BBA312 DECISION ANALYSIS Mid Term Assignment Task brief & rubrics
Task
Students are required to develop a report addressing the specific exercises set out in the guideline below. Your report should be 2000-2500 words, excluding
Title, Abstract, Table of contents, Bibliography and Appendices.
Exercise 1 (30 points).
All complex organizations must be broken down into manageable pieces to ensure that roles and responsibilities for making and executing critical decisions are
clear. A good way to determine what the important decisions are in your company is to look at the sources of value in your business and then organize the
macrostructure around them.
Take the case of British Gas, a division of the multinational energy and utility company Centrica. In 2006, faced with a serious performance crisis, the company’s
new leadership team started looking at the sources of value in its business. Managers began by examining differences in profitability by service, by geographic
area, and by customer segment. They discovered that profitability and growth varied much more by customer segment than by any other variable.
One segment used large amounts of gas or electricity and paid regularly through guaranteed direct debits. Decisions that helped the company retain these
customers, such as how to handle home moves and how best to offer additional services, were most important for this segment. A second customer segment
used less energy and paid regularly through a system of prepayment cards. Here the key decisions related to controlling costs, particularly those associated with
processing additional payments and with meter reading. A third segment wasn’t as consistent in keeping up payments. For that group, the critical decisions
related to managing receivables.
Recognizing those different sources of value, managing director Phil Bentley decided that the best way to structure the company was by customer segment. He
established three separate businesses: Premier Energy, Energy First, and Pay-As-You-Go Energy. This new structure allowed him to place accountability for
decisions that directly affected customers, such as service levels, positioning, and product bundling, in the business units. Corporate headquarters could focus on
noncustomer-facing matters such as IT and finance. The alignment of structure and decisions helped British Gas improve its performance significantly. It reduced
customer attrition from about 20% to less than 10%. Its bad debt fell, and the business began growing for the first time in years.
Source: Harvard Business Review. (2010). The Decision-Driven Organization.
(a) What was the objective of British Gas Leadership?
(b) What is the information they collected?
(c) How they analyzed this information?
(d) What are the decisions taken and what are their impacts on British Gas?
Exercise 2 (40 points).
An advertising company has a proposal to make to its customer who wants to launch a new cosmetic product.
The client is motivated by the potential profits. Therefore, the advertising company should evaluate the potential sales that each marketing strategy can
generate:
Marketing strategy 1: Advertise on the TV;
Marketing strategy 2: Advertise in TV and in supermarkets;
Marketing strategy 3: Advertise in TV, in supermarkets and via internet.
For simplicity, the demand the new cosmetic product is categorized as low, medium or high.
The table below shows how the sales the company will generate for each option depends on the level of demand in the market.
Marketing
strategy
Low sales Medium sales High sales
1 – 4 000 – 8 000 20 000
2 – 12 000 – 4 000 12 000
3 – 20 000 -12 000 4 000
It is estimated that if strategy 1 is adopted the probabilities of low, medium and high demand are 0.3, 0.4 and 0.2, respectively. For strategy 2 the respective
probabilities are 0.2, 0.4 and 0.4 while for strategy 3 they are 0.1, 0.2 and 0.7.
Determine the marketing strategy that the advertising company should recommend to its client based on expected sales. Draw the decision tree.
Exercise 3 (30 points).
You are the director of a hotel and check the level of costumer’s satisfaction with a questionnaire that the hosts answer when they leave the hotel and evaluate
with a grade (from 0 to 10) the service given. The results of the last ones are:
8.5 8 7.5 6 9 7
7.5 8.5 5 9 8 7.5
7 9 6 9.5 8.5 8.5
6.5 7.5 7.5 9 7.5 8.5
8 8.5 8 8 8 9
7 8 7 7.5 8.5 8
If the goal is to reach, at least, a grade of 8, do you think the hotel is offering a good service?
After analyzing the most common causes of customers’ unsatisfaction and their frequency:
N Complaints Frequency
1 Small rooms 3
2 Bad quality food in restaurant 30
3 Receptionists do not speak English 15
4 Too far from city center 12
5 Very old TVs in rooms 4
6 Wi-fi does not work properly 25
7 Very high prices 5
8 A/C does not work in rooms 17
a. Sort the eight causes in a Cause-and-Effect diagram.
b. Determine the most important causes and define an Action Plan for those ones.
Formalities:
• Word count: 2000-2500 words.
• Cover, Table of Contents, References and Appendix are excluded of the total word count.
• Font: Arial 12,5 pts.
• Text alignment: Justified.
• The in-text References and the Bibliography have to be in Harvard’s citation style.
Submission:
• Week 8: Via Moodle (Turnitin).
• Deadline: 27
th November 2022 at 23:59 CEST.
Weight: This task is a 40% of your total grade for this subject.
Rubrics
Exceptional
90-100
Good
80-89
Fair
70-79
Marginal Fail
60-69
Knowledge &
Understanding (20%)
Student demonstrates
excellent understanding of key
concepts and uses vocabulary
in an entirely appropriate
manner.
Student demonstrates good
understanding of the task and
mentions some relevant
concepts and demonstrates
use of the relevant vocabulary.
Student understands the task
and provides minimum theory
and/or some use of
vocabulary.
Student understands the task
and attempts to answer the
question but does not mention
key concepts or uses minimum
amount of relevant vocabulary.
Application (30%) Student applies fully relevant
knowledge from the topics
delivered in class.
Student applies mostly
relevant knowledge from the
topics delivered in class.
Student applies some relevant
knowledge from the topics
delivered in class.
Misunderstanding may be
evident.
Student applies little relevant
knowledge from the topics
delivered in class.
Misunderstands are evident.
Critical Thinking (30%) Student critically assesses in
excellent ways, drawing
outstanding conclusions from
relevant authors.
Student critically assesses in
good ways, drawing
conclusions from relevant
authors and references.
Student provides some
insights but stays on the
surface of the topic.
References may not be
relevant.
Student makes little or none
critical thinking insights, does
not quote appropriate authors,
and does not provide valid
sources.
Communication (20%) Student communicates their
ideas extremely clearly and
concisely, respecting word
count, grammar and
spellcheck
Student communicates their
ideas clearly and concisely,
respecting word count,
grammar and spellcheck
Student communicates their
ideas with some clarity and
concision. It may be slightly
over or under the wordcount
limit. Some misspelling errors
may be evident.
Student communicates their
ideas in a somewhat unclear and
unconcise way. Does not reach
or does exceed wordcount
excessively and misspelling
errors are evident.
