Data Handling and Business Intelligence

DATA HANDLING AND
BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
PART 1............................................................................................................................................1
Determining the reasons for the store’s decline in sales/profits over the years...........................1
Evaluating the use of Excel for pre-processing the data, analysing the data and visualising the
data...............................................................................................................................................2
Practical use of excel functions...................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Data handling is a concept of managing and controlling the data using software applications
such as Microsoft Excel (Anagnostopoulos, Zeadally and Exposito, 2016). The concept of data
handling is directly connected with business intelligence as the large information or data is
controlled by using information technology (Chalana and Dhillon, 2018). The main aim of this
report is to identify current trends in data warehousing, business intelligence and data mining.
For this, in the present report a big data of superstore is analysed in order to ascertain the reasons
for the decline in sales and profits of the superstore. Along with this, various functions of
Microsoft Excel such as Pivot tables, IF, Count are used in order to demonstrate the ability of
processing data. Various uses of Microsoft Excel including pre processing of data, analysing the
data and visualizing the data is also mentioned in this report.
PART 1
Determining the reasons for the store’s decline in sales/profits over the years
The data information about the superstore is provided for 4 years which are 2009-2012. By
using filter and sort option in Excel, it has been ascertained that the revenue and profit of this
store is reducing over the years. There are various reasons due to which sales and revenue of this
store is declining. These reasons are mentioned below:
 High Shipment Cost – It is observed that the maximum revenue recorded in 2009 was
86061 pounds but the maximum revenue recorded in 2012 was 413343.21 which
approximately half than 2009. In the course of 4 years’ maximum record sales of this
store has been cut to half and the result behind this case is high shipment cost which
organisation has to pay in order to ship the products so that it can be delivered to their
clients. This store is working for 4 years and the minimum shipping cost paid this store is
same in years 2009 and 2012. This store has not provided any concession in the shipping
cost for over 4 years due to which sales are declining of the company. Minimum shipping
cost in year 2009 and 2012 are 0.49 pounds.
 Low Discounts – Discounts are the promotion technique which are used by organisations
to increase their sales revenue. Using maximum function in Excel, it has been ascertained
that even after lowering sales revenue and profit, this store does not increase its discount
rates. Maximum discount provided in 2009 was 0.21 which decreased as 0.1 and 0.16 in
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