Report for Business Management: Design Choices for Queries and Data Dashboard  

ACF5904 Accounting Information Systems

10 October 2024

Abstract

This report will cover how the Sales Performance Dashboard of Exciting Electronics was designed and implemented, and it will answer critical questions concerning profitability, operating to capacity, level of customer satisfaction, and achievement of these goals. The dashboard provides the management with crucial data values after evaluating the Sales and Gross Profit by Product and Average Days of Payback and Delivery alongside Customer Satisfaction data values. Due to proper design elements such as minimal use of icons, adequate labeling, and use of other graphical interface items like slicers, the dashboard facilitates quicker decision-making. Extensive testing was carried out to improve the data quality of the tool, and the users were consulted to enhance the tool's practical usability and applicability to the company’s strategic plan.

Introduction

In the modern world, most organizations need to carry out their operations while using data and being as efficient as possible; the above reasons show that these are possible only if the Exciting Electronics of today change. This report details the design considerations made in making queries and creating a dashboard for monitoring factors associated with the sales process. This should be accomplished to assist management in its ability to monitor and assess sales activity, recognize areas of potential improvement, positively impact overall organizational effectiveness and efficiency, and improve financial results. Critical questions the business should track are also described in this report, with reasons why these questions are crucial, how KPIs help answer the questions, and the method of designing and testing the models to achieve optimal results. 

BPMN diagram

Figure 1: above for a visualization of the sales and delivery workflow

a.

The key questions Exciting Electronics should track regarding the sales process are:

1. Which product categories and brands drive the most sales and profit?

2. How efficient are the payback and delivery processes? Specifically, what are the average days for payment and delivery?

3. How satisfied are our customers? Are customer experiences rated as excellent, good, or poor?

4. Are we meeting our key operational and customer service goals? For instance, are 80% of sales delivered within the target delivery time?

b.

Tracking these key questions allows Exciting Electronics to maintain its competitive advantage by aligning product and brand profitability with resources. Losers can be removed or terminated and focus more on the best-selling products, automatically enhancing the company's revenue. Start Time and delivery time have bearings on operational cash flow and customer satisfaction depending on the payback period of raw materials. While payments are healthy when they are on time, delivery speeds up customer satisfaction. Realizing customer satisfaction facilitates responding to customers’ concerns in advance regarding their dissatisfaction and thus increases the chances of customer loyalty (Khadka & Maharjan, 2017). Lastly, tracking goals enables the management to address performance issues where necessary to enhance further improvements as well as improve customer relation.

c.

That is why the suggested KPIs meet the purpose of measuring Exciting Electronics’ performance. The Sales and Gross Profit by Product Category and Brand KPI help in decision-making on the products to stock and those that require marketing. Costs of goods sold; Average Days of Payback and Delivery KPI describes operational efficiency and highlights service availability issues. The Customer Satisfaction Evaluation KPI monitors the overall views on services to enhance customer satisfaction (Bridges 2024). The other KPI includes Goal Achievement Status, which checks whether the firm meets delivery and customer satisfaction goals. The above KPIs provide a good picture of the organization's financial health and customer relations for informed decision-making.

d.

The Sales Performance Dashboard enables Exciting Electronics to track sales and operational performances to a certain extent. The Sales or Gross Profit by Product Category and Top 15 Brands map shows which products and brands are the most valuable to stock and where to focus marketing efforts. The Average Days of Payback and Delivery is a tool indicating the terms for payment collection and delivery performance based on the expected timeline. Customer appreciation or dissatisfaction is shown through the Monthly Customer Evaluation, which reveals fluctuations in service delivery. The Goal Status section makes it easy to assess whether or not this business is meeting driving factors such as customer satisfaction and delivery period. With the help of interactive filters, it is possible to work with the segmentation of the data by the brand, contributing to the increased focus of the analysis (Zhang et al., 2024). In summary, the presented dashboard identifies whether the business objectives are met and adjusts to specific issues on time.

e.

To ensure that the Sales Performance Dashboard is easy to understand, it has been developed with simplicity, readability, and figure-ground reversal. Using bars and lines helps present the KPIs to show sales, gross profit, payback, and delivery time by periods. This is important so users get immediate results but are not Flooded with too much information about what they are looking at. The slicers make this dashboard easily modifiable, and clickable options for brands enable data refining. The data presented is sorted in a manner that makes sense, for example, by sales, evaluations, and timelines. These design parameters include satisfying the needs of the target user group on timely decision-making, combining data from various sources, and including a goal-performing signal that shows deviations (Szukits & Móricz, 2023).

f.

In creating the dashboard for Sales Performance, the data was pulled from Microsoft Access to Excel, and the values computed in the analysis included, among others, Sales Revenue, Payments, and Receivable as of 31/03/2024. Such calculations assisted in projecting balances that are most important for cash flows. Manual operations were performed to maintain crosschecks, and reciprocating entries were verified in the records to maximize their accuracy and precision. The performance metrics were also separated product-wise to monitor and compare the product's performance and customer satisfaction. The last was done with the help of a simulation of various scenarios, such as delayed payments. According to Romanelli (2020), after building up the dashboard concept, the user testing measured the ease and consistency of the programmed dashboard. In response to the feedback, final changes were incorporated to align or enhance the visual and analytical representation for improved decision-making.