:Introduction

In business, making good decisions requires the effective use of

information. Business Decision
Making provides the opportunity of learning a variety of sources and devel
ops techniques in four aspects ofinformation: data gathering, data
storage, tools available to create useful information and
presenting.Moreover, using appropriate IT software and spreadsheets for
data analysis and the preparation ofinformation provides the advantages
of using information systems which is currently used at all levels inevery
.organization
TASK 1
Everpia London, a company with 100% Korean invested capital is the
owner of high-grade Everon bedding- a reputable brand for lots of
consumer in London. It has already 3 factories in Luton and Essexand now
wants to establish one more factories in order to expand its
activity.Business Decision Making Purpose and aim of this assessment will
give the author opportunity toexamine a variety of data sources. For any
of the given scenarios, he will collect data from differentsources by using
variety of methods, and will use spreadsheets and other software for data
analysis andthe preparation of information in an effective manner.
Conclusions on the basis of data analysis arerequired to clarify
.the importance and use of different data analysis techniques
Prepare and implement a plan for the collection of primary 1.1
and secondary data
The Evepias criteria in choosing the most appropriate locat
ion for the new factory embraced a plenty ofsmall and medium English
enterprises (SMEs), the closest geographical match, and the
productioncapacity and behavior toward their partners which specialize in
textiles in that location are good. And inorder to find out the most suitable
.province, we have to collect both secondary and primary data
Secondary data
The secondary data are data which have already been collected
elsewhere, for some other purpose, butwhich can be used or adapted for
the survey being conduct (Bpp, 2004, p.7). So that the author can usethe
secondary data to assess the first two criteria of Everpia: the province
which having a large number oftextiles companies and short distances
between Everpia and those companies. These secondary data below are
:used
The geographical location of each province: find
out location of the province which is nearest to EverpiaOffice in Luton
(Bradford shire). We can localize it within 50km from Luton and then
searching onGoogle or from the Atlas Geography of London to determine
.the province that reach the condition

The area of each province: we need to find information about this to know
if it suitable for the
construction of the factory or not. We can find it on the General Statistics
Office of London (GSO)s
website, in Statistics data: land used by province. These data bring us the
information of the land use ondifferent purposes so that we can know how
.many areas have been used and if Everpia can build a factorythere or not
The number of SMEs which specialized in textiles: find out the province
that has text
ile is the leadingeconomic power or which province has the big
.concentration of small and medium textile companies
This kind of information can be found from the Department of Planning
and Investment (DPI)s website
of each province. For example: the website hungyenbusiness.gov.uk
use function Finding enterprises by branch. It will provide us the ,
accuracy source on registered firms and their kind of business. And a very
important thing that we need to know is the legitimacy of the company. So
we must contact a Chamber ofCommerce or Government Trade Office to
.verify their legitimacy
Population of each province: this data help us to figure out where the
human resource is abundant and
favorable for employees seeking for the factory. We can search on
GSOs website; there is the data of
average population by province there.With all the secondary data above
we can choose out 3 cities that have the best fits with the first twocriteria
that are provided by Everpia.Besides, it is better that we can see first-hand
the reality, by observation we will know clearer about thefactors that can
.influence our decision in choosing the province
Primary data
From the data that we have searched from the secondary data the number
of SMEs which specialized intextiles, we can list out the textile companies
of each province with this information: Name of thecompany, the location
and kinds of textile manufacturing that they do.In order to investigate the
production capacity and the firm behavior we need to collect primary
data.Primary data are collected especially for the purpose of whatever
.survey is being conducted (Bpp, 2004, p7)
In this case, we will do a survey to investigate the companies' features to
satisfy the third criteria byfinding the information about fixed and
operating capital, number of employees, their education andskills,
management skills and the credibility. The survey methodology is
.presented below

Present the survey methodology and sampling frame used 1.2

The list of textiles companies in 3 cities is called the sampling frame. After
having the sampling frame we
continue to pick out sample for the investigation of firms production
capacity and their behavior towards
clients. Because of the unnecessary and wasting time and money, we
cannot evaluate all the companiesthat have in the list, we just select some
of the companies to represent for the rest by using samplingmethod or in
other words we use the sampling method to narrow the range of the
surveyed firm. Here wehave the list of all textile companies that have
common conditions like: all located within 50km fromLondon, all are textile
companies, etc but different in province where they located in. So the
stratifiedmethod is the most suitable method that we can use.Take an
:example in using stratified method to pick out the sample
province A
textile companies 15

