BISM7202 Information Systems for Management

Assessment Guideline:

MS Office Assignment – Office 365 Excel 2019

SEMESTER 2, 2025

Summary

Task Description

This assignment requires you to create a professional business application using Microsoft Excel 2019 / Microsoft Excel 365. The assignment is worth 40% of your grade in this course. This is an individual assignment – group work or any collaboration on the assignment is not permitted. This assignment consists of several tasks to be completed in Excel.

Please be aware of the University's Statute regarding academic integrity, plagiarism, and the submission of your own work.

Please note you can resubmit your assignment as many times as you like prior to the deadline. We will only mark the latest version of the assignment submitted up until the due date.

Requirements

The purpose of this assignment is to test the student’s ability to operate, manage, and interpret business data in spreadsheets.

The assignment is worth 40 marks, which equals 40% of the overall grade achievable in this course. A foundational Excel Spreadsheet is provided for students to modify and update to meet the ‘challenges’ presented in the Case Specification document that is separate from this Assessment Guideline.

The assignment MUST be done individually.

The assignment may also include self-learning components that cover content/knowledge not presented in the tutorials. It is expected that the student will undertake their own research to master this component.

The assignment requires no prior technical background. Moreover, it is designed for business students in general to appreciate basic IS applications. Prior familiarity with the software tool (Excel) could be beneficial but will not guarantee a significant advantage or higher marks.

Through tutorials, students are exposed to practical exercises like those in the assignment, develop the skills to manage business data in Excel, and the skills to complete this assignment. It is essential that students carry out the required readings and preparation for each tutorial before attending/attempting each tutorial and this assignment.

Students are to further develop an Excel solution based on the template that is provided with the Case Specification. Students are to format, complete, and further develop the spreadsheet according to the assessment guidelines and Case Specification. However, students are not allowed to add columns/rows or type data outside the assigned areas unless otherwise instructed.

This is a challenging assignment worth 40% of your course grade, and you should start working on the assignment early in the semester.

Guidelines

Expectation

This assignment requires you to complete an Excel workbook file using Microsoft Excel 2019

/ Microsoft Excel 365 based on the specification provided in the BrisMart Solutions (BMS) Assessment Case Specification. This document is a companion to a template Excel workbook that contains several sheets you are to develop as part of this assessment.

The specification relates to BrisMart Solutions (BMS), which is a franchise business that provides door-to-door retail product delivery services to urban neighborhoods of Brisbane (their ‘franchise area’). The case has five main requirements for you to develop:

1. Develop a Schedule of Employee Budgeted Salary Costs and Build a Summary Table:

a. Create a detailed schedule of employee salaries according to his specifications.

b. Summarize the data using database functions in a summary table.

2. Undertake a Solver Analysis on Business Franchise Areas:

a. Use Excel's Solver tool to analyse and reallocate franchise areas to minimize the distance travelled from each store.

3. Undertake a Scenario Analysis for Saving Monthly/Fortnightly:

a. Analyse different scenarios for saving money either monthly or fortnightly to fund the construction of a new warehouse or retail store, estimating the required amount in a few years.

4. Provide Business-Focused Comments:

a. Offer insights and recommendations based on the spreadsheet analysis, focusing on the business impact and environmental benefits

5. Simulate Future Staffing Needs Using Synthetic Data:

a. To support potential expansion, Ryan is also exploring how the payroll model scales with additional employees. You are invited to use Generative AI to create synthetic employee records and reflect on their integration and implications for business growth.

More details on the specific requirements of the case are contained in the Case Specification.

The Excel template of the expected worksheets will be made available on the BISM7202 Ultra Blackboard site with the Case Specification. The Excel template provided must be used as the basis for the assignment. You may change the visual formatting (typographical errors, color, fonts, data format presentation, column widths, etc.) of the Excel template to provide a professional finished product, but nothing else unless explicitly required in the Case Specification. For example, do not change the structure of the template spreadsheet; do not add columns/rows or type data outside the assigned areas except when you are asked to do so.

Implementation Guidance

You must use Microsoft Office 365 Excel 2019 for this assignment. Any of the previous Microsoft Excel versions (e.g., Microsoft Excel 2016) might cause some unnecessary problems. The spreadsheet can be developed using the latest OSX version of Microsoft Office, but Windows 10 is the preferred platform and tutorials will be undertaken using Windows 10.

Please note that earlier versions of Windows are now out of mainstream support with Microsoft (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1).

Please develop your solution based on the provided files. In general, you are not allowed to insert any other columns or tables.

It is highly recommended that, prior to assignment submission, you check that your solution works on the university’s computers in the Labs if you can (although note their limited availability) if you have developed it on your own machine – particularly if you have used a non-standard version of Excel (e.g., the MacOS version or a non-Office 365 version of Excel).

When you develop your solution, you should aim to use the functions and features you were taught in the tutorials as appropriate. However, if you need functions or techniques that are not addressed explicitly in tutorial exercises, you should explore your pre-tutorial reading materials and preparation exercises or refer to the help component of Excel or other online resources. Aspects of the assignment have purposefully been designed to train and test a student’s self-learning ability with a software application, and thus these have not been included directly in a tutorial exercise.

Formatting and professionalism

BrisMart Solutions (BMS) is operated in a professional manner, and it is expected that your Excel workbook will be used by other staff and potentially updated in the future by others. Therefore, you would be well advised to make your work uniqueness quality.

(e.g., freeze panes to long pages, use named ranges where appropriate, use lookup functions instead of nested IFs where appropriate, use hard coding only where appropriate, use appropriate fonts and colors, graph axes and titles, etc.).

You should use meaningful Named Ranges whenever referring to a Cell on a separate worksheet.

Keep in mind, however, that your work will be judged primarily on the quality of your solution rather than upon its appearance

Submission

To be done through Ultra Blackboard Assignment Submission (NOT Turnitin) in the Assessments area of Blackboard.

o Your Excel Workbook file MUST be named in the format of BISM7202_StudentLastName_StudentID.xlsx.

o If your ID is 41724245 and your surname is Smith, the name of your files would be BISM7202_Smith_41724245.xlsx.