1) Prepare to write a business report by following the instructions given below
2) Write the final business report by following the instructions given below
Assessment Description
You work for a large consulting firm.
Several of your clients are accounting practices who are interested in the possible opportunities
and threats generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
Some feel that AI may threaten their current business models whereas others believe that it
presents opportunities to provide services to clients more efficiently.
As you are a recent accounting graduate your manager has tasked you with writing a draft report
on AI as it may impact on accounting businesses. The report will be available to clients and used a
marketing tool to showcase the skills of your consulting firm.
The key elements of your report should be understandable to both accountants and nonaccountants (the boards of the accounting firms often include non-accounting professionals).
Your manager has requested that the report contains (but is not necessarily restricted to)
responses to the following aspects (as they impact on accounting):
1) What is AI?
2) How has technology changed the work of accountants in recent decades?
3) Opportunities from the use of AI
4) Threats from the use of AI
Page 2 Kaplan Business School Assessment Outline
It is important that your report comes to some clear conclusions and make some practical
recommendations for accounting practices to follow.
You are aware of some excellent literature on the topic of artificial intelligence that you will also
incorporate in this report. You can include any information in the report which you think will assist
your clients to better understand this important topic. You must support your arguments and hence
use at least ten resources to inform your discussion. The library databases
(http://elearning.kbs.edu.au/course/view.php?id=159) will provide many useful journal articles on
this topic.
Assessment Instructions
You need to provide this information requested above in a report format in two stages as outlined
below.
Part 1: 20% due Monday of week 6 – Evaluating information resources and research plan –
detailed instructions:
1) Read the case study and briefly answer the following questions:
a) What is the purpose of your report?
b) What is the audience for your report?
c) What are the (key) decisions to be made?
d) What information would help you to make these decisions?
e) When you search for relevant information (in a database for example) what keywords do
you use?
2) Identify 10 sources relevant to the project (e.g. journal articles, textbooks, websites etc). At least
4 of these must be academic journal articles but there should be a variety of different sources
used.
3) Complete a source analysis on 3 of the 10 sources with full bibliographic references. At least 2
of these sources must be academic journal articles. Refer to the source analysis template.
4) Provide a full plan of main and sub headings of the report (include appropriate numbering).
Resources to help you understand these requirements and in particular the source analysis
template are provided on Moodle, including explanatory documents, marking rubrics and slides
(which accompany a presentation by your lecturer in week 2).
Resources to help you understand these requirements and in particular the source analysis
template are provided on Moodle, including explanatory documents, marking rubrics and slides
(which accompany a presentation by your lecturer in week 2). Please ensure you use all the
documents provided to help you.
Maximum words: 1500