province B
textile companies 15

province C
textile companies 30

Total: 60 textile companies

.Assume that we are taking 12 from 60 textiles companies to investigate
The first step is we have to calculate the percentage of each group (each
cities)
textile company in: 15/60.100% = 25% %
textile company in: 15/60.100% = 25% %
textile company in: 30/60.100% = 50 %
:So that our 12 samples must be%
of the textile company in province A = (25x12)/100 = 3 companies 20%
of the textile company in province B= (25x12)/100= 3 companies 40%
.of the textile company in province C= (50x12)/100= 6 companies 40%
Now we can choose 3 companies from province A, 3 companies from
province B and 6 companies from province C to investigate by survey
method. Furthermore, because Everpia wants to choose companies are
belonging to three-digit sub-industries of textile: Spinning, weaving and
fishing of textiles (171), Manufacture of other textiles (172) and
Manufacture of knitted and crocheted fabric and articles (173) so firstly,
we need to divide all the companies in each province to 3 part. Part 1, part
2 and part 3 that are belonged to three-digit sub-industries of textile: 171,
172, 173, respectively. Secondly, we choose the company based on these
conditions: in each province we need to choose 3 types of sub-industries
of textile and exactly the number of company that we have calculated
above. For example: in province A we have to choose 3 companies and
those 3 companies are from different kind of sub-industries of textile, it

means that we will choose 3companies from province A, 1 company is

(171) type, 1 company is (172) type and 1 company is (173) type. It's
.similar with the two remaining cities
design a questionnaire for a given business problem 1.3
Next, our task is to find out firm's production capacity and company's
behavior towards clients. In order to collect information from those
companies, the questionnaire is used. Depending on the purpose we
design the question relevant. Furthermore, we also need to identify the
targeting respondent for the questionnaire to get the accurate information
and we will decide which is the best method to collect the information
from the questionnaire. Here we have to investigate about the company
capacity as well as their behavior toward the clients so we need to ask
questions about the capital (include fixed and operating capital) of the
company, their profit every year, their liquidity, debts, the official
employees that the company have, level education of their employees,
about their performance, the employees skill in textile, their amount of
product that they produce in a month (year), the manager's skill,
level education of the manager, their attitude about the company's
responsibility with clients etc. So the targeting respondent for those
questions is the director or the CEO of the company who knows best about
the company situation as well as the data of everything in the company.
And in this case, the personal interview is the best choice although it may
cost more of money. In a personal interview the interviewer can avoid all
the misunderstanding of the interviewee and moreover, the interview can
grasp the situation and more active in collecting the necessary information
.for the survey, so it's more efficient
And because this questionnaire are designed for a personal interview so
.almost the questions in there are open-ended questions
The questionnaire has the structure as below
The first is the introduction to introduce about our company and
.questionnaire's purpose
:The second is the content of the questionnaire
About the company's situation at present: 6 questions
About the employees and managers of the company, the assessment of
their skill: 10 questions
About their attitude with clients: 3 questions
About The company's equipment: 2 questions
.About the company's partnership: 2 questions
.The detailed questionnaire is in the appendix 1
:TASK 2
create information for decision making by summarizing data 2.1
using representative values

The representative values includes mean, median and mode, it can be

calculated by using the measure of location. By using formula in Excel, we
:have this histrogram

:Expected salary per year

Mean 48, 6997
Median 40,000
Mode 40,000
First quartile 30,000
Third quartile 50,000
Skewness 8.862355137
With this variable, the median and the mode are the same but different
.with the mean
The mean is 48.6997992
The average salary that the employee at Everpia company expect each *
year is 48,700 per year. The median is 40,000
It means that there are 50% employees expect their salary each year *
above 40,000 and 50% of students expect their salary per year below
40,000.The mode is 40,000
is the salary that has the highest choice for the expected salary 40,000 *
of employee at the company of Everpia. The first quartile is 30,000
student at the company expect their salary equal or less than 25% *
30,000/year. The second quartile is the median. The third quartile is
50,000
employees at the Everpia Company expect their salary equal or less 75% *
.than 50,000 per year
:Age
Mean 22.48394
Median 21

Mode 22
First quartile
20Third quartile 24Skewness 6.565967484Age Distribution of Everpia
company.With this variable, the mean, mode and median are nearly the
same.The mean is 22.48394* The average age of the employees at the
Everpia company
.is 22,5
The median is 21* In the company there are 50% of students have the
.age above 21 and 50% of employee have the age below 21

