You have recently been employed by Decathlon, a sporting goods retailer, as part of the creation of a business analytics function within the company. Decathlon are aware of the concepts of ‘big data’ and ‘analytics’ but they are not particularly sure how it can benefit their business.
Your first task is to demonstrate to the company’s regional directors for your geographical area, how analytics can help them to better understand their business and facilitate informed decision-making. Then you will perform some analysis on the data set and develop analytics functionality for the use of the regional directors.
You have been provided with sales data, in a CSV file, for the trading period 01/01/18 to 31/03/18 inclusive. The sales data is from nine separate Decathlon stores in your geographical area. Daily sales are recorded at the departmental level: Sports Shoes, Sports Gear & Sports Equipment. There is also information on whether there was a major sales promotion in a particular department for each trading day.
Additional information is also available:
Store code
The size of each department in each store to aid comparative analysis.
You have been asked to perform some analyses on this data set and develop analytics functionality for the use of the regional directors. Specifically:
Inspect and clean the dataset plus comment upon the overall validity of the sales data.
Develop and demonstrate an Excel-based dashboard to summarise the main points of interest from the data set and allow further detailed data enquiries.
Utilise Monte Carlo simulation to perform a risk analysis of profitability levels in the Store 5 Sports Gear department (Note: the analysis should assume overall gross profit margins between 60% to 70% on revenue sales. The department also makes a daily contribution to overheads of £6,250. Use non-promotion sales only for your simulation).
Use optimisation processes to minimise the transportation costs of sports shoes from the Decathlon distribution centres in your area (Note: the distribution centres must be able to deliver, at least, the equivalent of maximum non-promotion day sales to each store).
Demonstrate a critical awareness of the impact of the data.
