Assignment 2 Brief

Student Name/ID Number

Unit Number and Title 14: Business Intelligence

Academic Year 2020-2021

Unit Tutor

Assignment Title Assignment 2: Apply BI tools & techniques and their impact

Issue Date

Submission Date

IV Name & Date Tran Vu Linh

Submission Format

Part I: Project submission. This should be a zip / rar folder of your project, including all necessary files to run your
project. There should be a link to your Tableau work on Tableau Public cloud.
Part II: The submission is in the form of a group written report. This should be written in a concise, formal business
style using single spacing and font size 12. You are required to make use of headings, paragraphs and subsections
as appropriate, and all work must be supported with research and referenced using the Harvard referencing
system. Please also provide a bibliography using the Harvard referencing system.
Part III: Team needs to present their point of view about how business intelligence tools can contribute to effective
decision-making as well as the legal issues involved in exploiting user data for business intelligence. You may need
to research for specific examples of organizations that use BI tools to enhance or improve their business and
evaluate how they can use BI tools for extend their target audience and make them more competitive within the
market.
Unit Learning Outcomes

LO3 Demonstrate the use of business intelligence tools and technologies

Assignment Brief

(Continued from previous scenario)

Your next task is to demonstrate to the board of directors about the ability of applying business intelligence in the
company's current business processes. To demonstrate BI, you need to prepare a presentation about BI and
related tools & techniques and a demonstration on real company dataset.
For the presentation, you need:
- Explain general concept of what is BI
- Introduction to some tools / techniques for BI and their application in general

For the demonstration, you need:

- A (some) data set(s) extracted from the company's business processes. Explain the dataset.
- Show how you pre-process data for later analysis, explain each step and it purpose
- Design dashboards to show your analysis on pre-processed data. Explain clearly purpose of dashboards and
charts. Suggestions should be made after analysis

During the demonstration, you need collect feed-back and comments from users to review how well your
dashboards design meet user or business requirement and what customization needed for future use.

Team needs to present their point of view about how business intelligence tools can contribute to effective
decision-making as well as the legal issues involved in exploiting user data for business intelligence. You may need
to research for specific examples of organizations that use BI tools to enhance or improve their business and
evaluate how they can use BI tools for extend their target audience and make them more competitive within the
market.

To summary, you need to submit a report in PDF includes 4 parts: your presentation, result of demonstration and
review of user feedback, point of view on BI contribution and legal issues.

HNC/HND Computing 3
 Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria

Pass Merit Distinction

LO3 Demonstrate the use of business intelligence tools and

technologies

P3 Determine, with examples, M3 Customise the design to ensure D3 Provide a critical review
what business intelligence is and that it is user friendly and has a of the design in terms of
the tools and techniques functional interface. how it meets a specific user
associated with it. or business requirement
and identify what
P4 Design a business customisation has been
intelligence tool, application integrated into the design.
or interface that can perform a
specific task to support
problem- solving or decision-
making at an advanced level.

LO4 Discuss the impact of business intelligence tools and technologies D4 Evaluate how
for effective decision-making purposes and the legal/regulatory organisations could use
context in which they are used business intelligence to
extend their target audience
and make them more
P5 Discuss how business M4 Conduct research to identify
competitive within the
intelligence tools can contribute specific examples of organisations
market, taking security
to effective decision-making. that have used business
legislation into consideration
intelligence tools to enhance or
P6 Explore the legal issues improve operations.
involved in the secure
exploitation of business
intelligence tools
 Table of content

Contents
P3 Determine, with examples, what business intelligence is and the tools and techniques associated with it...........6
P4 Design a business intelligence tool, application or interface that can perform a specific task to support problem-
solving or decision-making at an advanced level..........................................................................................................9
1.1. Importing some helpful libraries, cleaning and analyzing the dataset..............................................................9
1.2. Python Matplotlib reports..............................................................................................................................15
P5 Discuss how business intelligence tools can contribute to effective decision-making..........................................18
P6 Explore the legal issues involved in the secure exploitation of business intelligence tools..................................21
1. What kind of data will we collect?................................................................................................................22
2. How is your data stored by us?.....................................................................................................................22
3. How to use Big Data?....................................................................................................................................22
References................................................................................................................................................................24
P3 Determine, with examples, what business intelligence is and the tools and techniques associated with it.

