COMM5011: DATA ANALYSIS FOR BUSINESS
DATA ANALYSIS FOR BUSINESS
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COMM5011: DATA ANALYSIS FOR BUSINESS
FINAL EXAMINATION
1. Time Allowed: 24 Hours.
2. This is a Take-Home Exam, your responses must be your own original work.
You must attempt this Take-Home Exam by yourself without any help from
others. Thus, you have NOT worked, collaborated or colluded with any other
persons in the formulation of your responses. The work that you are submitting
for your Take-Home Exam is your OWN work.
3. Release date/time (via Moodle): Wednesday, 30 November 2022, 9:00am
(Sydney time)
4. Submission date/time (Via Turnitin): Thursday, 01 December 2022, 9:00am
(Sydney time)
5. Failure to upload the exam by the submission time will result in a penalty of 15%
of the available marks per hour of lateness.
6. This Examination Paper has 9 pages, including the cover page.
7. This Examination Paper has 2 sections: Section A = Qualitative and Section B
= Quantitative.
8. Total number of Questions: 2 in Section A, 3 in Section B.
9. Answer all 5 Questions.
10. Total marks available: 100 marks. This examination is worth 50% of the total
marks for the course.
11. Questions are not of equal value. Marks available for question sub-parts are
shown on this examination paper.
12. Some questions have word limits as indicated on the question. These word limits
must be adhered to. Text in excess of the specified word limit(s) may not be
considered in the marking process.
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13. Candidates must submit a signed Declaration Form together with the Take-
Home Exam answer document. Failure to submit the signed Declaration Form
may result in your Take-Home Exam answer sheet not being marked.
14. Answers to questions are to be written in the template provided. Please ensure
that you provide the following details on your Take-Home Exam answer sheet:
• Student ID:
15. In accordance with the Declaration Form, this Take-Home Exam paper cannot
be copied, forwarded or shared.
16. Students are reminded of UNSW’s rules regarding Academic Integrity and
Plagiarism. Plagiarism is a serious breach of ethics at UNSW and is not taken
lightly. For details see Examples of plagiarism.
17. This Take-Home Exam is an open book/open web, further information is
available “Here”.
• You are permitted to refer to your course notes, any materials provided by
the course convenor or lecturer, books, journal articles, or tutorial materials.
• It is sufficient to use in-text citations that include the following information:
the name of the author or authors; the year of publication; the page number
(where the information/idea can be located on a particular page when
directly quoted), For example, (McConville, 2011, p.188).
• You are required to cite your sources and attribute direct quotes
appropriately when using external sources (other than your course
materials).
• When citing Internet sources, please use the following format: website/page
title and date.
• If you provide in-text citations, you MUST provide a Reference List. The
Reference list will NOT BE counted towards your word limit.
18. Students are advised to read the Take-Home Exam paper thoroughly before
commencing.
19. The Lecturer-in-Charge (LiC) / Exam Referee will be available online (via
Moodle) after the Take-Home Exam paper is released for a period of two hours.
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IMPORTANT Answer all questions from Section A (Qualitative) and all questions from
Section B (Quantitative) using separate templates.
You must answer Q1 to Q2 using the Template provided for SECTION A and Q3 to Q5
using the Template provided for SECTION B. DO NOT MIX questions from Section A
with those from Section B in the same Template. The templates have to be uploaded
on separate Turnitin links.
SECTION A: QUALITATIVE QUESTIONS (50 MARKS)
QUESTION 1 20 MARKS
Milkrun is a new entrant in Australia’s $100 billion annual grocery market. Earlier in the
year, the outlook for the start-up was promising with many international and domestic
competitors scaling back services or going into administration. However, in the last
quarter, Milkrun is reportedly struggling to raise more funding from investors and turn
around mounting financial losses.
You decide to conduct a case study of Milkrun to give insight into start-ups using
technology to lower the barriers of entry into hypercompetitive markets. To build your
case, you collect both primary and secondary data. You conducted 45 interviews with
participants from across Sydney and Melbourne, for an average of 60 minutes each.
You also collected documents from mainstream media (e.g., news outlets), internal
reports (e.g., investor pitches, memos, strategic plans), customers’ feedback, and
scraped social media platforms for additional customer sentiments.
