Business Management Report: Superstore Data Analysis and Weka

This business management report analyzes Superstore's data to identify the reasons behind declining sales and profits, including high discounts, higher prices, late deliveries, and high shipping costs. The report utilizes Excel functions such as IF, LOOKUP, and PIVOT TABLE for data analysis. It further explores the advantages and disadvantages of Weka software, a tool for machine learning and data mining, and discusses common data mining methods like prediction, association, classification, and clustering. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the factors affecting Superstore's performance and the tools used to analyze them.

Business Management
Report

Contents
Table of Contents.............................................................................................................................2
Contents...........................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
PART 1............................................................................................................................................1
Analysis of data of superstore......................................................................................................1
PART 2............................................................................................................................................4
2.1 Advantages and disadvantages of Weka................................................................................4
2.2 Most common data mining methods......................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Business management can be defined as the process of performing such activities which
are related to the proper execution of all the operational activities of a company. In order to
execute all the planned procedure, it is very important for all the organisations to make sure that
they are focusing on business management. There are various activities which are performed by
managers for it. These are planning, organising, directing, controlling and etc. if an organisation
is not able to manage all its operations that it will be very difficult for it to reach its long-term
business goals (Bucko and Kakalejčík, 2017). Therefore, it has been proved that business
management is very important to attain the predetermined objectives. Present report is dedicated
in two parts first one is based upon a supermarket and second one is based upon an organisation
which is Audi. For the successful completion of this project different topics are discussed in it.
These are are determination of reasons behind declined sales or profits over the years, use of
different functions such as IF, LOOK UP, PIVOT TABLE. Additionally, advantage and
disadvantage of Weka along with use of different algorithms are also covered under this project.
PART 1
Analysis of data of superstore
For all the organisations it is important to generate profit as it can help to reach the long-
term business goals such as customer satisfaction, achieving higher competitive advantage and
improving performance. From the super store data set it has been analysed that profit and sales of
the organisation and decreasing continuously. There are various reasons behind it. All of them
are listed below:
High discount which is allowed by the organisation: Most of the companies allow discount to
the customers for the purpose of retaining them for a long period in future. Sometimes, it will
result in lower profit and sales. Same thing happened with super store due to high discount the
organisation have face the problem of lower profit and sales. This problem is also affecting the
sustainability of the company in the market. The management is required to take strict action
against it. Causes of it can be identified by analysing the prior reports that are formed for
preceding years. While allowing discount it is very important for the top level executives to
make sure that they are allowing a right percentage of it. Discount may reduce the percentage of
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profit which is acquired by the business enterprise on the sales. By evaluating the records of
Super store it has been measured that organisation is facing huge losses due to discount which is
provided to the customers for the purpose of increasing sales. This problem can be dealt by
reducing the percentage of discount on sales (Dwivedi, Kasliwal and Soni, 2016).
Higher prices of goods: From the records of super store in has been analysed that the prices
of all the goods all very high as compared to the market. Due to this, sales of the organisation is
decreasing continuously. This issue is resulting in lower profit which is affecting the business
execution procedures. High price of items that are sold to customer reduces their interest in the
organisation as they want that we get all the goods on lower prices. In order to deal with this
problem top level executives are required to set the price face by conducting market research. it
will help to gather detailed information of competitors and the prices which are said by them for
their products. Higher prices of items that are sold in supermarket is increasing the losses for
super store.
Late delivery of goods: All the goods which are ordered by clients are delivered late by the
organisation which is affecting the sales and profit of super store. due to this organisation is
facing losses and management is not able to pay attention towards improvement of profit and
sales. Total attention is paid towards the strategies which are made for the purpose of dealing
with losses. If a seller is taking too much time to deliver a good then it may result in decreased
interest of customer in that company (Hamoud, Hashim and Awadh, 2018). Super store is also
facing this problem as the time for delivery which is taken by it, is very high. It is affecting
overall profit and sales of whole organisation. It is very important for the management to take
strict action against it because it can help to deal with the main problem which is lower profits
and sales.