Business intelligence (BI) is a collection of methods and techniques for analyzing and converting raw data
into actionable and coherent facts that can be used in business research and decision-making. Any company
has sophisticated transaction-oriented processes that collect and store data from everyday activities in
repositories. Businesses must rediscover and use the knowledge they have in order to stay competitive, and
this is where BI comes in. We may draw insights from a pool of available data using market intelligence to
provide accurate, actionable, and virtually real-time decision-making inputs.
Economic intelligence increases business efficiency dramatically, according to figures that suggest a ten-fold
rise in return-on-investment. Businesses who use business intelligence see a five-fold improvement in the
pace at which they can analyze and make decisions about their customers' experiences. Failure to
implement BI, on the other hand, has resulted in vast amounts of data going unused.
To coordinate and translate data into usable material, the BI Environment includes business models, data
models, and ETL software.
Any of the words used in BI are:
 - Big Data is a series of massive, dynamic data sets containing both structured and unstructured data
that can be difficult to process and interpret using standard database management techniques.
- A data warehouse is a subject-oriented, automated framework for reporting and reviewing data in
order to aid in decision-making.
- Data mining is the method of using computational methods to transform vast amounts of raw data
into usable information with new patterns and connections in relational databases.
Below is a diagrammatic illustration of the BI implementation mechanism that will aid understanding of
Business Intelligence.

Dataset Example:

Content:

Author: Chuck Ephron

From: https://www.kaggle.com/chuckephron/leagueoflegends

League of Legends competitive matches between 2015-2017. The matches include the NALCS, EULCS, LCK,
LMS, and CBLoL leagues as well as the World Championship and Mid-Season Invitational tournaments.

Column:

Address: Website address the data is scraped from

League: League or Tournament the match took place in

Year: Year the match took place in

Season: Spring or Summer depending on which half of the year the match took place in

Type: Season, Playoffs, Regional, or International match

DataSet:

Requirement:
Riot Games developed and released League of Legends, a multiplayer online fighting arena (MOBA) video
game for Windows and Mac computers. With over 27 million regular active players since its release in
October 2009, it has risen to become one of the most successful MOBA games. League of Legends has risen
in popularity year after year thanks to a large gaming community and Riot Games' decision to make the
game free to download. The framework requirements for League of Legends, also known as LoL, are listed
below, which include both the minimum and most recommended requirements for a smooth game
experience.
 Details about the League of Legends game:
The movie will be released on October 27th, 2009. (PC)

- System Requirements: Very Minimal

- MOBA is a game genre.
- Riot Games is the game's creator.
- Riot Games is the publisher of this game.
Minimum Requirements for League of Legends
- Processor speed: 3 GHz (supporting SSE2 instruction set or higher
- RAM is 2 GB.
- 12 GB HDD Vacant Land
- Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10
- Resolution: up to 1920x1200 pixels
- DirectX 9C or higher is needed.
- Shader: A video card that supports Version 2.0b.
Recommendations for League of Legends
- Processor speed: 3 GHz (supporting SSE2 instruction set or higher)
- 4 GB of RAM
- 16 GB of free space on the hard drive
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce 8800 / AMD Radeon HD 5670 or similar video card with 512MB or
higher VRAM dedicated memory.
- DirectX: Version 9.0C or improved OS: Windows 7, 8.1, or 10

P4 Design a business intelligence tool, application or interface that can perform a specific task to support
problem-solving or decision-making at an advanced level.
1.1. Explaining the dataset and Pre-processing steps
As previously mentioned, our dataset comes from a Supermarket, and it contains columns that identify
different groups, as well as quantitative and qualitative results. Specific data forms will be revealed during
the review process. To assist us with the data cleaning and review process, we will use a Python 3
environment and some useful data analytics packages. We'll be doing the following things in particular:

 checking the rows and columns in our dataset

  checking for and counting unique values in categories and subcategories
 identifying any rows with missing values
 dropping redundant columns

