Briefly describe the company you will be looking at for the assignment and how they currently use big data

Overview

You will be creating a presentation of data to share with decision makers. Choose an industry and company you find interesting. To ensure you have access to information required for completing this assignment, the company you choose must be a publicly traded firm. You can choose any B2C firm.

Requirements

• What to submit: Upload your paper in Microsoft Word format.

• Length: The paper should be 1,600 to 1,800 words long excluding the title page, references, etc.

• Rubric: Your paper will be graded using the rubric included below. Please pay more attention on row #5, #6, #7, and #11 requirements in Rubric below. The requirement for row #7 alone is 30 points

Instructions

Write a paper outlining what data you would choose to present to some of the firm’s managers/staff and how you would present that data. Your paper should include each of the following sections:

1. Use headings to divide the paper into the sections identified on the rubric

2. Start with a section explaining best practices in organizing and displaying data for business users, including the design of dashboards.

3. Briefly describe the company you will be looking at for the assignment and how they currently use big data

4. List at least four data users by job title.

o Include the CEO on this list.

o Include at least one other manager who makes important decisions for the firm and who could make use of data on a regular basis. Examples of managers you might consider include VP of Manufacturing, Product Manager, Store Manager, Regional Sales Manager, etc.

o Finally, include the job title of at least two individual contributors who can make use of data. Examples of individual contributors include sales representative, retail sales associate, customer service representative, etc.

Your choices for this role are likely to vary by the industry type of firm (e.g., manufacturer, retailer, service provider) you have chosen.

4. Include brief job descriptions for each user (job title)

5. Include descriptions of the data needs of each user

6. List data items you recommend that can be supplied to each user (job title).

o Consider these data items carefully. You will want to include data needed by the user (manager or staff member in that position) to do their job and exclude data that would be unhelpful or distracting.

For example, the CEO might find data from financial statements (and ratios from financial statement items) useful such as expenses, sales by division, gross margin, average sale amount, return on assets (ROA), return on investment (ROI), variance reports (actual vs. budget) by division, etc.

A store manager, on the other hand, would more likely benefit from information such as refunds, net sales, total labor cost, customer ratings/feedback, employee count, FTE count, etc. A store manager would also likely want to see comparisons to peer stores or benchmarks for store operations.

o Be sure to include only data items the company can reasonably be expected to have. For example, a company is not likely to have detailed data on a competitor, so do not include detailed data on competitors unless it is available in that industry.

o Consider using a table to display your list of data items and which users would be provided with each.

7. Include a description and illustration of the user’s dashboard.

o Each dashboard should display data most helpful to that user.

o Be sure to include data on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis.

o Group data logically, and emphasize at least two KPIs for each user along with data allowing the user to dig deeper into the details behind the KPIs.

o Use graphical presentations of data in cases where the visual display would make the data more helpful to the user and would enhance understanding of the data presented.

o Create each dashboard in Excel, and paste each one of them into your paper. Each dashboard illustration should include sample data.

8. Close your paper with a brief summary and your conclusions

• Use headings to divide the paper into logical sections.

• A minimum of five trade publication articles, five academic journal articles, and the annual report of the company should be used as references. These should be real, widely read (at least in their industry) publications, not random blogs or websites. Additional credible references (books, general interest business publications, local newspapers, websites, blogs, etc.) are welcome.

• Sources for both major concepts and direct quotes used in your paper must be cited in the text of the paper and be in the reference list at the end of the paper.
Format the paper using APA style for the title page, page layout (line spacing, page numbers, etc.), headings, citations, and references. There is no need to follow additional APA style requirements.

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