Reference no: EM133672648

Business Intelligence

Part A:

As information and communication technologies advance, the business landscape is undergoing constant evolution, becoming progressively complex. Both private and public entities, ranging from organizations to corporations, face mounting challenges that compel them to adapt swiftly to evolving dynamics and to pioneer innovative operational approaches. This necessitates a level of agility that allows for rapid and frequent adjustments in strategic, tactical, and operational planning, often involving integrated decisions. The formulation of these decisions often hinges on the availability and analysis of vast amounts of pertinent data, information, and insights. This analysis must be conducted in real-time, necessitating the support of computerized systems. With the continuous evolution of technology, products are becoming smarter and interconnected, and services more automated, significantly transforming how knowledge is leveraged and applied, essentially turning it into wisdom in various domains.Please study the following 3 scenarios:
• "How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition"
• "ChatGPT and How AI Disrupts Industries"
• "What Makes a Company Successful at Using AI"
And you are required to write a report to discuss:
1. Based on a chosen example from the provided 3 scenarios to discuss your understanding of Business Intelligence and Business Analytics.
2. How the innovative technologies (AI, IoT, blockchain) in the selected examplehelp to transform business competition in the medical field.
3. Is Business Intelligence a cure-all measure to every solution for a company to sustain its positionin the international market? Discussion the drawbacks or potential issues.

Note: you do not need to include Summary, Introduction (Background) and Conclusion for this report, but the references should be included. However, a specific example should be from the provided 3 scenarios.

Part B
This part emphasises on the use of a DSS tool, and you are required to demonstrate proficiency with Visual DSSTM (a DSS development language/DSS generator).
Question B-1
Sonoff Pty Ltd is a leading IoT (Internet of Things) company, which has wireless Wi-Fi smart home products to turn your home into a smart home at low price. In 2024, this company is planning to build a new product line to introduce LoRaWAN gateway products for future farming applications into the market in North Australia:

Under intense competitive environment, the company engaged a consulting firm to conduct a feasibility study. Senior management requires a thorough analysis of one smart gateway product that will be introduced to the market. As a senior business analyst in the consulting firm, you have been appointed to advise the senior management on the feasibility of the new product.
An initial analysis conducted by other analysts for the product claim the anticipated net present value (NPV) for the new product line is over $1 million and they have recommended the manufacture of the product based on this assessment.
Your task is to use a decision support system (DSS) and report to the senior management whether the claim of the NPV being over $1 million is correct or incorrect using the relevant information given in Table 1.

Table 1: Summarised product details

Initial investment needed: $1,500,000

Annual overhead cost: $115,000 (cloud hosting is outsourced)

Cost of production: $20.00 per unit

Estimated selling price: $28.5 per unit

Market at the time of introduction: 426,000 units per year

Market growth: 18.5% per year

Market share: Most likely 21%

Assumed economically useful lifetime: 4 years, commencing 2024

Discount rate used to analyse new product proposals is 17.5%

Your task:
1. Develop a decision support model using Visual DSS using the variables described above. Include comments within your Visual DSS model to explain the variables and your calculations.
2. Based on the result of your model, what is the net present value (NPV)? Explain whether the claim regarding the NPV being above $1 million is correct or incorrect.
Hints
• Note that overhead and initial investment both occur at the START of the respective year, and profit occurs at the END of the year.
• You should use the correct NPV formula in Visual DSS. Use the ‘Help' feature within the Visual DSS application and Visual DSS tutorial to learn more about the correct NPV formula, which is applicable to the scenario, described in Question 1.
• The initial investment is a startup cost applicable to the first period only (i.e. 2024).
• The NPV is only relevant for the first period (i.e. 2024) for decision-making - so only report it for that period. Using NPV (0) in Visual DSS will allow you to achieve this.

Question B-2
You are now asked to analyse the variations on the impact of market share, cost of producing, overheads and initial investment on the NPV. You need to conduct a risk analysis based on the information below:
a) Unit costs can be described by normally distributed, mean of $20, standard deviation of $3.
b) Market share: triangular distribution - the range from $16% to 25% with 20% as the most likely cost.
c) Overhead: could be as low as $90,000 per year or as high as $135,000 per year but is most likely to be $125,000 per year. The distribution could be represented using a triangular distribution.
d) Market growth can be uniformly distributed between 15% and 22%.The senior management decided on the following decision criteria:
Decision criteria: The company is willing to proceed if there is a 60% or greater chance that the net present value will be greater than $1,000,000.

Your task:
1. You are required to use Visual DSS to run a Monte Carlo simulation (a Risk Analysis).
2. Produce a cumulative probabilities report and graph for the above question. Based on results and the decision criteria, explain whether the senior management should accept (willing) or reject(unwilling) the proposed production of the new IoT product.
 
PART C: (500 words)
In this part, you are required to demonstrate data validation by using Power BI.
Power BI is a business analytics service provided by Microsoft. It provides interactive visualizations with self-service business intelligence capabilities, where end users can create reports and dashboards by themselves, without having to depend on information technology staff or database administrators.
Download the needed data fromthe unit website, Financial Sample, or from Financial Sample Excel workbook.

By using Power BI Desktop, you are required to complete the following tasks:
• Develop any relationship between Product, SaleFact, Date, Country and Segment for this "financial sample" as a below example of Sales and Marketing Sample:

• Generate a pagedashboardrelated to sales as below:

In the Page Dashboard, it should containa title and at least the following charts:
o map
o tree map
o bar chart
• Generate a second page dashboard to show the trend or growthopportunities as above.
In the Page Dashboard, it should contain a title and at least the following charts:
o scatter chart (Sales, Product, Segment and Unit Sold)
o Line chart
o bar chart
• Use one more page dashboard tosummarise the dashboards as a report:
o Discuss the trend or growth opportunities
o Indicatepotential opportunitiesand what kind of business promotion/decision making can be applied for.