MGMT90280 Managerial Decision Analytics

Assignment 2 – Group Assignment (5,000 words)

Assignment 2 Specifications – 25%

Many organisations use Business Analytics to explore data, discover patterns and solve critical business problems. This assignment is designed to allow you to demonstrate that you can effectively analyse and solve a business problem and then provide recommendations to the organisation. As a minimum requirement each group must demonstrate the implementation of a major analytical technique from each type of business analytics in their reports:

1. Descriptive analytics (e.g., Descriptive Statistics and/or Descriptive Data Mining)

2. Predictive analytics (e.g., Regression Modelling, Monte Carlo Simulation, Time Series Analysis & Forecasting, and/or Predictive Data Mining)

3. Prescriptive analytics (e.g., Linear Programming, Integer Linear Programming, Nonlinear Programming, and/or Monte Carlo Simulation)

Sample Process:

· For example, the problem a student has chosen is a human resource scheduling problem at IBM Australia (Dockland office in Melbourne). The company wishes to make some employment changes and redundancy to reduce employment costs due to the impact of covid-19. However, the firm also wishes to have enough employees that will allow them to fulfill company needs (for on-going and future projects).

· In the initial stages of the student’s analysis, the student may perform. relevant descriptive analytics by using descriptive statistics and/or descriptive data mining techniques such as clustering and association to understand more about the employees at IBM Docklands.

· A student may then decide to perform. predictive analytics to detect if employees are thinking of quitting or may quit. The student uses several different variables in their logistic regression model to make that prediction.

· Based on the student’s predictive analytics outcome, the student uses the information as inputs to their prescriptive analytics to minimise human resource costs by finding an optimal employee schedule that fulfills current needs.

Note: For your report, you may perform. more than one business analytical approach of each type. However, the implementation and analysis of the business analytic techniques for your business problem must flow logically throughout your report.

It is strongly recommended you try to find real data for your problem. An open public database, Kaggle, can be used to extrapolate the data for many organisations. You can also try to search for the data you need by using Google Dataset Search. That said, if the data are simply impossible or too sensitive to obtain, you can use hypothetical/approximate data. In this case, you must justify the reason why you use those data, and it is preferable to provide references for the data you use (e.g., the previous literature, annual reports, data from similar organisations for which data are available, industry-level data, etc.).

1. Group Formation:

· Students must form. their own group with at least four but no more than six students in each group to work on and complete the assignment. The group members must come from the same registered seminar. Students must self-enroll their groups in Canvas by the end of Week 6.

2. Expected Contents of Group Report:

· Introduction – organization background, description of the business problem, justification of selection, etc.

· Literature review – summary of the findings from 6 peer-reviewed articles that are related to your problem.

§ Synopsis – description of the method used to collect the journal articles, such as databases, searching and filtering criteria, etc.

§ Strengths – analysis of the strengths of the articles with respect to the organisation’s evaluation criteria (e.g., things from the articles that you can borrow for your analysis).

§ Weaknesses – analysis of the weaknesses of the articles with respect to the evaluation criteria (e.g., things from the articles that do not fit well with your problem as well as those that you should improve for your analysis).

§ Summary of Literature Review – Summary of the identified strengths and weaknesses.

· Methodology – description and illustration of the business analytical approaches for the problem.

· Implementation – formulation of the problem by using different business analytical approaches, application of Excel Solver Add-in, Excel Analysis ToolPak, and/or Analytic Solver Basic for Excel.

· Discussions and Conclusions – suggestions for courses of action to the selected company as well as the evaluation of the business analytical approaches.

· References

· Appendices – including the minutes/notes of meetings.

3. Marking Criteria: