Digital Revolution

Assignment 1 - Page Box

Overview

For this individual assignment, you will use skills acquired through practical laboratory exercises to automate a business process, and to visualize the impact of the automation.

You should use Microsoft Excel (or equivalent open-source software) for this assessment task.

Important: This assignment specification is generated just for you. Do not distribute this specification.

Costs

Allen and Bhavneet are the semi-retired co-owners of the bookshop, and do not take a salary.

Chris, however, is a part-time employee, with total employment costs of $22 per hour. Chris is also entitled to four weeks of paid annual leave, during which a casual replacement is required at a cost of $33 per hour.

Fixed costs such as rent and insurance are $2900 per year, and utilities costs are $140 per month.

Task 1 - Costs of operating the business

Using Excel, create a spreadsheet called operating_costs.xlsx that calculates the projected annual outgoing costs of running Page Box.

Your spreadsheet should be configured such that the working hours, hourly rates, and fixed and utility costs can be varied easily.

Document your findings in your ePortfolio page (approximately 100 words).

Obtaining Books

Throughout the day, customers come to Page Box to buy books, and occasionally to sell them.

When people bring in books to sell to Page Box, the staff member on duty will review the books and make an offer for each one individually.

Currently, the process for determining how much the book shop will pay for a book is entirely subjective. Staff members offer an amount per book based on the quality of the book, and how popular they think it is, and how they are feeling at the time.

The sale amount is always simply double the amount paid and is set at the same time - if Page Box pays $3.00 for a book, they will put it on sale with a marked price of $6.00.

(Page Box does not deal in rare or antique books)

For several months, staff have been keeping track of the date and time, quality, publication year and amount paid for each book in a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is available for download on Moodle.

Task 2 - Sales team offers

Using Excel, process the history of purchases spreadsheet and use appropriate charts to visualize:

How the prices paid differed for each staff member; and  How the prices paid have changed over time

Describe your findings in your ePortfolio (approximately 250 words), and attach the Excel file to your page.

Process automation

Allen and Bhavneet want to improve the consistency of how they pay for and price books.

They'd like to standardize on three standard price offers, and have designed the following process to determine how to allocate them, including the option of rejecting the book altogether.

 The staff have already agreed on how to determine whether a book is 

terrible, poor, or good.

    

Task 3 - Automation

Using Excel, create a spreadsheet page that automates the above process, allowing a member of the team to enter whether the book is hardcover, its publication year, and its condition, and receive a price to offer.

Ensure that you include enough text and formatting to make your spreadsheet usable by a member of the Page Box team, or by a University lecturer.

Your spreadsheet should be configured such that the Low, Medium and High prices can be varied easily.

Describe how you automated the process (approx 150 words), and attach your Excel file to your ePortfolio.

Task 4 - Price setting

Using Excel and the historical data you have available, determine sets of prices which meet the objectives of the following scenarios:

Scenario one: Total offer prices are approximately the same as for the historical data

Scenario two: Assuming all books purchased are sold, allow all staff to draw the same wage as Chris.

Describe the strategy you used to find appropriate prices for each scenario (approximately 150 words).

Ensure that the Low price is less than the Medium price, and both are less than the High price.

Bonus challenge task (optional!)

Disclaimer: This task is 100% optional, and you can receive full marks without attempting or completing it. It is intended to be a challenge if you are interested in such things, and the marks available do not reflect the significant research and effort required to implement it correctly. Tutors will not provide significant assistance for this challenge task.

Optional task 5

 Reimplement Task 1 and Task 3 using either Python or HTML+JavaScript.

Write a brief overview of how to run your solution, and attach a zip file containing your code to your ePortfolio page.

There are no partial marks awarded for this bonus task - you must complete all features to attain the bonus marks.

It is possible to attain full marks for this assignment without completing this challenge task.

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