Assignment Task
Assignment Aim
Part 1 Overview
As a Business Intelligence (BI) consultant you would typically write a proposal for the CEO of an organisation detailing the product (dashboard) you will build for them.
If the CEO accepts your proposal, then the organisation would pay you to do the work and you would build the dashboard according to your proposal specifications.
Assignment Part 1: Pitching for the job
Part 1 is to write a 2,000 word proposal for the CEO of an organisation, detailing the dashboard you will build for them by identifying a key priority and supporting questions that will help them understand and plan for that priority.
In Part 1 you will also provide an example of the dashboard you would build if you got the job, but you will do the actual dashboard building in Part 2 (you have to get the job first!).
This assignment prepares you for this real-world process by being completed in two parts:
In Assignment Part 1 you will need to complete Steps 1, 2 and 3. Step 4 involves data so you will start this step here in Assignment Part 1 and complete this data step in Assignment Part 2, when you build the working dashboard (Step 5).
1. Choosing an organisation of interest.
2. Identifying a priority for that organisation;
3. Identifying questions that support this priority by showing insight (not a final answer);
4. Obtaining data to visualise these insights, including dealing with data quality issues and
joining the data; (only part of this step)
5. Building visualisations of the data to provide insights into the priority
A visual summary of the dashboard-building process is in Figure 1. Steps 1 + 2 are your starting point for any organisation. The supporting questions, which you will produce in Step 3 of Assignment Part 1, are designed to shed insight into the priority – not provide a definitive answer.
In this part of the assignment, you will write questions you believe support the organisation and its priority, with these questions supported in terms of available data.
Guidance for each of these steps for Assignment Part 1 is given in the following sections.
Steps 1 + 2 from Figure 1 need to be completed as follows:
Step 1: Choose an organisation
Choose one of the following organisations for your assignment – you will focus on your chosen organisation in Parts 1 & 2 so pick something you like!
• Shopify
• Bondi Pizza (https://www.bondipizza.com.au/)
• National Wine Centre of Australia
• Qantas
Step 2: Identify a priority from your enrolled program perspective (Accounting)
Identify a single key priority, that would be of interest to your chosen organisation and is relevant to your enrolled degree program.
How to identify a priority?
You have two choices: (1) Come up with one yourself; or (2) look up publicly available reports produced by your chosen organisation and identify a priority from their reports that is most relevant to your degree (Accounting).
This priority will be the focus of both Parts 1 and 2 of your assignment.
As you will need to build a working dashboard in Part 2 you have to think ahead now and identify a priority in an area where you can obtain enough data from different sources to be able to construct your dashboard. Before you panic we have a Finding Data – HELP!!!! section on page 9.
Once you have completed these two steps move on to Step 3.
1905071120Example of Step 1 + Step 2
Example Organisation: Samsung.
One of Samsung’s competitive advantages is manufacturing high-quality smartphones and dispatching them to millions of customers across the globe.
Some example priorities from different discipline perspectives are:
Accounting perspective:
• Dealing with challenges of variability of cost of raw materials in different countries
• Deciding on the optimal set of transport options for each region taking into account cost, reliability and corporate environmental goals
Example of Step 1 + Step 2
Example Organisation: Samsung.
One of Samsung’s competitive advantages is manufacturing high-quality smartphones and dispatching them to millions of customers across the globe.
Some example priorities from different discipline perspectives are:
Accounting perspective:
• Dealing with challenges of variability of cost of raw materials in different countries
• Deciding on the optimal set of transport options for each region taking into account cost, reliability and corporate environmental goals
Step 3: Identifying Supporting Questions for your Chosen Priority
Now that you have completed Steps 1 + Step 2 from Figure 1, in Step 3 it’s time to come up with questions you will pose in Assignment Part 1 and will ultimately give insight into this priority in Part 2, with real data in your working dashboard.
Step 3: For Assignment Part 1 you need to come up with 5 questions the proposed dashboard will be able to deliver insights for that the CEO can’t answer now or can’t answer easily (otherwise why would you get the job?!?).
Question Self check: by providing insights to your proposed questions, will the CEO/Owner be able to use the dashboard to understand and plan for the priority?
