This formative assessment for the Leading Through Digital Change module requires students to act as a Digital Transformation Specialist and prepare a Digital Transformation Report for a selected retail organisation. The assessment focuses on how traditional brick-and-mortar retailers can respond to the rapid growth of e-commerce and changing customer expectations. Students are required to evaluate the digital changes affecting their selected organisation and propose appropriate strategic changes that can help maintain competitiveness and create business value. The assessment is aligned with Learning Outcome 1, which focuses on applying knowledge and understanding of management and leadership strategies in organisations experiencing digital change. Students must select one organisation from the options provided in the assessment brief. The available organisations are River Island, Khaadi, Shoprite Holdings Ltd, Reliance Retail and Carphone Warehouse. Each organisation operates within the retail sector but has different markets, products and business contexts, allowing students to investigate digital transformation from an organisational perspective. The main task requires students to critically review and propose an appropriate digital transformation strategic framework that the selected organisation should employ in response to current digital change. Students must use one digital transformation framework from the specified choices: McKinsey 4Ds, BCG 3 Stages, Gartner's 6 Steps or Cognizant's 4 Pillars. The chosen framework should be applied to the organisation rather than simply described. The report should also establish digital transformation objectives that support important organisational departments, particularly operations, ICT and marketing. Examples may be used to strengthen the discussion, while higher-level work should demonstrate extensive personal research and critical evaluation. The report should demonstrate an understanding of the organisation's technological challenges, factors driving digital transformation, internal and external threats, opportunities and emerging digital practices. Stronger submissions are expected to provide clear justification for the selected transformation framework and explain how proposed objectives connect with the factors driving the organisation's digital transformation. The marking criteria place importance on knowledge, analysis, justification, evidence-based discussion and the use of relevant and recent research. The submission has a maximum main-body word count of 1,000 words. The cover page, table of contents, list of abbreviations, references and appendices are excluded from the word count. The required structure includes the BPP cover sheet, table of contents, list of abbreviations where appropriate, introduction, Task 1, conclusion, references and appendix if required. The report must be written in the third person, use professional academic formatting, include correctly labelled tables and figures where applicable, and use Harvard referencing and in-text citations. Overall, the assessment develops students' ability to analyse digital transformation challenges in retail organisations and apply management and leadership concepts to develop a strategically justified response to digital change. It combines organisational analysis, digital transformation frameworks, strategic objectives, academic research and professional business-report writing.
Digital Transformation · Digital Transformation Strategy · Digital Change · Digital Transformation Framework · Leadership · Management Strategies · E-commerce · Retail Transformation · Digital Strategy · Business Value · Competitive Advantage · Operations
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