NumPy is a library that supports big, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices, as well as, more specifically, certain high-
level mathematical functions to run on said arrays, among the Python packages imported. The Pandas library, which
facilitates data processing and interpretation by providing data structures and operations for manipulating numerical
tables, is also available. There's also seaborn, a Matplotlib-based data visualization library that offers a high-level
interface for producing visually pleasing and insightful statistical graphics. The Matplotlib plotting library, for example, will
generate static, animated, or interactive data visualizations. np, pd, and plt are the aliases for the packages..

Next, we read our dataset, an Excel file, into a pandas data frame and assign it to the df (which stands for dataframe)
variable. Afterwards, we call the head() function to return the first 5 rows, which is the default when no other parameters
have been specified.

Then, we use the pandas shape function to retrieve the number of rows and columns in
our dataset.
This yields 9994 rows and 21 columns.

To retrieve the column names of the table, we use the pandas columns function. This
returns an array of the column names of our dataset.
Then, we check for the datatypes of each of the columns to better understand our dataset. This uses the dtypes function
from pandas.

Most of the quantitative columns here are in the form of integers or floats. The rest are classified as an object type, with
the exception of the Order Date and Ship Date, which takes the form of the datetime datatype.
We then use the isnull() function to check if there are any missing data. isnull().sum() is used to count the number of rows
with missing data on that column.
We can see that there are 11 rows missing values in the Postal Code column.
In addition, the “Row ID” column is also unnecessary, being only a serial number.

We’ll can also see that the “Country/Region” column only has 1 value throughout all the records as “United States”,
through the value_counts() function applied on that column. This means that we will not be analyzing by the country, and
so it will be dropped similarly.

The drop() function receives ‘Row ID’ or ‘Country/Region’, a string argument, for a parameter that determines which
column to remove. The parameter “axis” specifies whether to drop labels from the index (when axis = 0) or by columns
(when axis = 1). head() shows the table again.
Following that, we attempt to extract the various unique values that appear in the Category column using unique values
(). We end up with three broad groups, which are then counted more accurately with value counts (). The value is
displayed on the left, and the number of instances is displayed on the right. We also use nunique to count the number of

unique values in the Sub-Category column ().

Lastly, we seek to see the specific count of records for each kind of sub-category, using the value_counts() function for
the ‘Sub-Category’ column.
In addition to these steps to check for what columns there are and removing redundant ones, we’ll also be creating some
new columns to be used for further analysis down below.
First, we’ll extract and display the order years.
We’ll also make a new column called Profit %, which is based off of another new column called Cost.

These new columns “Cost”, “Profit%” and “Order Year” are to be used later in analysis down below.

1.2. Python Matplotlib reports

Here are some reports we make using python’s matplotlib library. First off is a bar chart by different segments our
products are sold for. plt.figure() is used to create a new figure, with figsize being an attribute of the object that refers to
the dimensions (width, height) of the figure in inches. That is then assigned to the variable fig. Then, we use
add_subplot(111) to add an axes to the figure as part of a subplot arrangement, with the parameters being (nrows, ncols,
index). The subplot will take the index position on a grid with nrows rows and ncols columns. Index starts at 1 in the
upper left corner and increases to the right. The countplot() function from seaborn (alias sns) shows the counts of
observations in each categorical bin using bars. The first parameter 'Segment' refers to the data that is to be displayed,
and the "data" parameter receives the dataframe df as the dataset for plotting. Then a for loop goes through the patches
in the newly added subplot axes, then annotates with ax.annotate(). Finally, plt.show() displays the figure.
In the same way, we'd like to show the annual benefit percentage earned in each Sub-Category. This will be
based on the columns we generated during the pre-processing steps.
We'll try to make a bar chart this time, and we'll start with the seaborn barplot() feature. For long-form plotting
results, it takes the order year, Profit percent, and Sub-Category as inputs. Palette is merely a setting that
determines the color to use for various levels of the hue (Sub-Category) variable.
Lastly, we’ll go for a barplot of Year wise Total Sales & percentage of profit gained.
First, we use groupby to group each of the columns (sales and profit%) by the order year. plot.bar() from python's pandas
library is used to create the barplot. Then plt.title allows us to name the title of our plot.

