Data-Driven Management Brief 2025

Assignment Brief 

The students will be introduced to a fictional company that wants to analyse a management problem using data analytics. Students will analyse a dataset and visualise the current performance of the company. Each student will be issued with a unique variation of a simulated dataset.  
Students are required to write a report to the Board of Directors demonstrating their ability to analyse, visualise, and evaluate a performance management problem. The report should propose a performance dashboard and include visualisations that lead to recommendations.  

The report should be structured as follows:  

• an executive summary – please review the structure of the executive summary on the unit’s 
  Brightspace pages.    
• an introduction of the background of the business question – you can use references here, but references are not required. 
• a description of the data preparation, including:    
  
  • data restrictions–the rows you deleted,    
  • variable definition–adjustments to the columns or data transformations,    
  • a table with the variable definition of all variables used in the visualisations.     
• data visualisation and descriptive statistics: use figures and descriptive statistics tables to develop a data story. 
• recommendations for actions based on the analysis including:    
  
  • managerial consequences for the analysis conducted
  • quality of the analysis     
• an appendix with the performance dashboard including key descriptive numbers and key 
  figures.     

Additionally, each student must submit:     

• an R code running without interruption and replicating each table and figure. The R code shall entail comments and a clear signposting to all tables and figures in the report (either via comment or name of the output file)  

This is an individual piece of work.  

Word count: 2000 words (+ or -10%). If the word count is violated beyond the +/- 10% variation, your mark will be reduced by 5 points for 100 words above/ below the threshold. The word count includes all words in the WORD document except the first page and words in figures and charts generated in R. The first page should include the title of your report, your name, data number, student number and a word count only.

Description of the data  

You are commissioned to analyse the database of a prominent leisure-travel company who offer luxury cruises on their vessels. You are to derive recommendations for actions to improve a key performance target for the company who sail to major regions across the world. A database with data for 12 months is provided for the analysis. In addition, you should provide a dashboard based on your analysis. The dashboard should be calibrated on the provided data. 
You got a 5% random sample of the customer activities over the past year.