代写 Business Intelligence 2016 assignment


 
Business Intelligence 2016 SP5
 
 
 
 
Student's Assignment Guide
(Internal and External)
 

 
 
Contents
Assignments............................................................................................................................ 3
Scope....................................................................................................................................... 4
Marking criteria........................................................................................................................ 4
Aim of the assignments............................................................................................................ 4
How the assignments fits with the lectures.............................................................................. 4
Presentation/structure............................................................................................................. 5
Word limit................................................................................................................................ 6
Referencing/Backing up your statements................................................................................. 6
Assignment 1 - Benefits of a dashboard.................................................................................... 7
Assignment 1 - Sample dashboard from another organisation................................................... 8
Data to be used........................................................................................................................ 8
Finding Data............................................................................................................................. 8
Assignment submissions.......................................................................................................... 9
Assignment 2 Mock-up Dashboard............................................................................................ 9
Other..................................................................................................................................... 10
 

 

Assignments

Scope

You can choose to cover all areas of the organisation or focus on particular field of operation (eg: marketing, HR, manufacturing, environment sustainability, public reputation).  If you are doing a degree in that area, you might find that useful.
For example: Apple Inc
One of Apple's strengths is being able to manufacturing and deliver to millions of customers globally.  A threat to that may be worker injury, equipment breaking down or unreliable distribution. Which groups/users in Apple would want data to deal with those issues - what data would they need? In what form?
A company that needs to do a better job of recruiting the right staff - the dashboard then would be for HR managers.
 

Marking criteria

The assignments will be marked on how well you cover each of the requirements mentioned above as well as the following points worth 10% of the mark:
·         Referencing
o   Correct referencing
o   Referencing quality
o   Reference recency
·         Layout
·         Academic/Business Language
·         Grammar and Spelling
See below for more details.

 

Aim of the assignments

Together the two assignments will give you practice at developing a real-world business proposal.  As well as meeting academic requirements you could consider yourself as a consultant to that organisation – if your proposal is adopted they would be paying you to do the work. Assume that the reader knows little about BI. 
However the assignments are not just a sales pitch – you have to demonstrate that you know what you are talking about, back up your arguments with evidence, communicate new concepts and demonstrate to the reader that you have understood their business requirements enough to recommend specific BI in the form of a dashboard.
Make use of the course material and especially the BI Lifecycle to develop the parts of the assignment – this is business problem-solving and understanding someone's requirements - a skill you will use as a professional.  Like all skills can take practice!
 

How the assignments fits with the lectures

·         Organisations need to be better at finding opportunities and dealing with threats to do better due to increased competition (Lecture 1).
·         BI can help in dealing with the problems (threats) and opportunities or - put another way - BI can assist with the organisation's normal planning and performance management processes (Lecture 1+2).
·         Which is a specific opportunity and threat (or what business priorities/risks) is the organisation facing related to the Scope you choose?  There are some generic examples in Lecture 4, but for your assignment you need to work that out for yourself. Based on what you choose to focus on, there will be specific users and data you need to focus on (Lecture 4).
·         Then you need to build the dashboard - Lecture 2 also makes some suggestions about how to deliver BI and what approach you will use (how to implement it). Remember that the focus of the assignment is BI, so you don't need to spend lots of time looking for threats and opportunities/business priorities - just one.
·         Lectures on how to better manage data in the organisation to support BI (Information Management for BI and Analytics – Lectures 9 and 10 and Lecture 11 on Data Warehousing) as well as challenges to be considered (e.g., data quality) are relevant to recommendations you will make in Assignment 2.

 

Presentation/structure

The structure should address the points listed in the assignment outline (at beginning of this guide).  As a minimum include a title page and section headings. The title page is separate to the assignment cover page.
Sample templates for the two assignments are available on the course website.  You don’t have to use these. You can also use some parts of these templates (eg: the sample templates include Table of Contents and Executive Summary, you can leave these out if you want).
Since this is proposal for a business audience, it should be presented in a professional format, however the effort should be on what the assignment.
Using bullet points are OK for some sections but you'll need sentences for each point (ie. just a bullet point list with no explanation won't work)

 代写 Business Intelligence 2016 assignment

Word limit

Assignment 1: 1000 words +/- 10%. 
Assignment 2: 2000 words +/- 10%
One mark will be deducted if the assignment is too short or too long for each 10% too short or too long. Keeping to a word limit requires a focus on what the reader most needs to know.
These are included in the word count:
·         The 'body' of the assignment:
·         Headings
·         Direct quotes
·         Summary/Executive Summary (if you chose to include one)
·         Diagram headings and captions
·         Footnotes
 
These are excluded:
·         Title page
·         Table of contents
·         References
 

Referencing/Backing up your statements

Referencing is important for both assignments to: (a) expand your knowledge of the assignment topic and (b) provide evidence to the claims you make and (c) demonstrate you know what you are talking about to make a convincing proposal.
UniSA has a number of resources here: www.unisa.edu.au/referencing
The general rule is if you are using information or data that is not of your own creation then you need to acknowledge it.  Not only is this for academic integrity but to add weight to your recommendations – to show they are just not opinions.
This includes the screenshots, data you use and points taken from the lectures.
 
How many references?
That depends on how many points you are making. Generally more is better because you have used more sources to understand the topic and reinforce your points.
A minimum of 3 references is required, not including the lecture material and where you source sample dashboard and data from. Just adding as many references as possible without using them in the assignment won't earn maximum marks.
If you plagiarise (ie. copy from references and don't include it in quotes or include a reference) you will be penalised - we have failed students for doing this!
We want your understanding on the topic, not copied words from experts – this only demonstrates that you can research well, not apply your learning.
Reference quality
The type (quality) of references makes a difference and this is considered in the marks as well.  Feel free to use the readers and links from the lectures and Course Outline. 
Avoid marketing/vendor sites and general websites - the quality is not assured, ie. anyone can get a website up regardless of their expertise and marketing material from software companies is usually biased. The exception would be news sites when you want to report an event.
Finding references by Googling them is a poor approach – try the library catalogue instead.
 
