Introduction & Background
You are required to use the analytical tools taught during the module to produce a
management report of 2,000 words with insights into a set of data within a particular
business context. The dataset will be made available towards the end of the semester.
Company and Dataset Background
The New-Peth Shoes Ltd.1 is an SME, based in Morpeth Northumberland, that operates
online by selling, both, locally produced and imported branded shoes. The business has
ambitious growth plans in rivalling some of the high street shoe stores, but due to lack of
internal expertise in analytics and data driven decision making, the owner is struggling to
make informed business decisions.
You have been contracted as a Business Analyst in the company and your first assignment
is to produce a
2000 word comprehensive analytics report addressing the following:
a) Dashboard: providing an ‘on message’ overview of the business performance,
highlighting what you consider are key performance indicators (KPI’s) for this
business. The actual dashboard should be capable of fitting onto one page in either
portrait or landscape. [10%]
b) Data driven Business Intelligence (BI) Insights, visualisations and
analysis: You are required to use your knowledge and data analysis skills to
develop a range of business insights, with accompanying visualisations and
narrative. Your choice of the most significant elements to analyse will be driven by
what you consider the New-Peth shoes could do to be successful in terms of their
growth aim. There needs to be clear evidence of the rationale (reason) for
including a particular insight and key visuals must be integrated into the main body
of the report. [40%]
c) Recommendations: as part of this section, you are expected to develop strategic
forward thinking recommendations for New-Peth Shoes based on your previous
analyses (in parts a and b above) and orientated towards the strategic intent of
growth. Any recommendation made must be based on data analysis. [30%]
d) Organisation & Presentation: 10% is dedicated towards overall structure,
organisation and presentation of the report. A clear and organised report structure
along with professional presentation standards will determine the level of mark
awarded under this section. [10%]
e) Data cleaning and/or data preparation steps adopted in the
production of the report to ensure the integrity of the data. This should be
submitted as Appendix A of the report. [10%]
Submission instructions, structural guidelines and other information
1. This is a practical report and therefore does not require the use / inclusion of
academic based reference material, with the potential exception of
supporting recommendations.
2. If you do use reference materials to support your work then please ensure you
follow the University referencing guidelines, essentially Harvard referencing.
3. A 2000-word (+/-10%) report must be submitted via Turnitin link provided on
Canvas.
4. You are advised to use screenshots of your visuals and submit your document as a
pdf. You are not advised to use the publish feature in tableau to create the visuals to
include in your report nor submit in a word format.
5. The report must include one dashboard (screenshot) summarising business
performance on a range of key metrics.
6. What is excluded from the wordcount: Cover Page, Executive summary, Content
list, Reference list, Appendices, Visuals (Figures and Tables).
7. Appendices. Appendix A must be used for the data prep and cleaning element - e)
above. Other appendices can be included if absolutely necessary, but key visuals
MUST be integrated into the report.
8. Formative Feedback: formative feedbacks will be provided to students based on
generic and individual questions during designated assignment support sessions.
There will be dedicated assignment support sessions in addition to synchronous
taught sessions.