P5 Discuss how business intelligence tools can contribute to effective decision-making.

1. Why is Business Intelligence (BI) important to your company?

Business Intelligence, BI is a concept that usually involves the delivery and integration of relevant and useful
business information in an organization. Companies use BI to detect significant events and identify/monitor
business trends in order to adapt quickly to their changing environment and a scenario. If you use effective
business intelligence training in your organization, you can improve the decision making processes at all
levels of management and improve your tactical strategic management processes.
Here are some of the main reasons for investing in a good BI strategy and system.

Gain Insights into Consumer Behaviour:

One of the main advantages of investing in BI and skilled personnel is the fact that it will boost your
ability to analyze the current consumer buying trends. Once you understand what your consumers are
buying, you can use this information to develop products that match the current consumption trends and
consequently improve your profitability.

To Improve Visibility:

Do you know who the best performers are?

Can you easily identify areas for improvement?

Is stock going missing and you can’t identify where it’s going?

Is there an error in your accounts and you need to drill down to invoicing or billing quickly to make your P&L
balance – can you do this in a few clicks or do you need to re-run a report that takes forever?
If you want to improve your control over various important processes in your organization, you should
consider investing in a good BI system. This will improve the visibility of these processes and make it
possible to identify any areas that need improvement. Moreover, if you currently have to skim through
hundreds of pages in your detailed periodic reports to assess the performance of your organisation’s
processes, you can save time and improve productivity by having skilled intelligence analysts using relevant
BI software. Good BI should be at the heart of every organisation as it can provide increased
control. Visibility is essential.

To Turn Data into Actionable Information:

A BI system is an analytical tool that can give you the insight you need to make successful strategic plans for
your organization. This is because such a system would be able to identify key trends and patterns in your
organisation’s data and consequently make it easier for you to make important connections between
different areas of your business that may otherwise seem unrelated. As such, a BI system can help you
understand the implications of various organisational processes better and enhance your ability to identify
suitable opportunities for your organization, thus enabling you to plan for a successful future.

To Improve Efficiency:

One of the most important reasons why you need to invest in an effective BI system is because such a
system can improve efficiency within your organisation and, as a result, increase productivity. You can use
business intelligence to share information across different departments in your organization. This will
enable you to save time on reporting processes and analytics. This ease in information sharing is likely to
reduce duplication of roles/duties within the organization and improve the accuracy and usefulness of the
data generated by different departments. Furthermore, information sharing also saves time and improves
productivity.

To Gain Sales & Market Intelligence

Whether you are a sales person or a marketer, you probably like to keep track of your customers – probably
using a CRM to help you. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It refers to software that
handles all aspects of an organization’s interactions with its customers. In other words, it collects the data
about your customer and tries to make sense of it, presents it to you in various tables and charts. That may
include the entire sales cycle, from winning new customers, to servicing and tracking existing customers, to
providing post-sales services. CRM systems are now more involved in decision-support processes than ever
before. In our next articles, we will look at how BI can help increase your sales efficiently and gain a further
insight into your current market as well as market entry support.

To Gain Competitive Intelligence

BI can also be used to gain an insight into what your competitors are doing. This strengthens your
company’s ability to make decisions and plan for the future. We will look further into this area of expertise
in our next articles.

