Task One- Business analytics concepts
a. Critically analyse and explain the Internet of Things and the role of business analytics in IOT. [7 Marks] b. Critically analyse and explain the Text Mining concepts, applications and tools. Also, Text Mining steps should be described properly. [8 Marks]
Task Two – Forecasting [45 marks]
As a business analyst, you have been asked to forecast the amount of sales for the year 2020 in a company. Based on the data gathered, you have observed that there is a seasonal behavior on the amount of sale in each year. Look at the gathered data of previous years related to the revenue in each quarter which have been reported in Table 2.
Table 2- Data of total sales in each quarter of years from 2012-2019
Year Q Total sale
Four Moving average
Baseline Seasonality Deseasonality Trend Forecast Error
MAD Error
MSE MAPE
2012 1 719 2012 2 787 2012 3 901 2012 4 711 2013 1 739 2013 2 810 2013 3 925 2013 4 748 2014 1 790 2014 2 837 2014 3 973 2014 4 781 2015 1 851 2015 2 869 2015 3 1026 2015 4 836 2016 1 897 2016 2 915 2016 3 1080 2016 4 880 2017 1 961 2017 2 981 2017 3 1126 2017 4 921 2018 1 993 2018 2 1030 2018 3 1167 2018 4 947 2019 1 1029 2019 2 1110 2019 3 1193 2019 4 1018
a. Use the data set in table 2 to compute the four-period moving average and enter your values in the appropriate columns. [5 marks].
b. Plot the data and describe the main features of the series. [5 marks].
c. Calculate the Centered Moving Average (CMA)/Baseline. Interpret it. [5 marks].
d. Calculate the Trend and interpret the trend. [5 marks].
e. Determine the Seasonality (St) and interpret it properly. [5 Marks].
f. Forecast the revenue for year 2020. [5 Mark].
g. Calculate the Error, mean absolute deviation (MAD) error, Mean Square Error (MSE) and Mean Absolute percentage error (MAPE). [10 marks].
h. Write a brief report to explain and evaluate and make comments on the error variables, the forecasted and actual revenues. [5 marks].
Task Three – Marketing Analysis [40 marks]
A new product has been developed in a company and its price should be determined. Optimal price should be selected to achieve maximum profit. The demand of new product has a direct relation to its price. So, by increasing the price the demand will be decreased. It is assumed that the demand of the new product has been predicted by a model for each price level based on previous experiences and the predicted demands are reported in Table 1. Also, it is assumed that production and other related expenses to each unit of the new product has been calculated which is about £35.
Table 1- Estimated demand of a new developed product based on a price level
Price (£) Demand 40 2400 45 2200 50 2000 60 1388 70 1021 80 780 90 617 100 500 110 413 120 342 130 296 140 255 150 222
The main objective of the company is to maximize its profit regarding to the new product. It is assumed that the unit production and supply cost of each product is about 35£.
a) Use Excel to determine the estimated equation function of demand according to the price in a quadratic form. [5 marks] b) Use Excel solver to find the optimal price which maximizes company profit. [5 marks] c) Determine the optimal demand. [5 marks] d) Compute the optimal profit. [5 marks] e) Interpret the results. [5 marks] f) If the supply cost of each new product is 10, 15, 20, 25, determine on the optimal price and analyze it properly. [15 marks]