REQUIRED:
With reference to the above scenario, answer the following question:
a) Compare and contrast the two data collection and analysis methods. Outline
the relevant advantages and disadvantages of each for this research. (15
marks) [Answer word limit - 450 words]
b) Suggest an alternative data collection method for this case study. Explain why
this would be a suitable alternative given the scenario. (5 marks) [Answer word
limit - 150 words]
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QUESTION 2 30 MARKS
Read the business case on Woolies’ experience implementing an enterprise-wide
information system:
Anatomy of an IT disaster or how Woolies spent $200 million on
SAP
When it comes to IT disasters the $200 million, six-year implementation of SAP
merchandising systems at supermarket and liquor group Woolworths ranks in the
middle of the pack.
That is not to say the SAP implementation did not cause enormous problems.
The highest-profile problems occurred at Big W last year. When the SAP system went
live, the discount department store was unable to put orders through to suppliers.
Suppliers were furious as the systems glitches prevented them from selling products at
a time when shelves were empty. It caused millions of dollars in lost sales.
One of the less well-known negative side effects of the SAP implementation was in the
supermarkets group.
Prior to the roll-out of the software each supermarket manager was given a weekly
profit-and-loss statement.
This was an important part of managing profitability, but its value went far beyond that.
It contributed to increased accountability among store managers for the performance of
their businesses.
The weekly profit-and-loss statements had to be stopped about 18 months ago. These
weekly profit statements will be back at the end of this month.
SAP was unable to produce the weekly profit statements because the data collection
processes used under the new system did not match those used under the old systems.
Loss of Corporate Memory
The old Woolies system was built in-house about 30 years ago with a combination of
people from the company and outside contractors. It was called CASS, which stood for
corporate application support system.
One of the key failings that occurred at Woolies during the SAP implementation process
was the lack of attention given to documenting processes used by staff in the day-to-
day running of the business.
Too much of the intellectual property of what was then the best-performing supermarket
group in Australia was left in the heads of people who worked at Woolies.
This carried lots of risks because when people left, they took with them key pieces of
information.
Loss of corporate memory is often referred to as a key risk in companies, but it is only
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when something as critical as a new merchandising system is jeopardised that senior
management learn its importance.
Woolies lost a lot of senior people as senior executives were changed.
Business Enabler
Another failing which has been repeated at other companies was the lack of
relationship between the software implementation and the business objectives.
Woolies previously had its chief information officer reporting to its head of retail
services. Under new chief executive Brad Banducci, the CIO will be reporting directly to
him. Woolies recently lost its CIO Clive Whincup. It is in the market for someone who
believes in technology as a business enabler.
Another failing in the Woolies implementation was the long period of time taken.
Woolies committed to an upgrade of its merchandising systems in 2009. It was called
Project Galaxy.
The SAP software was chosen to replace four separate platforms. In hindsight six years
was far too long because it meant that no one in the business took it seriously. It
seemed to jump up on people and that led to lack of preparation for change.
The Woolies SAP implementation has not been a rolled gold disaster. In the retail
space that award goes to the SAP implementation at Target in Canada about four years
ago.
Poor implementation of the SAP software at Target triggered a breakdown in the
company's supply chain. That led to empty shelves and contributed to the eventual
closure of the Canadian arm at a cost to the US parent company of about $US7billion.
Widely Used
It should be noted that the German-owned SAP makes reliable and widely used
software for thousands of Australian and international companies.
In retail it is well known for its precision. When functioning properly it can make
operations more efficient, streamline the movement of goods through supply chains,
enhance the customer experience and allow increased use of self-service facilities.
In Canada, Target did eventually fix its SAP problems, but a reassessment of the
benefits found the path to profit was too long for the board of the parent company to
tolerate.
Woolworths is privileged to have on its board Kathee Tesija, a supply chain expert who
actually helped to fix the SAP problems at Target in Canada. She led the
merchandising and supply chain functions at Target Corporation from 2008 and was
chief merchandising and supply chain officer and executive vice-president when she left
in 2015.
Shareholders in Woolies should see the benefits of SAP in the next few years as
Banducci continues his transformation program.
