Assignment - Parchment Bonanza
Overview
For this individual assignment, you will use skills acquired through practical laboratory exercises to automate a business process, and to visualize the impact of the automation.
Learning Outcomes
The following course learning outcomes are assessed by completing this assessment:
A1. Prepare a basic solution to a business problem;
A2. Select appropriate IT solutions for business functions;
A3. Apply business information software for data visualization and analysis purposes.
S1. Write basic programming logic;
S3. Interpret and construct representations of business data flow and processes;
K8. Outline the basic principles of programming.
Assessment Details
Parchment Bonanza is a small second-hand book shop, run by a team of three staff members: Adrian, Brutus, and Caesar.
For this assignment, you will complete the following set of tasks using Excel, and build an ePortfolio page to describe your work.
Task 0 - Setting up
Create an ePortfolio page for your assignment. You will submit this page to Moodle as per the lab tasks.
Task 1 - Costs of operating the business
Using Excel, create a spreadsheet called operating_costs.xlsx that calculates the projected annual outgoing costs of running Parchment Bonanza.
Your spreadsheet should be configured such that the working hours, hourly rates, and fixed and utility costs can be varied easily.
Task 2 - Sales team offers
Using Excel, process the history of purchases spreadsheet and use appropriate charts to visualize: How the prices paid differed for each staff member; and
How the prices paid have changed over time
Describe your findings in your ePortfolio (approximately 250 words), and attach the Excel file to your page.
Task 3 - Automation
Using Excel, create a spreadsheet page that automates the above process, allowing a member of the team to enter whether the book is hardcover, its publication year, and its condition, and receive a price to offer.
Ensure that you include enough text and formatting to make your spreadsheet usable by a member of the Parchment Bonanza team, or by a University lecturer.
Your spreadsheet should be configured such that the Low, Medium and High prices can be varied easily. Describe how you automated the process (approx 150 words), and attach your Excel file to your ePortfolio.
Task 4 - Price setting
Using Excel and the historical data you have available, determine sets of prices which meet the objectives of the following scenarios:
Scenario one: Total offer prices are approximately the same as for the historical data
Scenario two: Assuming all books purchased are sold, allow all staff to draw the same wage as Caesar.
Describe the strategy you used to find appropriate prices for each scenario (approximately 150 words). Ensure that the Low price is less than the Medium price, and both are less than the High price.
Bonus challenge task (optional!)
Disclaimer: This task is 100% optional, and you can receive full marks without attempting or completing it. It is intended to be a challenge if you are interested in such things, and the marks available do not reflect the significant research and effort required to implement it correctly. Tutors will not provide significant assistance for this challenge task.
Optional task 5
Reimplement Task 1 and Task 3 using either Python or HTML+JavaScript.
Write a brief overview of how to run your solution, and attach a zip file containing your code to your ePortfolio page.
Attachment:- Assignment.rar