The mode is 22
The number of employee aged 22 is the most popular in the *
Company.The first quartile is 20* 25% Employee aged equal or less than
20.The third quartile is 24
.employee aged equal or less than 24 75% *
When there are extreme values in a set of data, we prefer to use mode *
or median, because the mean will be affected by the extreme values so it
makes the result inappropriate. With the data of culture back-ground,
because it's qualitative data so we cannot find the mean or median we
just find out that UK is the culture back-ground that occur the most in
.the data
analyse the data to draw valid conclusions in a business 2.2
context
To calculate the skewness of data distribution, we use the Coefficient of
Skewness formula.If C of S is nearly +1 or -1, the distribution is highly
skewed.In this case, we can see that both C of V of age and expected
salary are positive* The distribution is skew to the right.Because the
skewness of expected salary is higher than the skewness of age so the
expected salary is morespread out.We can see the histograms which are
drew below to check the data distribution that we have
:commented.Salary

Salary
%100,000-200,000
200,000-800,000<
800,000<

Frequency
9
4
0

Cumulative
99.20%
100.00%
100.00%

A suitable survey methodology in terms of population, sample and

sampling methods that could be usedto collect the New Everpia Company
employee salary, wages about their opinions on the different
rangeavailable on the market is the different types of sampling methods,
which are used to gatheringinformation about employees. The alternative
would be to test, measure or question every member of theemployee, this
might be impractical because It could take too long, difficult to access all
items inemployee such as their national insurance and tax contribution
its too expensive and total ,
employee sizemay be unknown.Advantages of sampling; is that it saves
time and money, and sometimes can be the only option.Disadvantages
are that sampling error, this is when sample is not representative of total
Companys
expenditure, this bias can be computed and analysed. Non sampling
errors, this is when missing data,defective questionnaires etc, these
cannot be computed and analysed so sampling must be planned
.andcarried out well
analyse data using measures of dispersion to inform a given 2.3
business scenario
Cross table showing the distribution of data by cultural background and
expected
salaryCount of expected salary Cultural backgroundExpected salary Englis
h Chinese Germanic Indian Latin Slavonic Other1000-20.000 53 6 0 0 0 0 2
<40.000-60.000 92 23 1 8 0 4 10<20.000-40.000 163 26 3 4 2 0 23<
100.000-<80.000-100.000 15 3 1 0 1 1 2<4 0 1 7 60.000-80.000 20 6 3
0 0 0 0Total 350 200.000-800.000 0 4 0<1 0 1 2 200.000 2 3 0
67 8 17 3 7 46Look at the table above, we can see that almost the culture
back-ground of employee at company ofEverpia. With 350 employees out
of total 499 employees, the number of English employees will influencethe
number of the other culture back-ground so we cannot see the relationship
between the culture back-ground and the expected salary of the employee
correctly.Cross table showing the distribution of data by gender and
expected
salaryCount of expected salary GenderExpected salary Male Female20.000
-40.000 97 125>40.000-60.000 53 85>60.000-80.000 19 22>80.000100.000 7 16>100.000-200.000 5 4>200.000-800.000 0 4Total 206 292
Look at the table above, we can see that at the different salary from less
than 20,000 to 100,000 thenumber of male and female is similar
(because there are more female than male here). But the female aretend
to expect the salary higher than the male. There are 8 females have the
expected salary from over100,000 to
per year while therere only 5 males who want to have the salary 800,000
over 100,000 peryear. May be the male are much more realistic than the
.female so they just expect the lower salary thanthe female

explain how quartiles, percentiles and the correlation 2.4

coefficient are used to draw usefulconclusions in a business
context
:Quartile
Quartile represents the middle value between two quarters of a
distribution
,Dransfield)
The lower quartile is the value between the first and second .(2003
quarter of the distribution. The upperquartile is the value between the
third and fourth quarter of the distribution. The middle quarter is
calledmedian.Percentile: Percentiles are values that divide a sample of
data into one hundred groups containing equalnumbers of observations.
For example, 30% of the data values lie below the 30th percentile (Easton
andMcColl, 2010).Coefficient: the coefficient of variation measures the
spread of a set of data as a proportion of its mean. Itis the ratio of the
sample standard deviation to the sample mean. It is often expressed as a
percentage(Easton and McColl, 2010).Quartiles, deciles, and percentiles
divide a frequency distribution into a number of parts containing
equalfrequencies. According to the 50% employees expect their salary
each year above 40,000 and 50% ofemployees expect their salary per
year below 40,000. The items are first put into order of
increasingmagnitude. Quartiles divide the range of values into four parts,
each containing one quarter of the values.Again, if an item comes exactly
on a dividing line, half of salary of employees counted in the group
aboveand half is counted below. Similarly, deciles divide into ten parts,
each containing one tenth of the totalfrequency, and percentiles divide
into a hundred parts, each containing one hundredth of the totalfrequency.
If we think again about the median, it is the second or middle quartile, the
fifth decile, and thefiftieth percentile. If a quartile, decile, or percentile falls
between two items in order of size, for our
purposes the value halfway between the two items will be used. Other
conventions are also common, butthe effect of different choices is usually
.not important
TASK 33.1 produce graphs using spreadsheets and draw valid
conclusions based on the informationderived
The line chart shows the trend which took place in sales of domestic and
international markets during thefour-year period from 2003-2006. As we
can see in the chart, the trends of two markets werecontradictory. Firstly,
in 2003 there was a big different between the sales of domestic and
export
markets because the export sales was 10 times higher than the domestic s
ales with 80,5m and 8,4 m,respectively. However, in 2004 the export
sales sudden plunged significantly from 80,5m to 37,4m andcontinued
to go down in subsequent years and remarkable decrease to 1,8 m in
2006 while the domesticsales from 2003-2006 were erratic a little bit but
in general it still remained stable, from 8,4 m in 2003 to13,8 m in 2006.

