1. The Case

Best Bike Ever (BBE) is a company1 started as a local family business more than 40 years ago in North America. The company sells a wide range of bikes, bike parts and accessories, as well as sport clothing and equipment related to biking. BBE grew rapidly in its first decade and soon expanded to an international business after few years with a dozen branches across several countries.

The CEO of BBE has recently been to a conference about Business Analytics where several companies shared their fantastic experiences and stories on how analytics help them to achieve business value and enhance competitive advantages. The BBE CEO was amazed to see how data-driven fact-based insights from analytics can improve decision-making in organisations which in turn increase profitability, performance and success. Upon returning from the conference, he placed a high priority on initiating an analytics project in BBE. As a graduate from Massey University who has successfully completed an Analytics course and learnt how to use relevant tools and techniques, you are assigned to the project team and your job is to embark BBE on Analytics!

2. Your Task

Download BBE dataset (BBE Dataset.xlsx) from Stream (under Assessment 2 tab). It is an Excel file containing four Excelsheets holding the Internetsalesinformation of BBE between 2017 to 2020. Then use what you learnt in lectures and Qlik Sense workshops to create a useful, informative, insightful and rich dashboard for BBE management to use. Think about what diagrams/visualisations would be useful for the managers of BBE (so should be on the dashboard). Then use your dashboard to analyse the BBE sales data and write your report for BBE top management.

What to include and discuss in your report (and your dashboard) is ultimately your choice. But as a guideline, your report, at least, should address the following points:

a. At least 9 (NINE) visualisations (graphs/charts) are required to be included in your dashboard.

c. If the dashboard sheet extent further down your screen (which is likely to happen), take several screenshots (from top and bottom of the sheet) and include them all in your report.

Remember, this is a data-driven report. Everything that you say in the report should be backed-up by data. Your dashboard is your primary source. For example, if you say that product X was sold most in 2018, you should provide a screenshot of the relevant graph (from dashboard) in your report to support your finding/statement.

3. Access to Qlik Sense

4. Explanation of the data in the dataset

This section explains the data in the BBE Dataset.xlsx dataset file (available on Stream). This Excel file contains four different sheets which holds the Internet sales information of BBE: Products, Customers, Orders and Promotion

This is the explanation of the four sheets:

Below is a diagram showing the relationship between these six tables (that together present Internet Sales information of the company): 

Data in Orders table (or sheet) is connected to the other tables with a number of Key fields. For example, ProductKey field in Products table tells you which product was sold in each transaction. As an example, in the first line of data in Orders, you can see that ProductKey is 310:

The name of the fields in the tables are quite self-explanatory, however, description for some of the fields is provided below (not all fields and all tables as many are very obvious from the names):

Customers:

Product:

Promotion:

But note: There is only one thing that you should do after you’ve uploaded the Excel file into Qlik Sense: Action 1 and Action 2 bellow:

Action 1: This may not happen to everyone but for some of you, when you are importing the assignment Excel dataset into Qlik Sense, your will see two additional tables show up in the "Tables" list starting with _xlmn (see below image). Do NOT tick these two tables. Just tick the first four (products, customers, orders, promotion).

Action 2: When you upload the data into Qlik Sense and apply the Recommended Associations(Apply all), you will see the below result:

To do so, drag the Products bubble and drop it onto the Orders bubble. When you do this, you will see the below screen:

Select Products.ProductKey from the Products table and Orders.ProductKey from the Orders table, then click Associate (this is telling Qlik that these two Product Keys represent the same thing):

6. Important Notes

https://owll.massey.ac.nz/assignment-types/business-report.php

• You can also watch the very useful videos produced by former School of Management English Language & Academic Success (ELAS) advisor, Nick Roelants, about how to write a good “report”:

• There are no specific instruction for font type, size, line space, etc! … As a University student, however, you are expected to deliver a professional piece of work that is clear, neat and well organised. Don’t forget to include page numbers. Figures and tables (if used) should be always numbered and captioned, and you should refer to them at least once in the body of your writing. Using justified text is visually appealing.

• Clarity of language, layout and general presentation is an assessable aspect of the assignment.

• Remember that your document must look like a professional piece of work. Remember that you are presenting it to your managers in BBE. Try to impress them by the quality of your work! Managers always care about the appearance and small details.

7. Submission

8. Marking criteria

Criteria	Value
Dashboards and Analysis ‐ Designing and developing a useful, informative, insightful and rich dashboard appropriate for managers of BBE ‐ Incorporating adequate, relevant, and meaningful visualisations/diagrams into the dashboard ‐ Good coverage of most important aspects of sales data analysis in dashboard and the report ‐ Thorough analysis of data from different aspects (both in dashboard and the report) ‐ Adequate and well-reasoned discussion/explanation of the (most important) diagrams/visualisations in the report ‐ Reasonable alignment between the dashboard and the report ‐ Reasonable data-driven discussion/insights supported by data and relevant graphs/visualisations ‐ Suitable answer to the three specific questions	50%
Argument Development ‐ Logical and well-constructed argument/discussion in the report (each paragraph argues one specific point, clear line of argument, good cohesion between paragraphs, clear main thesis statement for each paragraph) ‐ Avoiding irrelevant and off-track information/discussion ‐ Avoiding unsupported statements, claims, and discussions	30%
Format and Presentation ‐ Appropriate business report structure ‐ Correct spelling, punctuation and grammar ‐ Clear, logical, concise and professional presentation and writing style ‐ Clear and appropriate language and tone for a professional piece of writing ‐ Readable and good quality screenshots in the report ‐ Adhere to the word count limit ‐ Visually appealing	20%
Total	100%

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