Computer Applications for Business (5)

1. Computer Applications for Business (5) • Last Week • Multiple Excel Sheets: Paste Special & Paste Link • Reviewing Templates • Newsletters and brochures • Keeping track of changes and Comparing files • Introductory Assignment Workshop • This week • Storing pictures and sounds • Composite documents – Practical integration of Excel and Word • Assignment Workshop

2. Graphics: Bitmap and Vector • We’re all familiar with Vector graphics: what you do with a pen or a brush • VDU screens and most printers work on a different principle: they produce a pattern of dots, usually printing 600 per inch horizontally and vertically (“raster”) • Windows supports both kinds, plus a special for fonts • .WMF (Graphics Metafile) is vector format. Very efficient for drawing boxes, lines etc. • .BMP – each point on the drawing is represented by a number indicating its intensity (in black, or in R G B)Can be compressed: GIF for drawings, JPEG for photos • TrueType fonts: a set of rules for drawing each character, with hints to avoid “aliasing”

3. Sounds: Wave and MIDI • Record any sound digitally: sample amplitude of sound wave at short intervals, represent each value by a number • This is how CDs work, sampling 44,100 times/sec, and storing 216 levels of amplitude for each channel • DAT works the same way (though 48K times a second) • MiniDisc & DCC similar, but signal is then compressed • Computers usually do slower sampling, lower quality • Uncompressed as .WAV files • compressed as MP3, AAC, or ATRAC • For music, you can use the equivalent of a pianola • For each instrument, record pitch and dynamic of each note • Send this as instructions to instrument to play the note • Musical Instrument Digital Interface defines codes & timbres

4. Composite Documents • Earlier, you copied data between spreadsheet pages • Because of extra data stored on the clipboard,can also copy between different applications • Most useful for building a report under Word, including • Figures – drawings and pictures • Tables of figures maintained on a spreadsheet • Charts and graphs from a spreadsheet • Information selected from a database • As before, you can Paste in a snapshot.. • .. Or link the current values from the data source • “Bread and butter” of report-writing

5. Composite Document Practical Composite Document exercises starting on page 10 1. Creating a Spreadsheet  2. Making a Graph of the Data  3. Making a drawing 4. Adding a Picture to the document 5. Adding a Table to the document Static pasting versus Dynamic linking 6. Adding a Graph • Adding an Object

6. Some lessons that emerge • Save things • Quite a few people hadn’t kept their supermarket spreadsheet, so had to do the work again • Others had saved it, but had trouble finding it • I work on the principle that there’s no point in repeating things that worked, so all the exercises build on past ones • Skipping exercises makes future ones harder • I try to keep the learning points of each session down to a manageable scale • This week we’ll focus on Business as Usual spreadsheet

7. Making an Investment Decision • Business consist largely of taking calculated risks with the expectation of their being profitable • How do we calculate the risk? • And the potential gains to be made? • A good guess is that “Tomorrow will be like today, unless somebody does something to make it different” • So project forward the “Business as usual” situation • And compare with result of making the change • Justify any assumptions • Cost out the impact of the investment • Set goal for the profit that will justify investment • Usually have “hurdle rate” below which it’s not worth the trouble of further investigation

8. Evaluate this Business Case • Your company issues its software on diskettes, and this is becoming a significant expense as the size of your product increases. • You ship 1000 packages a month, and have been offered a CD-burner that can handle all your production requirements in 3 hours a day. It costs £25,000. • Blank discs cost you £0.50 each, less than the six 20p diskettes you currently use for each package. CD labels cost you 10p each, against the 2p for diskette labels (so treat media costs as 60p or 22p). • Assume that you need someone dedicated to the machine for one hour each day, to set up a production run – this is the same labour cost currently incurred setting up to copy diskettes. • Assume also that your current diskette-copier is fully-depreciated, but may start needing maintenance in the next year. • Work out the cost of producing the media component of each package. Do the savings obtained justify the proposed investment? What changes are likely to improve or degrade this business-case?

