Case Report
The case report is to be completed independently. Only the following resources may be used: the
textbook and assigned readings and other course materials linked directly
through the course the course CengageNOW page; Microsoft Excel and Excel help
files.
Introduction
They have hired you to help them
understand their data and make sound decisions.
SWC has provided you with as much information as they have, and it is
up to you to determine the best quantitative approach to answering their
questions. SWC has also made it clear
that it is crucial that you explain what you are doing in a way such
that a group of people unfamiliar with quantitative analysis can understand
what you are doing and feel comfortable with the results. If you just provide a numerical answer to
their questions, while still helpful, this will not meet their expectations for
the project.
Deliverable
SWC has requested that you answer their questions in the form of a
business report in MS Word format. Simply
typing in answers to their questions below will be construed as a lack of
professionalism. The writing must be free of errors and easy to
understand. The exact design of the
report is up to you, as long as it is clearly formatted as a report, looks
professional, and all issues are addressed in an organized and coherent manner.
As is your policy, you are to include
any equations and calculations that you have done to be completely
transparent. Any graphs or diagrams
should be included in the body of the report or in an appendix.
THE CASE
The VP of admissions at SWC knows from
past experience how many of the students that apply to the school will actually
end up attending and generating revenue (the “conversion rate”). However, it is always a guess as to how many
students will end up applying each year, so projecting revenue and expenses is
difficult. The VP would like a systematic way to predict applications for next
year based on the number of applications in years past. The VP would like you to present at least three
different methods to predict applications for next year, along with at least
two ways to determine which prediction method is best. Which
method would you recommend? Why? The number of applications received in
previous years is found in Tab 1 of the Excel file “Case 3 Data”.
The VP of admissions has a second
concern as well. There are variety of
ways to attract students and increase applications. The university can purchase online
advertising, send out traditional mailings, and do in-person recruiting at
various functions. The VP estimates that
each online ad will result in 50 new applications, each traditional mailing
will result in 30 new applications, and each recruiting event will result in 12
new applications. Online advertising costs $850 per ad, mailings cost $600
each, and in-person recruiting events cost $300 per appearance. The university wants to maintain a broad
presence, so at least 3 of each form of recruiting is desired. There are limited personnel available for
recruiting, so a maximum of 5 in-person recruiting events can be managed. At least half of the advertising must be
online, as the university president wants to expand enrollments in on-line
programs. The VP has a budget of $7,000. The VP wants to understand the mathematical
problem that must be solved to figure out how many of each type of advertising
should be used, and have an Excel file that can solve the problem. (For convenience, feel free to solve the
problem in terms of partial units…i.e. the final answer can be 1.2 online ads,
2.6 mailings, etc.). Based on your results, what marketing strategy
would you recommend to the VP? What
would be the impact of increasing the marketing budget by $2,000?
And finally, the President of SWC has
decided that the organizational structure of the university is suboptimal. As such, the President is ready to kick off a
project aimed at reorganizing the university departments. She has created the following list of
activities and completion times, but would like your help visualizing the
project map. The President is also
concerned about the length of the project, and wants to know the probability that the project will be
finished within 57 weeks (assuming project finish times follow a normal
distribution). Be sure to document ALL
STEPS needed to reach this probability calculation.
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