Reference recency
Since BI is a fast moving area use references from the last 5 years*. Consider if you were the CEO receiving the proposal – in a fast changing business environment would you trust a report that is using data from 6 years ago?
However in some cases – especially for data for Assignment 2 – you not be able to find recent data then explain that.
* eg: agile methodology, self serve BI, big data, spatial data, more user-friendly/accessible predictive analytics, BI being initiated and funded by business not IT and cloud infrastructure that are new to mainstream BI in the last 5 years.  These are significantly changing the approach to making BI available
 
Referencing style
Please use the Harvard style of referencing in-text citations.  Refer to section on ‘Harvard Rules’ and ‘Harvard Guide’ here www.unisa.edu.au/referencing
The references for data used can be included in the references section.
References must be in English.
References must be available when the assignment is being marked.

 

Assignment 1 - Benefits of a dashboard

·         Be as specific as you can to that organisation’s business needs.
·         Outline what information needs relating to a business priority would the dashboard answer.
·         Making general statements about the benefits for a dashboard will not be useful – the test is whether what you write applies only to your organisation and not to a number of other organisations:  if it is not specific enough then it won’t get as many marks.
 

Assignment 1 - Sample dashboard from the Web

·         Make it as relevant as possible to the scope of the dashboard – the reader wants to get a sense of what you would build for them - eg: if you are focussing on HR, it's no good providing a dashboard about manufacturing.
·         Include a paragraph describing the sample dashboard.
·         Samples can be found on the web and in sample downloads (eg: Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, IBM Cognos Mobile iPad app available from iTunes). 
·         It doesn't have to be an actual organisation.
·         Make sure to reference where you obtained the sample from.
 

Data to be used

Initial thoughts on what data should be included (including internal and external data) – should be relevant to the questions the dashboard is going to answer (related to the opportunity or threat the organisation is facing).
You don't have to find real data for Assignment 1 but it is beneficial and makes your proposal more convincing if you do some research on potential data sources and provide suggestions on which available data could be used.
 

Finding Data

Finding data about the industry of your organisation is not a requirement but it is a useful skill to develop and as a professional you will have to do it often in your career. It is rarely easy to find good quality and reliable data, however it is getting easier!  But done well, you can bring new insight and value to an organisation if you can obtain information, especially if it is not already available to from internal systems (eg: like benchmarking info).
Importantly think about the questions you want to answer with your dashboard because this will focus your search (too much data is also a problem!).  Publicly listed companies (those that have shares and are on a stock exchange) will often have an investor page.  Many organisations have to report to government bodies like regulators (ASIC, ombudsmen, etc).  Look for annual reports and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (or US and European equivalents) are useful.  Federations, associations and industry bodies (like the Australian Bankers Association if you were studying a bank) are another source. Often the data will be confidential and you can't obtain it - so consider using data related to that industry/sector.
Examples
·         Qantas' performance is impacted by tourism, exchange rate, fuel prices, visa conditions, other airlines and terrorism.
·         A physiotherapy practice you would look for health related data and aging population. Aging population is a hot topic especially in South Australia.
·         Demographic information on which age groups use mobile phones.
The importance is the relevance to the question and the reliability of the data to answer the question - not the volume!
Focus on external data made available by public accessible web portals (see links below).
Do research on data that is related to the industry.
It is likely that you will not find data that is directly related to your organisation. Therefore think about the industry and in a wider scope think about how can data that is publicly available be useful for the organisation.
Do not use any data that is confidential or commercially sensitive you may access to.
Do not pay for any data.
Do not contact the organisation and ask for data.
Allow enough time to find and prepare the data – do not leave to the last minute.
 
Sample data sources:
·         Gartner’s analysis by industry (see Using Gartner Resources tip sheet)
·         IBIS World (via the UniSA Library)
·         Australian Bureau of Statistics http://www.abs.gov.au
·         SA Government http://data.sa.gov.au/
·         Australian Government http://data.gov.au/
·         AURIN portal https://portal.aurin.org.au/
·         http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2012/03/27/publicly
·         http://www.kdnuggets.com/datasets/index.html
·         http://aws.amazon.com/datasets/
·         Tableau resources http://public.tableau.com/s/resources?qt=&qt-overview_resources=1#qt-overview_resources
 
 

Assignment submissions

·         Electronically as MS Word or PDF document.
·         Don't include your report in a zip archive because Turnitin won’t work then.
 

Assignment 2 submission and bashboard

·         You need to submit a working dashboard in PowerBI or Tableau by submitting a packaged Tableau file (*.twbx) or PowerBI (*.pbix) file or share your online PowerBI dashboard with your tutor.
·         If you create your dashboard using PowerBI (either desktop or online version) you must submit a also all your data files, for example, Excel sheets which you have used to connect to the dashboard.
·         A screenshot of the dashboard must be included in the report.
·         To demonstrate the value of combining data your dashboard needs to use at least more than one data source. 
·         There are many online resources available that help you in learning to use both tools.
 
 

Other

·         Do not write in the first person (“I”)
·         Use formal language – this is a report intended for the CEO/Head of your organisation.
·         Feel free to use diagrams, tables, quotes to explain your ideas. 

代写 Business Intelligence 2016 assignment