Assessment 2 – Business Analytics Project (Due 13 Nov 2020)
Please read all the instructions very sincerely. (up to bottom)
Description
The Insight Toys Company is an organization that manufactures toys at different production sites worldwide. We are trying to find ways to be more competitive and are striving to increase customer satisfaction. Managers of finance department need to better understand profitability and sales issues.
Data
The INSIGHT_TOY_DEMO data set, contains 57 variables and 1,600,000 observations. It represents the historic transactional data from the company.
Data Dictionary
Field Description
Customer Customer No.
Facility Facility (99) – sales office, or manufacturing location.
Facility City City where the facility is located.
Facility Continent Continent where the facility is located.
Facility Country Country where the facility is located.
Facility Opening Date Used to calculate the Facility Age
Facility Region Region (within a country) where the facility is located.
Geography Hierarchy A hierarchy made up of Continents, Countries, Regions, Cities and Customers
Product Brand 2 product brands: “Novelty” and “Toy”.
Product Line 8 product lines. A line belongs to one product brand (see above)
Product Make 71 product makes. A make belongs to one product line (see above).
Product Style 335 product styles. A style belongs to one product make (see above).
Products Hierarchy A hierarchy that was created to drill down from product brands to line, make, style and product ID.
Sales Rep ID of the sales representative that made the sale.
Order Order No.
1

Field Description
Transaction Date Date of the sale, from January 1st, 1998 to September 7th, 2005.
Transaction Month Month and year of the sale, from January 1998 to September 2005.
Transaction Weekday Day of the week when the sale happened (“Monday”, “Tuesday”, etc).
Transaction Year Year of the sale, from 1998 to 2005.
Unit Manufacturing unit that was used to assemble that product. There are 166 units in total.
Unit Status Status of the manufacturing unit (eg. “Active”, Failure”, etc). There are 5 possible status.
Customer Distance Distance from the customer address to the nearest sales facility. Anywhere from 100 meters to 50 kilometers.
Customer Satisfaction An evaluation of the customer satisfaction, at the time of the sale.
Scores vary from about 20% (very low satisfaction) all the way to 100%.
Facility Age Age of the facility, from 0 (brand new) to about 32 years old.
Facility Efficiency An evaluation of the efficiency of the facility’s operations, based on multiple management factors. Scores vary from 30% to 100%.
Gross Margin Product Sale minus Product Cost of Sale
Gross Margin Ratio A percentage of gross margin, calculated by dividing Gross Margin by Product Sale for each transaction.
Product Cost of Sale Product Cost of Sale. The purchase and production cost of the product sold.
Product Material Cost The raw material component of the Cost of Sale.
Product Price (target) The standard ideal product price – if the product was deemed 100% quality and the market conditions were ideal, this is what the Product Sale price would be set at.
Product Quality An evaluation of the manufacturing quality of the product. Scores vary from 60% to 100%.
Product Sale The actual revenue of the sale of that product.
Sales Rep Customer Base Amount of potential revenue for all possible customers in a given sales representative’s region.
Sales Rep Customers Number of customers a sales representative is responsible for at a given date.
Sales Rep ID ID of the sales representative who made that sale.
Sales Rep Rating The internal organization’s evaluation of the performance of a sales representative.
Field Description
Unit Actual Products produced from a given manufacturing unit at that point in time.
Unit Age Age of a manufacturing unit.
Unit Capacity Maximum production capacity of a given unit for a given period.
Unit Discard Rate A percentage representing the number of products discarded for quality reason, divided by the unit target (see below).
Unit Lifespan A ratio represented by 100% minus (age of the manufacturing unit divided by its theoretical lifespan).
Unit Lifespan Limit The Unit Lifespan (see above) point at which a facility replaces manufacturing units.
Unit Reliability A ratio representing how reliable a manufacturing unit is. It is made up of products discarded for quality reasons, divided by total amount of products assembled by the unit, for a given time period.
Unit Target Products that should be produced from a given manufacturing unit at that point in time.