High shipping cost: All the companies which and delivering product to the customers
according to their orders charge shipping cost for the delivery. for the purpose of generating
profit it is very important for top management to make sure that the set an appropriate amount
for the same. The records of superstore on showing that shipping cost which is charged by the
business enterprise is very high. it is resulting in declined profit and sales. If a cost which is paid
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by clients for getting a delivery is very high then it may result in lower engagement of them in
that entity. Due to this amount of sales and profit get declined and losses are increased.
From above discussion it has been analysed that there are various causes of lower profits and
sales of super store. It is very important for manager to take proper actions for the purpose of
dealing with all the problems properly (Hamoud and Atwell, 2016). There are various formulas
which could be used by management of Super Store for the purpose of identification of all the
above described problems. All of them are as follows:
IF: It is a type of function which is used in excel for the purpose of performing logical tests
and get the exact results. There are two different answers which are acquired with the help of it
which are true and false. With the help of this function more than one conditions could be tested.
It is an inbuild function in excel which is categorized as a logical one. It could be entered in a
cell to get the accurate results. For the purpose of analyzing the causes behind the decreased
profits and sales managers of Super Store can use this function. It could be implemented by the
management to find the reason for lower profits and higher losses. An example of it is,
IF(G1>0.01,”lowsalesandprofits”). The other formula for the same is
IF(K2>2,”lowersalesandprofits”).
LOOK UP: This formula is also used in excel or the purpose of getting results from a range
and array. It is categorized in reference function. It can also be used as a worksheet function in
excel so that researchers can get accurate answers for their queries. It allows the user to get a
piece of information in a raw or column. While using it first of all the users are required to select
the cell where the formula will be applied (Lu, 2018). Afterwards they are required to click on
the VLOOKUP at the button and the they will have to click of the drop-down button. At last the
cells for the range will be required to be selected. For the purpose of identifying the reasons
behind the decreased sales and profits managers in Super Store can use it. Examples of it are
LOOKUP(0.01,G2:G8400), LOOKUP(2,K2:K8400). With the help of these formulas all the
values which are lower than the added one will be highlighted. It can help to find the problem
easily.
PIVOT TABLE: It can be defined as a function which is used in excel for the purpose of
summarizing the information of extensive tables. It includes sum, average and other statistic
function. In other words, it can be defined as a technique of data processing used in statistics to
reduce the time which is invested by users to analyze excel. With the help of it an analyzer can
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transform rows in columns and columns in rows. It is also an inbuilt function in excel which
could be used by managers of Super Store to find out the reasons behind decreased profits and
sales. For the purpose of using it the managers will be required to source the cell and the click on
the ribbon and then select the insert tab. Afterwards they will be needed to click on the PIVOT
table and then the list could be scrolled down to use it (Natek and Zwilling, 2014).
By using all the above described functions, the managers in Super Store can find the
problems which are faced by the entity and resulting in lower profits and sales. It will be
beneficial for them to analyze the main causes of major challenges of decreased revenues and
profitability.
PART 2
2.1 Advantages and disadvantages of Weka
Weka is a type of software which is used in machine learning and perform the data mining
tasks which requires algorithms. All of them could be applied directly or to a data set which is in
the form of Jawa code (Watkins, 2016). There are various activities which are related to it. All of
them are classification, pre-processing, clustering, regression of information which is used for
different purposes such as analyzing business performance. It could be operated in a Windows,
Linux and OS X operating systems. There are various advantages and disadvantages of using it.
All of them are as follows:
Advantages: It is available for free for all the users under GNU general public license.
As it is based upon Jawa language therefore its portability is very high which means it could be
used in any type of computing platform. It is a collection of different techniques which are used
for the purpose of processing and modeling the data set provided to the user (Olaniyan, Ojukwu
and Ogude, 2019).
Disadvantages: Sequence modelling in this software is not covered by different
algorithms which are used in it. It requires professional training which may result in higher cost
to a company to provide experience of its employees to work with this. It is not capable for the
multi relational mining of information which is inserted in it. It is bounded by memory which
means a large amount of data could not be stored in it.
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2.2 Most common data mining methods
There are various types of methods which could be used for the purpose of data mining. All
of them could be used for the purpose of mining the information analysed by users. Description
of all of them is as follows:
Prediction: It is considered as the most valuable method of mining as it is used to project the
information which could be used in future. While using it users analyze and evaluate the
information of prior years and current trends for the purpose of forecasting data for upcoming
years (Ortega, Lorences and Marx-Gómez, 2014).