This article was originally published by Tony Boyd in the Australian Financial Review
Chanticleer column: https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/anatomy-of-an-it-disaster-or-how-
woolies-spent-200-million-on-sap-20160609-gpfowf
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REQUIRED:
With reference to the above scenario, answer the following questions:
a) Woolies’ case is steeped in signs of existing business problems and presents a
rich opportunity to contribute to business research. With the background
information provided, assume the role of a qualitative researcher, and propose
a research question (RQ). Describe the broad research purpose and explain
the motivation for your proposed RQ. (10 marks) [Answer word limit - 300
words]
b) Discuss two (2) qualitative research methods that you would use to answer
your proposed RQ from part a. Explain why these methods are appropriate for
addressing your RQ in this scenario. (20 marks) [Answer word limit - 600 words]
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SECTION B: QUANTITATIVE QUESTIONS (50
MARKS)
QUESTION 3 25 MARKS
Energy drink consumption has continued to gain in popularity since the 1997 debut of
Red Bull, the current leader in the energy drink market. Given below are the exam
scores and the number of 12-grams energy drinks consumed by 10 college students
within a week prior to the exam.
Exam Scores 75 92 84 64 64 86 81 61 73 93
Number of
Drinks 5 3 2 4 2 7 3 0 1 0
1. What is the sample covariance between the exam scores and the number of energy
drinks consumed? (4 marks)
2. What is the sample correlation coefficient between the exam scores and the number
of energy drinks consumed? (4 marks)
3. How will you classify the linear relationship between the exam scores and the
number of energy drinks consumed? (4 marks)
4. You will expect a decrease in the amount of energy drink consumed within the week
prior to the exam to be associated with [Blank]. (4 marks)
5. Following this statistical analysis, can you conclude that an increase in the amount
of energy drink consumed within the week prior to the exam causes an increase in
exam scores? Why? (9 marks) [Answer word limit – 200 words]
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QUESTION 4 10 MARKS
It is believed that the average numbers of hours spent studying per day (HOURS)
during undergraduate education should have a positive linear relationship with the
starting salary (SALARY, measured in thousands of dollars per month) after graduation.
Given below is the Microsoft® Excel output for predicting starting salary (Y) using
number of hours spent studying per day (X) for a sample of 51 students. NOTE: Only
partial output is shown.
Regression statistics
Multiple R 0.8857
R Square 0.7845
Adjusted R
Square
0.7801
Standard
Error
1.3704
Observations 51
ANOVA
df SS MS F Significance
F
Regression 1 335.0472 335.0473 178.3859
Residual 1.8782
Total 50 427.0798
Coefficients Standard
Error
t Stat p-value Lower 95% Upper
95%
Intercept -1.8940 0.4018 -4.7134 2.051E-05 -2.7015 -1.0865
Hours 0.9795 0.0733 13.3561 5.944E-18 0.8321 1.1269
Note: 2.051E-05 = 2.051 * 10-0.5 and 5.944E-18 = 5.944 * 10-18.
1. The estimated average change in salary (in thousands of dollars) as a result of
spending an extra hour per day studying is: (5 marks)
A. 0.9795.
B. 0.7845.
C. 335.0473.
D. -1.8940.
2. The error sum of squares (SSE) of the above regression is: (5 marks)
A. 427.079804.
B. 92.0325465.
C. 1.878215.
D. 335.047257.
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QUESTION 5 15 MARKS
The managers of a brokerage firm are interested in finding out if the number of new
customers a broker brings into the firm affects the sales generated by the broker. They
sample 12 brokers and determine the number of new customers they have enrolled in
the last year and their sales amounts in thousands of dollars. These data are presented
in the table that follows.
Broker Clients Sales
1 27 52
2 11 37
3 42 64
4 33 55
5 15 29
6 15 34
7 25 58
8 36 59
9 28 44
10 30 48
11 17 31
12 22 38
1. The prediction for the amount of sales (in $1,000s) for a person who brings 25 new
customers into the firm is [Blank]. (5 marks)
2. Set up a scatter diagram. (5 marks)
3. The coefficient of correlation is [Blank]. (5 marks)