Business Intelligence for Newcastle United FC

This report discusses the implementation of business intelligence systems in Newcastle United Football Club to improve revenue through merchandise selling. It explores theories like the PDCA model and cause-effect relationship model. The report also includes a critical analysis of a developed dashboard using Microsoft Excel.

Business Intelligence MS
Excel Dash Board

Contents
Introduction to the problem/opportunity statement regarding Newcastle United FC.....................1
Theory linked with problem/opportunity statement........................................................................1
Evidence of knowledge of key business intelligence/data analytics systems..................................3
Critical analysis and justification of developed dashboard.............................................................3
Conclusion and recommendations for the successful implementation and use of a BI / DA
solution in Newcastle United FC.....................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

Introduction to the problem/opportunity statement regarding Newcastle
United FC
Business intelligence is a technology which helps in analysing the data in order to extract
and present information which cannot be gained only by looking at the data (Popovič, Puklavec
and Oliveira, 2019). This technology is referred as business intelligence as its helps business
owners, managers and executives to analyse business data and make informed decisions
(Laursen and Thorlund, 2016). In this present report, the Newcastle United Football Club is
analysed in order to implement business intelligence systems in this organisation. NUFC is a
football club which was founded in 1892 and is currently owned and managed by Mike Ashley
(Dixon, 2020).
As the business analyst of Newcastle United Football Club, the department of this club
which has been selected is Revenue through merchandise selling. Like any other sports club,
there are various revenue streams of NUFC which are sale of merchandise, stadium rights,
promotions, advertisements, broadcasting rights, sponsorships, ticket sales, prize money and
more. All these revenue streams are used to manage sports matches and for players. Among all
these revenue streams, merchandise is one of the most important stream from where ample
monetary funds are gained by the sports club. In the case of NUFC, the area or department of
“Revenue through merchandise selling” is a problem which has a potential to be turned as an
opportunity.
NUFC is an old sports club which is currently facing various issues which is impacting the
survival of this club. Major reasons of such situation of this club includes degrading players’
performance and the financial condition of this association. NUFC offers multiple merchandise
products which includes game gear, team gear, winning gear, personalised gifts, fan gear and
support gear. Due to mismanagement of revenue streams and channels. NUFC is not able to earn
sufficient revenue from their merchandise which is influencing the overall position and survival
of this club. This problem statement of NUFC can turn into an opportunity, if the management of
this association implements business analytic system.
Theory linked with problem/opportunity statement
The major problem which NUFC is currently facing under the department of “Revenue
through merchandise selling” is the mismanagement of revenue channels resulting into
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insufficient revenue. This problem statement of NUFC is linked to certain problem solving
models and theories which can help NUFC to effective manage all their revenue streams and
channels and can grow in the competitive environment. The first theory or model which is linked
with the NUFC’s problem statement is PDCA model.
PDCA Model
PDCA is an acronym of Plan, Do, Check, Act. This model is more like a process which
helps business organisations to solve their business problems by effective decision making skills.
The process of PDCA is a procedure for continuous improvement in which problems faced by an
organisation are resolved on continuous basis (Kholif and et.al., 2018). This theory of PDCA is
linked with the problem statement of NUFC. The implementation of such theory in regard to
NUFC can be done as follows:
Plan – In this stage, problem of a business is first identified along with collection of data in
order to identify the root cause of the problem. In case of Newcastle United Football Club, a plan
can be developed to implement business analytic system. In this stage, it will be necessary to
collect all the revenue information of NUFC which they have earned from merchandise products.
All such information will help in identifying the root cause of the problem of low revenue earned
by NUFC via merchandise.
Do – At this stage of PDCA model, the plan which has been developed is now implemented
in order to provide a solution for the problem (Li, 2020). In case of NUFC, the plan of
implementing a business analytic system will be implemented at this stage and then a
measurement will be decided that can measure the effectiveness of the solution implemented to
resolve the problem.
Check – At this stage, the scenarios of before solution implementation and after solution
implementation is compared in order to check if the implemented solution is effective or not.
Similar to the instructions, a system of business analytics can be checked after implementation in
NUFC in order to identify any variation between the real and expected state.
Act – This is the last stage of PDCA model in which all the results of the solution
implementation are documented and recommendations for further plans are justified (Xu, 2020).
The above theory of PDCA model can be implemented in NUFC in order to resolve their
issue of gaining insufficient amount of revenue through merchandise product. Another theory
that can be linked with this problem statement of NUFC is cause effect relationship model. In
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this model, various elements or causes are identified which are causing a problem (effect). Using
such theory, root cause(s) are identified behind a problem and the solutions can be prepared for
those causes (Zhang, 2016). In cases of NUFC, there are various causes which have resulted into
the effect or problem of low revenue from merchandise products. These causes can include,
NUFC provides discounts on their various merchandise products in order to increase the
sales. But there is no system of identifying that whether these discounts are effective or not.
Another root cause is the mismanagement of revenue channels and merchandise categories due
to few channels of revenue are resulting into little revenue with low profit margin. Pricing
strategy is also a root cause for NUFC’s problem as the pricing strategy used by this football
club is competitive pricing strategy in which this association set the prices of their merchandise
products by comparing the market prices of their competitors (Loskutova, Watts and Burns,
2019). This strategy results in overlook the fact that the prices of the merchandise products must
be set according to the popularity of the products and according to the traffic at each
merchandising category and revenue channel.
Both the theories which are analysed above are directly related or linked with the problem
statement of Newcastle United Football Club as by using these theories, the management of this
