Using Data to Build Business Practice

Using data to build business
practice

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
Analysing the data of BIS to identify the pattern of barriers which restrict use of business
support.........................................................................................................................................1
Highlighting interesting findings...............................................................................................10
Recommendations about areas which require further support..................................................11
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Data analysis is a science of analysing numerical information by applying tools and
techniques of business intelligence so that meaningful insights can be gained from the data. This
concept is highly used by contemporary organisation to understand market and their customers.
The main aim of this present report is to develop understanding regarding data collection
instruments for effective business decision making. For this aim, a data set of BIS is given; BIS
is a Department for Business Innovation and Skills. Using this dataset, a comparison analysis has
been made between South East regions with the North West region in order to identify the
pattern of barrier which limits businesses to take up and use business support. This report will
include interesting findings about the data along with few recommendations that require further
support.
MAIN BODY
Analysing the data of BIS to identify the pattern of barriers which restrict use of business support
Data analysis is a wide concept which includes various processes of data collection, data
mining, data analysis and data visualisation. The data set of BIS is a large data set which is in the
form of a questionnaire. BIS has distributed this questionnaire to 1203 small businesses in order
to gain responses of business owners on why they do not acquire business support from external
parties. The aim of this report is to compare responses of business owners of only two regions
which are South East and North West. The Excel sheet which is provided is filtered first to
reduce the data to only two regions. This reduced data is then copied into a new Excel sheet.
The reduced data is first reviewed to gain familiarity with the data. All the variables and
their values are observed effectively; by critically observing these variables, it has been
concluded that only few of these variables are required to be used for the analysis of identifying
barrier patterns. This analysis is divided in to two sections, the first section will identify that at
what percentage business owners of both the regions has used external business support and
why. In the second section, the reasons will be determined that why business owners do not use
business support to attain business success and growth.
For first section, the variables which are used are Q3_1 and Q3_2A to Q3_2CS. Before
this analysis, it is important to ascertain that which region has more number of urban and rural
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businesses as it can be an interesting point of distinction in both the regions. This analysis has
made by developing a PIVOT table and then selecting “Region” as volume label and
“URBANRURAL_1” as row label and values. The PIVOT table data and support bar chart is
attached below:
Row Labels South East North West Grand Total
Urban 166 121 287
Rural 56 28 84
Grand Total 222 149 371
The above analysis has used Excel functions of PIVOT table and bar chart from which it
has been observed that South East region has high number of businesses that 222 than North
West region which has 149 as its total number of busineses. Considering this disntinction,
number of Urban and rural businesses are also higher in South East region. But, this also imply a
point of difference that South East region has more percent of Rural businesses than North West
region and North West has high percent of urban business than South East region. This analysis
interprets that the practice of traditional business methods is higher in South East.
Returning to the Q3_1 variable, this question has asked from its respondents that whether
they have ever used external professional business support for smooth conduction of their
business or not. The below analysis is supported by Excel functions of PIVOT table and bar
chart.
Row Labels South East North West Grand Total
Urban 293 211 504
Yes 39 31 70
No 254 180 434
Rural 94 50 144
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