Class Paper/Project:

For a business to properly function, effective methods of communication among owners, managers and investors are essential. Accounting fills the need for a common language of business. It records and processes financial information into an easily accessible format that can be understood by any person in the business world.

Accounting has an impact on all aspects of business. For example, the marketing department, which is responsible for managing and developing the sales of a business, must work closely with the accounting department to monitor trends in the business as well as manage the efficiency of sales promotions initiated by the marketing company. A marketing campaign might be successful in terms of gross sales, but the accounting department might determine that the cost of the campaign was too high.

Goal Demonstrate your knowledge about information technology to build data sets, retrieve relevant business information that can be used to drive decision making, analyze and communicate this information.

Project Details You are being considered for a large promotion at your firm. The company has requested you to present to them an idea of why you should be promoted. In essence, what can you bring to the table to provide value to the corporation? This is your time to shine to management. Demonstrate your knowledge of accounting, technology and ability to communicate (writing skills).

Requirements:

1. Build and/or transform a data set into a usable format for analysis in excel
2. Use excel to analyze the material using charts, tables and/or pivot tables
3. Must answer the four questions:
   1. Build Data Set describe how you created the data set
   2. Data Extraction and Analysis describe how you extracted the data
   3. Data Interpretation describe what you interpreted from the data
   4. Suggested Business Recommendations make suggestions based on the data
4. Write a report (using Microsoft Word) explaining the information that is presented by your findings (your recommendation). Note, you are not explaining how you created your charts, tables and/or pivot tables. You must explain how your research solves a problem for management and will also add value to the company.
5. Follow APA writing and referencing guidelines (see recommended reading for effective writing in the syllabus)
6. The word document (paper) and all items (excel spreadsheets, power-point slides, etc.) must be submitted via blackboard (Link for submission will be provided)

Example:

I created an excel spreadsheet detailing numerous sales information for a corporation. The details consisted of multiple items being sold (various categories along with sub-categories). In addition, there are multiple sales people from different geographic locations serving multiple geographic locations. The data spanned five years. Using this information, I created charts, tables and pivot tables; and presented them in a power point slide as exhibits to my written paper. Together these documents provided answered the following questions:

1. Who are the top sales people in specific years?
2. What items did they sell?
3. What were the profit margin(s) on respective items?
4. Which sales people sales are trending above average?
5. Which products does the company offer that are no longer selling?

The four questions:

1. Build data set The data set I created contained 5 years of corporate data containing sales prices, items being sold, the geographic regions items were sold and where the salesmen live.
2. Data Extraction and Analysis I used a variety of sorting / filtering and / or (pivot tables) in excel to arrange the data in order to be able to interpret the data.
3. Data Interpretation- I used the data from data extraction to determine the top five sales people and the top items being sold in the north east location.
4. Suggested Business Recommendations I noticed that sales were below average in the south and determined that we should relocate the top selling salesman to that region in order to boost sales.

The deliverables for this project included:

1. Word document containing answers to all four questions (Build Data Set, Data Extraction and Analysis, Data Interpretation and Suggested Business Recommendations)
2. In addition to answering the four questions above, please be sure to write the companys management of how your recommendation will add value to the company.
3. All excel spreadsheets and any power point slides used to support your answers to the four questions.