Unit Yield Rate A ratio of products produced (‘Unit Actual’) vs. that should be produced (‘Unit Target’).
xyCustomer Lat Latitude where the customer is located
xyCustomer Lon Longitude where the customer is located
xyFacility Lat Latitude where the selling facility is located
xyFacility Lon Longitude where the selling facility is located
xyFacility Continent Lat Latitude of the continent where the selling facility is located
xyFacility Continent Lon Longitude of the continent where the selling facility is located
xyFacility Country Lat Latitude of the country where the selling facility is located
xyFacility Country Lon Longitude of the country where the selling facility is located
xyFacility Region Lat Latitude of the region where the selling facility is located
xyFacility Region Lon Longitude of the region where the selling facility is located
xyFacility City Lat Latitude of the city where the selling facility is located
xyFacility City Lon Longitude of the city where the selling facility is located
Product Product ID included in the order.
Assessment 2 – Business Analytics Project (Due 13 Nov 2020)
Important Note: Use the “INSIGHT_TOY_DEMO” data source for your report.
Business intelligence (BI) reports are very important communication tools in managerial decision-making and are targeted to variety of audiences that include accountants, finance professionals, marketers, salespeople, product managers, among others. The relevance, utility and timeliness of presented information are critical for effective and efficient decision-making.
Business Case (Please Read Very Carefully)
You are the manager of the business intelligence department at Insight Toys Corporation, one of the world’s largest toy manufacturers with operations across the globe. Few weeks ago, the company appointed a new Marketing VP, and in a recent presentation he announced a new strategy for some of the best-selling toy products. He asked you for help in developing a case study (a visual story line) that will help the executive team for better and faster understanding of the presented information. In his keynote, he wants to go over some facts about current business performance and then use that data to make the case for a new strategy. The manager is not sure what type of data/numbers he will ultimately be using in his presentation, and therefore, he asked you to make the business report as flexible as possible in order to allow for further explorations, e.g., filtering, slicing and dicing.
After the meeting, you realized that there are a couple of reports already in place, but they were customized exclusively for the previous VP and they have too many details that may not be useful, or worse, they may just confuse the audience. This time you thought that the new report should have a more strategic purpose and that it is designed in a way that make it easy for the intended audience to understand and for the presenter to explain. Furthermore, you heard about plans that the company will soon have project-based teams, which will be responsible for new product launches. These teams will have a cross-functional aspect, i.e., it will include people from different departments such as operations, marketing, finance or R&D. This fact makes you think about some anticipating measures, and you decide that the new BI report should be easy to use/present by other people beside the Marketing VP.
Business Intelligence Report (100%):
You are to write a “18 months to 3 years” strategic plan (maximum 1500 words) for InsightToys company.
Note:
• The strategic plan should be based on the insights you gain by analysing data. Therefore, creating an interactive report (dashboard), as instructed below, will be a good starting point.
• It is important that you support your discussion/arguments/findings using literature (references). If necessary, use appropriate frameworks, models and methods for analysis. Give figures/diagrams where necessary.
Suggested instructions:
• Get into the SAS Visual Analytics (or other software tool of your choice) and use Report Designer.
• Using at least six different Objects from Tables, Graphs, Controls, Analytics, provided by SAS Visual Analytics, create an interactive Business Intelligence (BI) report (dashboard) with at least three pages on operations, marketing and finance. This BI report should include key facts about company’s performance on a global and regional level. These facts should include both financial and marketing related data.
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• Remember to decide on the appropriate visualization tool/type to use based on the data you choose, and information you intend to portray. How will these charts be perceived by a non-technical user? What questions he/she may ask and answer with it?
• Use the business insight you gained through designing and using your interactive reports (dashboards) to draft your strategic plan.
• Please attach the screenshots (3-4 pages) of your interactive report (dashboards) in an appendix at the end of your strategic plan report.
For some formatting guidelines you may see (https://www.uow.edu.au/student/learning-co- op/assessments/reports/).
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