It can be said that Everpia Company has found the stability in domestic
market but theywere losing their place in the international markets
although they used to be successful before with the
high sales. So its nece
ssary that the company need to attach more special importance to the
internationalmarket by some prosper strategy and plan in marketing or in
the quality of product in order to affirmed
.the companys brand and attract more foreign partner

01020304050607080902003200420052006DomesticInternational
create trend lines in spreadsheet graphs to assist in 3.2
forecasting for specified businessinformation

23
Particulars FY 2007-2008 FY 2008-2009 AverageTATA Steel 63.85 69.7 66.8
SAIL 18.25 14.95 16.6If a person seeking for more profit he can go for
(TATA Steelc

Dividend Pay-out Ratio = Dividend per common share x 100Earnings per

shareTATA Steel FY 07-08 FY 08-09= 15.93 x 100 = 15.66 x 10063.85
69.70= 25% = 22%SAIL FY 07-08 FY 008-09= 3.7 x 100 = 2.6 x 10018.25
14.95= 20.3% = 17.4%Dividend Pay-out ratiosParticulars FY 20072008 FY 2008-2009 AverageTATA Steel 25% 22% 23.5%SAIL 20.3% 17.4%
18.85%TATA Steel is giving more dividends to its shareholders compared
.to SAIL
Prepare a project plan for an activity and determine the 4.2
critical path

24
This section shall contain, either directly or by reference, plans for the
supporting functions of thesoftware project. Supporting functions include
:(but may not be limited to)
,Software quality assurance

,Verification and validation plans

.Production support and operational support functions

Work Packages, Schedules, and BudgetThe Gantt Chart shows the a
.project plan analysis dateline
IDTask NameStartFinishDuration
Jan 1 2012Jan 8 2012Jan 15 2012Jan 22 201212345678910111213141516
1718192021222324
1 3d1/4/20121/2/2012Project
GIven2 5d1/10/20121/4/2012Questionaries3 7d1/12/20121/4/2012Primary
Data4 3d1/16/20121/12/2012Secondary
Data7 2d1/24/20121/23/2012Submission6 2d1/20/20121/19/2012Presenta
tion5 4d1/19/20121/16/2012Analysis
This section of the Project Management Plan will specify the work
packages, identify the dependencyrelationships among them, state the
project resource requirements, provide the allocation of budget
andresources to work packages, and establish a project schedule.1 Work
PackagesThis subsection will define the work packages (work breakdown
structure (WBS)) for the activities andtasks that must be completed in
order to satisfy the project agreement. Each work package must
beuniquely identified; identification may be based on a numbering scheme
and descriptive title. A diagramdepicting the breakdown of activities
(Gantt Chart) may be used to depict a hierarchical relationshipamong work
packages.2 Dependencies

25
This section will state the ordering relations among work packages to
account for interdependenciesamong them and dependencies on external
events. Techniques such as dependency lists, activitynetworks, and the
critical path method may be used to depict dependencies among work
packages.3 Resource RequirementsIdentifies, as a function of time, is
estimated of total resources required to complete the project. Numbersand
types of personnel, computer time, hardware, software, office facilities,
travel, training, andmaintenance requirements are typical resources that
should be specified.4 Budget RequirementsIdentifies, as a function of time,
.is estimated of total budget dollars required to complete the project
Use financial tools for decision making 4.3
:Conclusion
In Business Decision Making, using a variety of sources for data collection
in order to analyse thedifferent costs of business is presented. It also
applies a range of techniques for analysing data for the purpose of
business. By using different kind of graphs show the business how to draw
valid conclusions based on the information and leads to prepare a formal b
usiness report. Moreover, managementinformation systems suggest

suitable information tools for the different levels of the organisation

.throughcalculation and a diagram