HS3041 Business Intelligence & Knowledge Management

Group Assignment Guidelines and Specifications

Assignment Title

Business Intelligence Dashboard Project for Fitness Equipment Distribution Company

Tool: Microsoft Power BI

Assignment Overview

You are working as a Business Intelligence consulting team for a fitness equipment distribution company. The company sells products to customers across different regions and wants to improve its business performance using data-driven decision-making.

Your team (up to 4 members) has been given a generated dataset containing sales transactions, product information, customer details, and regional data. Using Power BI, your task is to clean, model, analyses, and visualize the data, then present your findings in a professional business report.

The dataset includes:

• Sales.csv
• Products.csv
• Customers.csv
• Regions.csv

Your analysis should help management understand sales patterns, customer behavior, product performance, and regional trends.

Business Case

The management team of the fitness equipment distribution company has asked your group to answer the following business questions:

1. Which products and categories perform best in terms of sales and revenue?
2. Which regions are meeting or failing to meet sales expectations?
3. What customer segments contribute most to business performance?
4. What trends can be identified over time?
5. What recommendations can be made to improve profitability and business strategy?

Your team must use Power BI to create a dashboard and provide business insights based on the dataset.

Assessment Task Structure

Instead of completing the assignment in sections A, B, C, and D, your work must be presented in the following four project components:

Part 1: Business Understanding and Data Review (8 marks)

In this part, your group must:

• Briefly explain the business problem
• Describe the purpose of the analysis
• Introduce the dataset and explain the role of each table
• Identify the key fields that will be important in the analysis
• Explain what management wants to learn from the data

You should also include screenshots of the imported tables in Power BI.

Part 2: Data Preparation and Data Model Design (8 marks)

In this part, your group must:

• Import all dataset files into Power BI
• Clean and prepare the data where necessary
• Correct data types
• Rename fields if needed
• Build relationships between the tables
• Explain the logic of your data model

You should provide:

• A screenshot of the relationship model
• A short explanation of how the tables are connected
• Any assumptions or changes made during data preparation

Part 3: Interactive Dashboard Development (14 marks)

Your group must develop an interactive Power BI dashboard for management. The dashboard should contain at least 4 pages and include appropriate visuals, slicers, and filters.

Your dashboard should include analysis such as:

• Sales performance by product and category
• Regional performance comparison
• Customer insights
• Time-based sales trends
• Profitability or revenue-related insights
• At least one custom visual such as a map, KPI, gauge, or decomposition tree

The dashboard should be clear, professional, and easy to understand.

Part 4: Management Insights and Team Reflection (10 marks)

Your group must write a report that includes:

A. Management Insights

• Summary of the most important findings
• Explanation of what the dashboard shows
• Business recommendations based on the analysis
• Discussion of any limitations in the dataset or dashboard

B. Team Reflection

• Explain how the group worked together
• Describe how tasks were divided
• Mention any challenges faced
• Explain what your group learned from using Power BI as a team

Deliverables

Your group must submit the following:

1. Assignment Cover Page
2. Power BI file (.pbix)
3. Group Report (.docx)

The report should include:

• Part 1: Business Understanding and Data Review
• Part 2: Data Preparation and Data Model Design
• Part 4: Management Insights and Team Reflection

Note: Dashboard pages are assessed through the submitted .pbix file.

Suggested Report Format

To help structure your work, your report may use the following headings:

1. Introduction
2. Business Problem and Dataset Overview
3. Data Preparation and Modeling
4. Dashboard Design Summary
5. Key Findings and Business Recommendations
6. Limitations
7. Team Reflection
8. References

Marking Guide Summary

Submission Instructions

• Submit via Blackboard by the due date
• Late penalties apply according to institute policy
• Only the final submission will be marked
• All sources must follow Holmes Institute Adapted Harvard Referencing
• The report must be submitted in MS Word format
• The Power BI dashboard must be submitted as a .pbix file

Marking Criteria Summary

Student Assessment Citation and Referencing Rules

Adapted Harvard Referencing Rules

Holmes has implemented a revised Harvard approach to referencing. The following rules apply:

1. Reference sources in assignments are limited to sources that provide full-text access to the source's content for lecturers and markers.
2. The reference list must be located on a separate page at the end of the essay and titled: "References".
3. The reference list must include the details of all the in-text citations, arranged A-Z alphabetically by author surname with each reference numbered (1 to 10, etc.) and each reference MUST include a hyperlink to the full text of the cited reference source. For example:

1. All assignments must include in-text citations to the listed references. These must include the surname of the author/s or name of the authoring body, year of publication, page number of the content, and paragraph where the content can be found. For example, “The company decided to implement an enterprise-wide data warehouse business intelligence strategies (Hawking et al., 2004, p3(4)).”

Non-Adherence to Referencing Rules

Where students do not follow the above rules:

1. For students who submit assignments that do not comply with the rules, a 10% penalty will be applied.
2. As per the Student Handbook, late penalties will apply each day after the student/s has been notified of the due date.
3. Students who comply with rules and the citations are "fake" may be reported for academic misconduct.

HS3041 Group Assignment T1 2026

Submission Guidelines

Your documents should be a single MS Word or Open Office document containing your report. Do not use PDF as a submission format.

All submissions will be submitted through the safe Assign facility in Blackboard. Submission boxes linked to Safe Assign will be set up in the Units Blackboard Shell. Assignments not submitted through these submission links will not be considered.

Submissions must be made by the due date and time (which will be in the session detailed above) and determined by your Unit coordinator. Submissions made after the due date and time will be penalized per day late (including weekend days) according to Holmes Institute policies.

The Safe Assign similarity score will be used in determining the level, if any, of plagiarism. Safe Assign will check conference web-sites, Journal articles, the Web and your own class member’s submissions for plagiarism. You can see your Safe Assign similarity score (or match) when you submit your assignment to the appropriate drop box. If this is a concern you will have a chance to change your assignment and resubmit. However, re-submission is only allowed prior to the submission due date and time. After the due date and time have elapsed your assignment will be graded as late. Submitted assignments that indicate a high level of plagiarism will be penalized according to the Holmes Academic Misconduct policy, there will be no exceptions. Thus, plan early and submit early to take advantage of the re-submission feature. You can make multiple submissions, but please remember we grade only the last submission, and the date and time you submitted will be taken from that submission.