of the project team. The CEO expects you to creatively develop and refine his broad idea of an Anti-Scam Mobile (ASM) app further. Answer the questions that follow based on the above problem context.

Question 1

(a) Researchers have proposed many product concepts by framing the idea of a “product” differently: Crawford-Benedetto, Henderson-Clark, Kotler, Slack, Product Packaging. Describe any one such product concept. Use it to examine what aspect of the proposed ASM product needs to be innovated. Discuss how it could be marketed effectively.

(b) Using Pearson’s Risk Map, analyse the uncertainty involved in your innovation and recommend how SBSPL can move forward on the innovation. How would you protect your suggested innovation in Q1(a)? 

Question 2

The ASM project team had been making good progress and giving regular updates to the CEO. Architecturally, they have split the app into two parts: mobile client and anti-scam server. It is the server-part that is particularly impressive. It consists of a database of anti-scam rules and an AI engine that can scan messages and phone recordings for new scam patterns and self-learn new rules for the database. In fact, the source of the messages need not even be from the mobile phone! Just recently, the CEO of a local online shopping platform had approached James for help.

The shopping platform has had its fair share of scams that are perpetrated by both buyers and sellers of the platform. He was able to produce live data detailing suspicious online behaviour to James. This was reducing both buyer and seller trust of the platform. If it is not addressed, it will eventually lead to the demise of the platform. James was very pleased with the progress of the ASM project team. The investment in R&D effort is paying off. His entrepreneurial mind is racing ahead. He now sees a new service opportunity in supporting online shopping platforms!

(a) Suggest a suitable service. How will your service be a compelling value proposition for the customer? Construct the steps that the project team needs to take to develop your proposed service. Be sure to relate how different aspects of the service will be developed in the process. 

(b) The government has been encouraging local enterprises to digitalise their business. Digitalisation is often described in terms of the three (3) related concepts of digital transformation, digitalisation and digitisation. Describe each of these concepts and sketch a diagram of the digitialisation pyramid to show the relationships between them. Illustrate each of these concepts in the context of the case scenario above.

This BUS368 - Management has been solved by our PhD Experts at My Uni Paper.