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Business Intelligence at Super Skateboard Builders (SSB), Inc

MS Access

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Background¹

Super Skateboard Builders (SSB), Inc. was founded in 1997 by John “Z-boy” Boeve, the current president of the company, with the help of a small trust John received from his maternal grandmother, a woman who motivated John to go to college and to continue to pursue his skateboarding passion.  She marveled at John’s skateboarding finesse and encouraged him to find some way to earn a reasonable living by capitalizing on his passion for the sport.  John used the money from the trust to buy the necessary shop and office equipment (storage bins, an assembly table, desks, etc.) and lease a small building that would adequately house a skateboard assembly operation. 

 

Based on your thorough analysis of the cost and benefits of implementing an ERP system, John and his team decided to move forward with a full scale implementation of SAP.  Implementation lasted approximately 12 months and went smoothly for a project of such size, complexity, and scope.

The Problem

SSB has been using the new ERP system for approximately 12 months and they are thrilled with the initial gains in productivity and overall efficiencies.  Business processes have been formally defined and are routinely being followed, communication between departments has improved, delivery times have decreased, sales have increased due to better information about products in inventory, and overall employee morale has improved. 

 

Now that the system configuration has stabilized, John would like to start taking advantage of the data being collected by SAP during the processing of transactions.  Specifically, he would like to conduct a detailed analysis of SSBs (1) customers, (2) products, and (3) salespeople and thinks the data residing in SAP will provide valuable insights.  John and SSB have requested your assistance with analyzing the data to identify patterns and trends and make recommendations that can be used to improve the overall performance of SSB. 

Your Task

SSB would like for you to perform a detailed analysis of data contained in SAP using Access.  Accordingly, the SAP database administrator has created the attached data mart for you to use.  The data mart is in a small subset of the overall data contained in SAP and has been sent to you as an Access database.  The database contains sales orders for July of 2012 along with employee, customer and product information.  To analyze the data, you will need to understand relational databases and create queries to find and extract the data of interest. 

Creating Queries using SQL

SSB would like for you to generate several queries using the SQL “Query Design” feature in Access.  The queries are designed to provide an overview of the data stored in the data mart and techniques for answering specific questions about customers, products, and employees.

 

Query 1 – Employee List

Design a query to list all employees in the organization.  The query should display the following information: employee ID, employee first name, employee last name, employee address, employee salary, department name, and region name.  After executing the query and verifying the query works correctly, save the query as “Query1”.

 

Query 2 – Sales Representative List

Design a query to list all sales people in the organization.  The query should display the following information for the sales people in the organization: employee ID, sales rep first name, sales rep last name, sales rep address, sales rep salary, sales rep department name, sales rep region name.  We assume Everyone in the “Sales” department are sales people. After executing the query and verifying the query works correctly, save the query as “Query2”.

 

Query 3 – Customer List

Design a query to list all customers in alphabetical order by customer last name.  The query should display the following information: customer ID, customer first name, and customer last name. After executing the query and verifying the query works correctly, save the query as “Query3”.

 

Query 4 – Sales Orders in July

Design a query to list all sales orders from 7/3/2012 to 7/14/2012 sorted in ascending order by purchase order date.  The query should display the following information:  PO date, order ID, product ID, product description, quantity sold, and unit price.  After executing the query and verifying the query works correctly, save the query as “Query4”.

 

Query 5 – Finding a Sales Order

Construct a query to list all the products purchased by customer whose last name start with W on July 14^th, 2012.  The query should display the following information: PO Date, order ID, customer ID, customer first name, customer last name, product ID, product description, quantity sold, and unit price.  After executing the query and verifying the query works correctly, save the query as “Query5”.