You Have Been Hired As A Consultant For A Small Retail Compa
You Have Been Hired As A Consultant For A Small Retail Company That Se
You have been hired as a consultant for a small retail company that sells widgets online. The company is interested in learning how to use their data to improve their business. They have asked you to write a business case to explain the justification for implementing a database management system to improve business intelligence within the company. Within your business case, begin by explaining business intelligence. Then explain data management and how a database management system can facilitate business intelligence. You should also explain the benefits that the company will experience with the system. Next, consider the design of the system. Begin by describing the data entities, attributes and keys. For instance, a data entity may be Customer. Attributes of customer may include name and address. The key may be a uniquely assigned customer number. You should have at least five data entities in your database. Create an entity-relationship diagram showing the relationship between the entities. Create a relational database model to describe the data.
Paper For Above instruction
Business intelligence (BI) is a technology-driven process that involves collecting, analyzing, and presenting data in a manner that supports better business decision-making. For a small retail company selling widgets online, BI can provide valuable insights into customer behaviors, sales trends, inventory management, and operational efficiency. Implementing a robust BI system enables the company to transform raw data into actionable intelligence, helping managers make informed decisions swiftly, optimize marketing strategies, reduce costs, identify new opportunities, and enhance customer satisfaction.
Data management encompasses the methods and practices used to maintain, store, organize, and retrieve data effectively. Proper data management ensures data quality, security, and accessibility, which are paramount for accurate BI. A database management system (DBMS) facilitates effective data management by providing a structured environment for storing data, ensuring data integrity, supporting data retrieval, and enabling multi-user access with concurrency control. It acts as the backbone for BI tools, allowing seamless data integration, analysis, and reporting.
The benefits of implementing a DBMS for the company are substantial. Firstly, it enhances data accuracy and consistency, reducing errors that may arise from manual data handling. Secondly, it increases data security through controlled access permissions, safeguarding sensitive customer and transaction data. Thirdly, a DBMS improves data retrieval times, supporting real-time analytics crucial for dynamic business environments. Additionally, it enables better data sharing and collaboration across departments, promoting a unified understanding of business performance. Over time, these improvements can lead to increased sales, better customer retention, and more efficient operations.
The design of the database system involves identifying key data entities, their attributes, and relationships. For example, a Customer entity would have attributes such as CustomerID (primary key), Name, Address, Email, and PhoneNumber. A Product entity might include ProductID (primary key), Name, Description, and Price. The Order entity could have OrderID, OrderDate, and CustomerID as a foreign key. Other entities may include Supplier, with attributes such as SupplierID and Name, Inventory with InventoryID and stock levels, and Payment with PaymentID and payment details.
In the entity-relationship diagram (ERD), relationships demonstrate how entities interact. For example, a Customer places many Orders, establishing a one-to-many relationship from Customer to Order. An Order contains multiple Products through an associative entity, such as OrderDetails, which includes attributes like Quantity and Price. The Product entity is related to Supplier in a many-to-one relationship, indicating each product has a supplier. These relationships help in designing a fully normalized relational database model, ensuring data consistency and minimizing redundancy. The relational model translates these entities and relationships into tables with primary and foreign keys, facilitating efficient data operations.
By adopting this database design, the retail company can efficiently store and access essential data, enabling comprehensive business analysis. The system can generate sales reports, identify top-selling products, analyze customer purchase patterns, optimize stock levels, and evaluate supplier performance. Such insights are invaluable for strategic planning and sustaining competitive advantage in an increasingly digital marketplace.
References
- Connolly, T., & Begg, C. (2015). Database Systems: A Practical Approach to Design, Implementation, and Management (6th ed.). Pearson.