Challenges and Recommendations for Wesfarmers: A Data Collection Platform using MS Excel

Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................ 2
Research objective.................................................................................................. 3
Designing of the data collection platform...............................................................3
Decision items......................................................................................................... 7
Recommendations................................................................................................... 7
Potential external data sources...............................................................................8
Conclusion............................................................................................................... 8
List of reference......................................................................................................... 9
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Introduction
Wesfarmers is a giant Australian firm created by a group of farmers as a cooperative society who
lived at Western Australia in the year 1914, almost a century old. According to Gilchrist (2017),
the company is privileged to have owned the first radio station in the west Australia. The
company has grown from a cooperative society into a fully-fledged business entity dealing in a
multiple businesses including hotels, liquor stores, supermarkets and departmental stores which
mines coal, produce fertilizers and manufacturing of safety products. It acquired its development
pace by purchasing other loss making companies such as the Ash-burton transport company and
transforming them into a profit making business enterprises. In mid twentieth century the year
1950, Wesfarmers purchased it major competitor Gascoyne trading limited which left
Wesfarmers as the sole operator in the west Australia. Ruthen (2018), Walker and Wylie (2017)
and Hatch (2016) all noted that the Wesfarmers Company headed by Rob Scott as the leading
Australian company after beating Woolworth enterprises and BHP to make the largest profit of
AUD 68.99 billion. The company has an operating income of AUD 4.40 billion, net income of
AUD 2.87 billion and total assets amounting to AUD 40.12 billion. Wesfarmers is not only
Australian leading profit making firm but also it is the Australian leading private employer
having employed more than 223,000 employees working at different branches and departments
of the company. According to Lawrence (2009), it also has more than half a million
shareholders.
Despite being the best Australian company, Wesfarmers has many challenges including
marketing and decision making. According to Australian (2018), after selling the Wesfarmers
Curragh coal mine in Queensland to Coronado, the board of directors headed by the former
Western Australian university chancellor Michael and the chief Executive officer Scott would
not come to an understanding of what to invest next on. After making a sizeable fortune from
investing in “dying companies” or rather purchasing loss making institutions and breathing
success onto it, the board wants to involve the shareholders in making the decision about the
company to purchase next since they will not be having a say (chance to make a decision) at the
exchange stock day but the Executive officer Scotts argues that majority of the shareholders up
to 80% have less than one thousand shares, that is 400,000 shareholders of the 500,000
shareholders, he further advises that the market opportunity that fits Wesfarmers well are
investment that are long term and require more time and patience before its fruits are reaped off
and therefore it is the decision of the all the stakeholders of Wesfarmers including the board of
directors, management board, shareholders and other acquaintances linked to Wesfarmers to
decide what to venture and merge into. According to Hewitt (2011) and Lee (2010), shareholders
are investors of the company and there is a need of them to be involved in the major decision of
the company.
According Campbell (2017) and David (2016), at least five major companies including AGL,
Santos, Caltex, Qantas and Brambles are linked to a potential business merge with Wesfarmers.
Despite having over AUD 12 billion to spend on merges, the Wesfarmers Company is limited by
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financial resources since these companies are large and therefore expensive too. The tough task
is to the managers and the board to choose one company to merge into. The company has to use
data collection platform to collect data from heads of various departments, all interest and
willing shareholders, board and the executives to make the choice.
Data collection platform is a tool used to collect data from research and survey participants’
online using web browsers and internet devices to aid data surveys. It is advantageous since it
facilitates collection of data easily from different people at different places uniformly, cheaply,
using time efficiently and stores the collected data in desired excel files and sheets.
Research objective
The main objective for this research is to develop a data collection platform using MS Excel.
Designing of the data collection platform
The data collection platform can be created from Excel using the Microsoft office excel surveys
in the MS One Drive or basically using the MS Excel spreadsheet website to design a data
collection platform. The design in this assignment is developed using the MS spreadsheet
website.
The research questions typed and then created in the Microsoft Excel sheets and must be
included as named ranges. The possible answers to the research question must also be typed and
included as named ranges. The possible answers can be placed at the same Excel sheet or
different Excel sheet but in the same Excel file with the research questions.
Excel sheet
However, the closed survey answers should be placed in a list named ranges to allow for
customization of the available options. For instance, for survey question about number of shares
in possession its answers are polled downed and listed as options such that upon clicking that
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