Reference no: EM132735159 , Length: word count:1050

Data Driven Decisions for Business

Part 1:

Assessment Brief

2.1. Scenario

You have recently been employed as a data analyst in a consultancy called Wood From the Trees (WFTT). The consultancy was established 10 years ago and specialises in helping companies that don't have the skills to analyse data to support business decisions. WFTT have successfully established a strong reputation and they are now working with internationally recognised brands.

As WFFTs expands they continue to bring in new employee's. The recruitment strategy is to employ less experienced people and give them the support and development they need to succeed in the company. They like recruits to have a broad management experience and not be specialist analysts because they offer more commercially viable recommendations.

As part of the approach to introducing you to how the company works WFFT have asked you to complete a number of initial tasks to ensure that you have a grounded knowledge and understanding of the company. This is your opportunity to demonstrate your capability and give them the confidence to let you run your own project in the future. The responses to requests detailed below should be included in a summary Word report that you save and submit in a PDF file.

Formative Week 1

1. Summarise the key changes and trends that are leading to the increased importance of data analysis in companies

Week 2

WFTT have recently taken on a new client - they are mid sized high end luxury international jewellery chain called Bangles. The first phase of the project for Bangles is to understand the performance of the company. To do this you have been asked to define the data request to be sent to Bangles. A data request is a table that lists the data you would like Bangles to send and which will then be used for the analysis. As an example - the data request is expected to include sales by key category by month by market (e.g United Kingdom)

2. Produce a summary table which describes the data and the business function within Bangles that you expect to be responsible for providing this data. Your line manager has indicated that they expect you to cover both financial and non financial data and at least 6 different types of data be requested (for example sales, profit)
250 words. 10 Marks

Week 3

Bangles has provided an extract of data - which your line manager has made available to you in a spreadsheet (see separate Excel file). You have been asked to complete an initial review of the data and to create relevant descriptive statistics

3. Highlight any issues you can see in the data - and describe how you identified them. Justify what you will do to resolve each issue that you identify

4. Create the following statistics
A. Total volume and sales value by month
B. Average prices per month by category and total
C. Total volume and sales by category and total by year and by quarter
D. Year on year volume, sales value and average price by category and total Include a summary table of C and D in your report
20 marks

Week 4

A key step in any project that your company delivers is to take the data and present it back to the client in a visual form. Your line manager has asked you to complete this work

5. Using the descriptive statistics that you have calculated in your answer to part (4) create up to 4 charts to visualise the data and copy these charts into the submission. You need to have at least 1 example of the following types of chart
a. At least one of your charts needs to use a secondary axis (e.g. the chart needs to have a line and bar shown on separate axes)
b. A stacked bar chart

6. Include a short commentary for each chart that explains what is being presented, why it matters and highlights any follow up questions you think are relevant

Part 2:
2. Assessment Brief

2.1. Scenario

You have recently been employed as a data analyst in a consultancy called Wood From the Trees (WFTT). The consultancy was established 10 years ago and specialises in helping
companies that don't have the skills to analyse data to support business decisions. WFTT have successfully established a strong reputation and they are now working with internationally recognised brands.

As WFFTs expands they continue to bring in new employee's. The recruitment strategy is to employ less experienced people and give them the support and development they need to succeed in the company. They like recruits to have a broad management experience and not be specialist analysts because they offer more commercially viable recommendations.

As part of the approach to introducing you to how the company works WFFT have asked you to complete a number of initial tasks to ensure that you have a grounded knowledge and understanding of the company. This is your opportunity to demonstrate your capability and give them the confidence to let you run your own project in the future. The responses to requests detailed below should be included in a summary Word report that you save and submit in a PDF file.

2.2. Summative

Your line manager is happy with your performance and because you have familiarity with the Bangles data she has asked you to lead the next stage of the project. Bangles invested in a marketing campaign in the UK in month 5 2020.

The business question that Bangles are trying to address are:

• Did the marketing campaign have a positive impact on sales performance in the UK? A new dataset is available to you (see separate file)
You have been asked to complete a report for the client. This should be written in Word and then saved as a PDF and be no more than 2,500 words. Because this is your first client report for WFTT your line manager has given you additional detail re the structure and content that she expects to see

a) Context. Summarise the key changes and trends that are leading to the increased importance of data analysis in companies such as Bangles, and how data analytics can add value

b) Plan. Summarise and justify the analytical approach that you will take using business analytics to answer the business question

c) Analysis
i. Data. Outline any steps you have taken to clean the data
ii. Analysis. Apply relevant analytical techniques that will support answering the business question. Summarise your analysis in insightful tables and charts and include an appropriate management commentary that highlights the key points that can be drawn from your analysis

d) Conclusion and next steps
i. Concisely summarise your conclusions and recommendations in respect of the business question. This should include how the analysis could be improved (for example through using additional data) and highlight any concerns you have re the analysis
ii. Next steps - critically evaluate the use Bangles could make of advanced techniques such as econometric analysis in further analysing the effectiveness of the UK marketing campaign

e) Board Summary
i. Bangles would like a 5 slide summary that they can use internally and present to the Board. This should cover all of the key points in the report

Create and then cut and paste 5 Microsoft Powerpoint slides into your document that summarises your written report

f) Additional marks are available for the professionalism of your report (for example writing style, quality of your presentation) and the use of appropriate research

Attachment:- Formative Assessment Brief - Data Driven Decisions for Business.rar