Your Blogs were a success and were seen by the manager of Atlantic Office Supplies – a small company in the USA that distribute a variety of Office Supplies who has offered you the position of Senior Applications and Data Analyst that you were happy to accept.
Your new job role now includes interpreting data from the company’s sales information. You are already used to working with traditional software packages such as Microsoft Excel™ for day-to-day analysis and more specialised software such as WEKA for mining data. But recently the company has noticed that they are not performing as well as they should. Therefore, you have been asked to analyse their sales data to look for areas that need attention.
Your manager has asked that you use Microsoft Excel™ to assess and analyse the sales data and you have been asked to produce a Business Report that will discuss the findings of your analysis, supported by a copy of your Microsoft Excel™ spreadsheet that will show the handling of the data.
Task 1 – Microsoft Excel (1000 words + Microsoft Excel™ Screenshots)
Using the ‘Swansea Office Supplies’ data set (that has been provided in the Module Documents Tile on Moodle), and with the use of Microsoft Excel™ analyse the data to find any areas where profitability is low or negative (i.e. a loss). In doing so, you must demonstrate relevant examples of (but not limited to) the following Microsoft Excel™ functions: such as IF, LOOKUP, PIVOT TABLES, CHARTS and GRAPHS. Each function used within your report will need to be explained and their use evaluated to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of using Microsoft Excel™ to pre-process, analyse and visualise the data for decision making purposes.
Your response to both tasks must be presented in a Business Report format of 2000 words (+/- 10%) and include a minimum of 15 academic references in the following suggested structure:
• Front Cover
• Executive Summary
• Content Page
• 1.0 Introduction
• 2.0 Main Findings
o 2.1 Excel
• 3.0 Conclusions
• 4.0 Recommendations
• References
• Appendices (If appropriate)