Association: It is a method of data mining which is similar to another technique which is
tracking patterns but on the other hand it is more specific in nature and highly linked to the
variables. While using it, the user can look the specific attributes and events which are correlated
with each other.
Classification: It is one of the complex data mining technique which forces the user to collect
the attributes which ae required to mine the information. With the help of it detailed information
regarding the data which is being studied could be gathered (PUTRA and SETIAWAN, 2019).
Clustering: It is very similar to the above described method but different grouping chunks
of data are included in it which are based on their similarities. For the purpose of analyzing the
information on the basis of demographics it is the best suitable method to get exact results.
Tracking patterns: It is considered as the basic technique of data mining which is beneficial in
identifying the patterns in the data set. The main purpose of it is to guide the users to recognize
the aberration which is taking place in regular intervals (Swenson Roth and S Butler, 2016).
CONCLUSION
From the above project report it has been concluded that business management is a process
which should be focused by all the organisations for the purpose of reaching the long-term
business goals successfully. in order to analyse the reasons behind decrease sales and profits it is
very important for the managers to assess the records of different years and then find the causes
of decreased sales and profits. It will be very easy for the management to figure out the reasons
behind their losses or declined sales by analysing the records. While analysing the business
reports, different functions in excel could be used which are IF, LOOK UP, PIVOT TABLE. All
of them will be beneficial to easily get an insight into the business records. Various data mining
software such as Weka which could be used over Excel. It will be beneficial for small businesses
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such as Audi dealership as it can help them to use different algorithms to get accurate results.
With the help of such type of software an organisation can manage its records easily.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Bucko, J. and Kakalejčík, L., 2017, May. Machine learning techniques in the education process
of students of economics. In 2017 40th International Convention on Information and
Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics (MIPRO) (pp. 750-754).
IEEE.
Dwivedi, S., Kasliwal, P. and Soni, S., 2016, March. Comprehensive study of data analytics tools
(RapidMiner, Weka, R tool, Knime). In 2016 Symposium on Colossal Data Analysis
and Networking (CDAN) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.
Hamoud, A., Hashim, A. S. and Awadh, W.A., 2018. Predicting Student Performance in Higher
Education Institutions Using Decision Tree Analysis. Hamoud, AK, AS Hashim, and
WA Awadh, Predicting Student Performance in Higher Education Institutions Using
Decision Tree Analysis. International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial
Intelligence. 5(2). pp.26-31.
Hamoud, B. and Atwell, E., 2016, February. Quran question and answer corpus for data mining
with WEKA. In 2016 Conference of Basic Sciences and Engineering Studies
(SGCAC) (pp. 211-216). IEEE.
Lu, J., 2018, September. Data Science in the Business Environment: Skills Analytics for
Curriculum Development. In International Conference on Machine Learning,
Optimization, and Data Science (pp. 116-128). Springer, Cham.
Natek, S. and Zwilling, M., 2014. Student data mining solution–knowledge management system
related to higher education institutions. Expert systems with applications. 41(14).
pp.6400-6407.
Olaniyan, O. M., Ojukwu, E. and Ogude, C., 2019. A Frame Work for Customer Relationship
Management in Nigerian Banks Using Data Analytics. FUOYE Journal of Engineering
and Technology. 4(2).
Ortega, C. M., Lorences, C. P. and Marx-Gómez, H. J., 2014. Architecture for business
intelligence design on the IT service management scope. In Engineering and
Management of IT-based Service Systems (pp. 201-213). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
PUTRA, W.E. and SETIAWAN, D., 2019. THE SUCCESS ANALYSIS OF
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ELECTRONIC SYSTEM INTEGRATED FINAL
PROJECT OF JAMBI UNIVERSITY STUDENTS WITH DELONE AND MCLEAN
MODEL APPROACH. JEBI (Jurnal Ekonomi dan Bisnis Islam). 4(2). pp.147-156.
Swenson Roth, W. and S Butler, D., 2016. Improving Student Outcomes through the Well
Designed use of Computer Technology in University Business Classes. Economics and
Business Review. 2(2).
Watkins, A., 2016. Modeling in R and Weka for Course Enrollment Prediction (Doctoral
dissertation, California State University, Northridge).
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