9. A Possible Approach

10. What Happens If…? • Need to be able to handle changes in you assumptions: • For example, blank CDs drop to 30p each • Or CD-writer needs expensive maintenance • These are called contingencies, and must be considered • Negative contingencies are most important • They could make the project uneconomic • Can never be ignored • Positive contingencies don’t always need quantifying • They are the jam on the cake • Any assumed value needs to have a cell to itself • Work out if it needs one cell, or ability to change with time

11. Module Assignment Due Thursday 19 Nov 2008(Week 8)

12. Module Assignment • You should now be competent with: • Microsoft Word and Excel • Laying out logical letters and reports • Goal of assignment is to get apply your skills to a business problem • Use Excel to explore a business case • Build a report to “sell” your conclusions to management • The report will be a composite document including a spread-sheet to show projected cash-flow • Don’t worry if there are parts of this you can’t yet do • We will address any problems over the next few weeks

13. Your company is considering expanding a 100-room hotel in a French ski resort Hotel is busiest in winter months but also does reasonable business at other times of year It is closed from Sept to November At peak holiday periods, you turn away almost as many potential guests as you can accommodate Market research indicates that hotel could use 50 more rooms in Dec-Mar After paying housekeeping costs, average income per occupied room is €1090 per month, including profits in the health club, restaurants and bar (which have spare capacity) Have agreed plan to build 40 rooms Cost: €10,000 per room to build Start June 1, so rooms can be occupied by December reopening * Bank will offer you a €400,000 five-year mortgage on June 1, at a monthly interest rate of 1% During the construction period, you will not be able to use 50 rooms overlooking construction site, This will reduce average June-Aug occupancy to 30 rooms Should you go ahead with the project, or stay as 100-room hotel? * may need to consider risk here Assignment Subject

14. Suggested Approach • First make up your own mind by doing the following: • Analyse the proposal • Cost it out month-by-month down a spread-sheet, modelling Do nothing, and Build with Mortgage cases • Compare cash-flow for “do proposal” & “do nothing” cases • Estimate the risk – how sensitive is cash-flow to minor errors in your assumptions? • Then write a report that convinces the reader • Management summary • Body of Report • No need to produce an appendix in this case (it’s where market research and “how to do it” information would be)

15. Management summary (20%) Your recommendation and what it does for the business Print this at start, but write it last Body of Report Current situation Proposed changes Effect of changes on the business (backed up with your spreadsheet) Assumptions you've made & why Impact of changed assumptions (“Contingencies”) Risk to business from delay or cost overrun Possible beneficial changes and their value Potential Added Goodies Graphical representations Instead of just showing list of figures .. give line graph showing change in cumulative cash-flow maybe also produce bar-chart of monthly revenue/expense .. Any other ideas? See Edward Tufte’s brilliant book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information in the Library Report Structure “What if” spreadsheets can help here

16. Marking Scheme • Equal weight for each of: • Executive Summary • Up to a page covering your key messages • Analysis • Show that you understand the business • Spreadsheet correctness and elegance • Do your sheets express the facts well? • Structure and integration of report • Consistency with assignment brief • Use of styles; tables and graphs integrated into narrative • Credibility of report • Would your management believe you? • Requires clear and accurate expression

17. More on Mail – Formats • Most universal is MIME: • pure ASCII text, constrained to 7-bit codes to avoid transmission control codes • No control over fonts, colours, emphasis • Users have found ways around this, for example: • I *strongly* disagree with this proposal • BUT DON’T DO THIS, IT’S CONSIDERED THE EQUIVALENT OF SHOUTING • Most mail systems will word-wrap – But not all • Winchester system is Microsoft Exchange with Outlook XP • More powerful – allows rich text format (RTF) messages(multiple fonts, emphasis, colours) • At the cost of NOT being universal

18. Netiquette • E-mail is an odd medium: • We dash off notes without consideration given to a letter • Recipient may not read the note in the spirit it was sent – many examples of people taking deep offence • And they’re preserved and can be used against us! • Some conventions have grown up to counter this risk • Symbols to indicate mood, for example, :-) means “I’m joking”; :-( means “I’m sorry about this” • Use of emphasis signs to substitute for voice cues“this is *not* something I should normally ask, but..” • Stock phrases like IMHO (in my humble opinion) • Abbreviations may be less offensive than full phrase – RTFM instead of something like “Read the fine manual”

19. E-mail Timing • Although e-mail almost always gets to its destination within an hour or so, there are many potential problems: • Your server may be disconnected from the network • Or the recipient’s server may be down – AOL was down briefly in 2008; Winchester was offline one weekend • Or it may be down when the recipient tries to pick up mail • Or it may have lost the message (esp in small companies) • You can request automatic acknowledgement • But many receiving servers ignore the request • And your server may send confirmation as soon as the message gets on to “the Internet” (CompuServe does) • If it’s important, ask the recipient to acknowledge • Don’t forget that notes will cross in the mail