When you construct your questions, remember you will use these questions to produce the visualisations in your dashboard in Part 2 – so think ahead and develop questions for which you can obtain enough data from different sources to be able to construct your dashboard.
Finding Data – HELP!!!!
In Part 1 you need to include potential data sources you will use in Part 2 when you finally build the working dashboard.
Remember – you are not building the dashboard in Part 1 but you do need to think about the data in Part 1 and identify reliable data sources to support your proposal that you could use in Part 2 when you build the working dashboard.
Finding data about your organisation is very similar to finding references for your report. It is also a useful skill to develop and as a professional you will have to do it often in your career. It can be challenging to find good quality and reliable data. Done well, you can bring new insight and value to especially if it is not already available from internal systems (eg: like benchmarking info).
Importantly, think about the questions you want to answer with your dashboard because this will focus your search (too much data is also a problem!). Sometimes data can also help us think of questions too, so it’s a balancing act we all learn to achieve with practice
Tip: include the word ‘statistics’ in your search eg: ‘Australian airline statistics’
Potential sources of data include – but are not limited to
• Publicly listed companies (those that have shares and are on a stock exchange) will often have an investor page.
• Many organisations report to government bodies like regulators (ASIC, ombudsmen, etc.). Look for annual reports (which may be on the investor page if they have one)
• UniSA Company and Industry Guide — IbisWorld and Company360 are particularly good resources https://guides.library.unisa.edu.au/companyinfo
• The Australian Bureau of Statistics are useful (eg: Australian Bureau of Statistics http://www.abs.gov.au, SA Government http://data.sa.gov.au/, Australian Government http://data.gov.au/) and are also very good quality sources of data.
• European equivalents of the Australian government sites including EU Open Data Portal http://data.europa.eu/euodp/en/data/
• US equivalents of the Australian government sites including https://www.data.gov/ and the US Census Bureau https://www.census.gov/data.html
• UN Data http://data.un.org/
• Open Data Kit https://opendatakit.org/
• World Health Organisation https://www.who.int/gho/database/en/
• UNICEF https://data.unicef.org/
• Federations, associations and industry bodies (like the Australian Bankers Association if you were studying a bank) are another source. Often the data will be confidential and you can’t obtain it – so consider using data related to that industry/sector. One source that is open is the World Bank Open Data https://data.worldbank.org/
• Kaggle https://www.kaggle.com/datasets
• A link to around 100+ data sites but choose data that appears to come from reliable sources https://www.columnfivemedia.com/100-best-free-data-sources-infographic
Written Proposal for Steps 1, 2 + 3: Presentation + Structure
For the purpose of this assignment, you can assume your client (the reader) knows a little about BI.
You should also assume they don’t have any BI dashboards around the priority that you’ve chosen but obviously would have data.
Don’t spend time researching what they currently have in BI dashboards – it’s not a research assignment, it’s a providing-a-new-solution assignment.
Since this is a proposal for a business audience, it should be presented in a professional format making it easy to read. The use of diagrams and graphs, particularly to show figures, will earn more marks. All figures and tables should be captioned and referenced by label in text (e.g. Table 1 contains …, Figure 1 shows … ). An efficient layout is important but don’t spend too much time on making it look good and not enough time on the content. Microsoft Word has many sample templates that can be used.
Using bullet points are OK occasionally but you’ll need sentences for each point (i.e. just a bullet point list with no explanation isn’t suitable).
Do not write in the first person (“I”)
Important: Whenever you use technical terms, explain them using non-technical wording. Loss of marks will apply here.
Word Limit
Total limit is 2000 words +/- 10% (1800 – 2200 words part of allowable word limit)
Marks will be deducted if the assignment is too short or too long. Keeping to a word limit requires a focus on what the reader most needs to know.
Included in the word count:
• The body of the assignment:
• Headings
• Direct quotes (you will gain more marks by writing using your own words then using lots of direct quotes)
• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Diagram headings and captions• Google dataset search https://toolbox.google.com/datasetsearch
Excluded from the word count:
• Title page
• Table of contents
• References
• Footnotes
• Text within diagrams (headings and captions contribute to the word limit)
The proposal should contain the sections below covering the points described:
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