P6 Explore the legal issues involved in the secure exploitation of business intelligence tools

Capturing data to offer insightful feedback, forecast outcomes, and assist businesses in making better
choices is the most effective tool in industry. Today, huge volumes of data are unrestricted and
 accessible from everywhere, but the ability to view, interpret, and deploy this data remains a critical
problem that can not be overlooked. When collecting information, it is critical to understand the
dangers and legal responsibilities, since making errors with confidential data may have unforeseeable
repercussions. As a result, businesses must still be cautious about how to better mine data to avoid
making legal mistakes; but, if we want to be confident, we can ask the following questions before
mining:
1. What kind of data will we collect?
What kind of information will we gather?
Certain forms of data gathered are subject to legal obligations. HIPAA's privacy laws offer federal
safeguards for personal health records and are stringently enforced to safeguard sensitive data. Personally
identifiable information (PII) - information that may be used to trace individual identity, such as a person's
name, social security number, or date of birth - is also protected. Companies must also follow certain
safeguards to secure confidential financial details when collecting payment information.
Companies must be mindful of all the data they gather in order to comply with the regulatory requirements
that each form of data entails, which is critical. These regulatory provisions are in place to safeguard the
interests of consumers. Personal details for customers can be very vulnerable. If customer knowledge is
well maintained, the company's image and value will rise, and its reputation will aid in the company's
growth.
2. How is your data stored by us?
The company is responsible for implementing appropriate security policies to secure the data base. Since
the consumer information that businesses are legally required to obtain, commonly known as business
inventory, is important to the whole company, this data base will quickly become a target for hackers. To
escape regulatory threats and protect confidential consumer information, businesses must adhere to
mandatory legislation and stringent security requirements. Companies can store data on a dedicated
company server and hire a competent management team to prevent data theft. Allow allowed users to
view data and gain access.
3. How to use Big Data?
Without preparation, a company's efforts to manage a large volume of data are ineffective; the amount of
data is only useful if the manager knows how to leverage the technique. There are several ways in which Big
Data will benefit businesses: Predicting consumer behaviour, identifying fraud, determining optimal
marketing targets, and customizing knowledge are only a few examples. Customers are contacted.
Companies are expected to report this information to consumers as a condition of data processing,
however, due to how the data will be used. Furthermore, Big Data has stringent guidelines that, in certain
cases, necessitate careful preparation. For example, if a phone marketer gathers information about a
customer's phone number and home address and resells it to carriers that sell sim cards or phone devices in
order to obtain usage data, this is a breach of the law, and the information is not adequately used. Another
example it is legally legally wrong for you to be an employee of company A, and sell company data to
company B while the two sides are competing.

One way to reduce regulatory threats and develop a successful Big Data solution is to ask questions about
data forms as well as how to exploit and use data content. Big Data can become a massive asset for
organizations and help them make better business decisions if it can be reached and used as intended
 References:
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lp=y&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_content=s&utm_campaign=ggl_s_en_apac_SPT_nonbrand_beta&ut m_term=
%2Bbusiness%20%2Bintelligent&_bt=399812437679&_bm=b&_bn=g&gclid=Cj0KCQiA7NKBBhDBARIsAHbXCB7eu3ZjFOt
FeAcZKCGo6HVUYZIZ9nRbeKacuSw9WoGTttszkqZ3EagaAtKPEALw_wcB> [Accessed 23 February 2021].

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<https://www.cio.com/article/2439504/business-intelligence-definition-and-solutions.html> [Accessed 23 February 2021].

[3] Tableau. 2021. What is business intelligence? Your guide to BI and why it matters. [online] Available at:
<https://www.tableau.com/learn/articles/business- intelligence#:~:text=Why%20is%20business%20intelligence%20important,data
%20within%20their%20business%20context.> [Accessed 23 February 2021].

[4] Appian. 2021. Business Process Definition - What is Business Process? | Appian. [online] Available at:
<https://www.appian.com/bpm/definition-of-a-business-process/> [Accessed 23 February 2021].

[5] Fruhlinger, M., 2021. What is business intelligence? Turning data into business insights. [online] CIO. Available at:
<https://www.cio.com/article/2439504/business-intelligence-definition-and-solutions.html> [Accessed 23 February 2021].