football club can resolve their problem and can turn it into an opportunity.
Evidence of knowledge of key business intelligence/data analytics systems
In order to evidence the key business intelligence/data analytics systems, the dashboard for
NUFC is developed.
Critical analysis and justification of developed dashboard
For Newcastle United Football Club, the type of dashboard which is created is “Analysis of
revenue streams from different channels”. In this dashboard, there are few key parameters used
which are merchandising categories, revenue analysis and channel of revenue analysis. The
software application which has been used to create the dashboard is Microsoft Excel and the
major functions of this applications which are used includes Pivot tables, Slicer, Graphs and
arithmetic functions (Bilicki and Roeder, 2016). The dashboard which has been developed can
act as a business analytic system of Newcastle United Football Club. For every element of the
dashboard, there is a justification which has been stated below along with the critical analysis of
the dashboard:
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Dataset - The first step of developing a dashboard is to collect all the valid data which will
be used to resent the information on dashboard. For Newcastle United Football Club, a database
is collected and recorded under the worksheet of “Database” which is acting as a backend of
Dashboard (front end). In this dataset, there are 8 variables which are merchandising category,
name of the product, unit price of that product, quantity sold of each product, discount rate
applied on the type of a product, total discounted value, revenue and channel. The entire data is
sorted according to the merchandising category. There are total 6 merchandising categories for
merchandising products of NUFC. Each category has different products of NUFC merchandise
which are sold at a distinct price through different sales channels. Such dataset is well justified as
it will help NUFC to determine their revenue gain from each channel and merchandising
category and using such information, management of NUFC can focus on those channels and
categories which are unable to gain sufficient revenue. By looking at the dashboard, it can be
seen that Personal selling is the revenue channel which is gaining the least revenue and this
problem must be focused by NUFC. By looking at the wider side, there is negative aspect of
such wider data as well because when it will be necessary to edit or add on the data, all pivot
tables will also be required to edit.
Slicer and information board – Apart from the backend data, the dashboard itself holds
various elements and slicer and information board are few of them. A slicer is a visual filter
which is used to filter or represent a certain data from the entire data set. An information board is
connected to this filter in the developed dashboard (Giolito, 2017). This slicer has all the revenue
channels name and when user clicks on one of these channels, then the information regarding
that revenue channel reflects on the information board. This information board includes data of
total sold quantity of all the products under a certain revenue channel, total discount value and
total earned revenue. These elements of slicer and information board are well justified as they
help in quick representation of each revenue channel by which management of NUFC can
identify in seconds that which channel is most revenue earning and which is least revenue
earning. For example, if a user clicks on “Retail” on the slicer, then the information board
reflects sold quantity as “36400 units”, discount value as “28989” and revenue as “1574764”. In
order to critically evaluate the dashboard, a negative aspect has also been observed of slicer that
if in future, another merchandising category has been initiated by NUFC, then this dashboard
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will be required to develop again as slicer is already connected to all pivot tables of dataset and
in order to connect another pivot table with the slicer, major changes will be required.
Graphs – This is the last and most important element of the dashboard which represents the
revenue, sold quantity and discount value of every revenue for each of the merchandising
category. When a user will click on any of the revenue channel from slicer, the 6 graphs attached
at the dashboard will be automatically customised showing bars of revenue, discount and
quantity separately. For example, if a user clicks E commerce then revenue and other aspects can
be seen on five graphs leaving Team Gear graph as no products of Team Gear are sold via
Ecommerce revenue channel. There is also a negative aspect of this element which is every time
a data is added into the dataset, all graphs are required to be refreshed to represent current data
points.
Conclusion and recommendations for the successful implementation and use
of a BI / DA solution in Newcastle United FC
After developing a dashboard and critically analysing it, it can be concluded that a business
analytic system will resolve the problem of Newcastle United FC as by using a DA solution such
as an interactive dashboard in MS Excel, NUFC can determine their lowest revenue generating
revenue channel and then can develop plans for it. There are various recommendations for
NUFC which will be suitable for them to apply as it will help them in successfully implementing
a Business intelligence system:
NUFC must collect all their data regarding prices, discounts, revenues for all their
merchandising products. And such data must be divided into categories according to two
criterions which are according to merchandising categories and revenue channels.
NUFC must use cause effect theory of problem solving as by this the association will know
the root cause of their problems and then these causes can become the key parameters of BI
dashboard.
The above analysis has helped in gaining the conclusion that if NUFC will implement and
use BI system such as database then their problem of gaining low revenue from merchandising
can become an opportunity.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bilicki, E. and Roeder, R., Target Brands Inc, 2016. Operations dashboard. U.S. Patent
9,280,777.
Dixon, K., 2020. Demand and the reduction of consumer power in English football: a historical
case-study of newcastle United fanzine, the Mag 1988–1999. Soccer & Society. 21(1).
pp.96-114.
Giolito, R., FCA Italy SpA, 2017. Dashboard. U.S. Patent Application 29/544,848.
Kholif, A.M. and et.al., 2018. Implementation of model for improvement (PDCA‐cycle) in dairy
laboratories. Journal of Food Safety. 38(3). p.e12451.
Laursen, G.H. and Thorlund, J., 2016. Business analytics for managers: Taking business
intelligence beyond reporting. John Wiley & Sons.
Li, B., 2020, February. Construction of College Pairing Support System Based on the PDCA
Model. In 2020 12th International Conference on Measuring Technology and
Mechatronics Automation (ICMTMA) (pp. 725-728). IEEE.
Loskutova, N., Watts, A.S. and Burns, J.M., 2019. The cause-effect relationship between bone
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Xu, B., 2020, April. Performance Management Model of Public Expenditure Based on PDCA
Cycle Theory. In 2020 International Conference on E-Commerce and Internet
Technology (ECIT) (pp. 216-221). IEEE.
Zhang, Z., 2016. Cause-effect relationship between vocal fold physiology and voice production
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