small business simulator p6, D2

click here to see how No Name Sport uses information
week one
1. I changed the stock prices so they were bellow the RRP this is to increase the amount of customers i get.
2. it was recommended that I put a window display. I did this to try and increase the amount of customers.
3 I sent a press release to the newspaper to promote my business
4 i had the shop cleaned. this was to make the shop more hygienic for the customers
5 I promoted the replica kit-male to try to increase the amount of sales


because this was the first week of my small business i wanted to focus on gaining more customers. this is important because the more customers you have early on, the more money you will make. this also means that you will have more money to spend on improvements. the first thing i did was lowered the stock prices so they where slightly bellow the recommended retail price. the reason i did this is because i wanted to gain commercial advantage over my competitors. this is similar to what most shops such as Tesco and Asda do.

the next thing i did was put up a window display. this is because i did some research on events that were happening in my area and i found out that a football game was going to happen. this was useful as it attracted all the people that were going to attend the football match and also gained me more potential customers. it also gave me an advantage over other companies because i put up the advertisement as early as possible. this meant there was more time for these potential customers to view my banner and could have caused the other companies to loose potential customers.

another way i tried to increase the amount of customers was by promoting my advert in the newspaper. in the real world many football fans would be reading the newspaper to hear about all the sports related news. this meant i could take advantage of this by sending a press release to the newspaper. this was a very cheap way of promoting my business but was very effective as it allowed more football fans to hear about my business.

although i was mainly focusing on gaining customers, i also thought hygiene was very important for keeping customers happy. every week i cleaned the shop. i thought this was a very important decision because it improved the customers first impressions of me.

i decided to do some market research on other companies to see what type of people were commonly purchasing from their shop. after doing this research i found out that more males were purchasing then females. as a result of this i decided to raise the price of the replica-kit-male i then promoted this kit. the result i was hoping for was more customers would purchase this kit therefore increasing my income.

this is the outcome of the first week

this was the end result after week one. over all i think the first week was very successful as i was managing to make a profit. this meant i had more money to spend on improving my business. i also manages to raise the health level to 80 / 100. this was good as it could potentially increase the amount of customers who want to visit my shop. however after looking at this feedback i noticed the customers were not very happy with my business.

week two
1 i got the shop cleaned
2 I slept in to improve my health
3 I got online training in customer service to improve peoples opinions of my business

because the customer satisfaction was so low i decided to devote this week into improving the customers opinions of  my business. the first thing i did was cleaned the shop. i still felt like having a clean shop was vital for improving the customers satisfaction.

the second thing i did was slept. although this had no effect on my business it was very important that i took breaks and avoided over working myself because it could lead to various health problems.

because i wanted to improve the customer satisfaction i decided to listen to what the customers were saying. i noticed that a large amount of them were complaining about the staffs attitude. i decided to give myself online training in customer service to improve the customers opinions of my business.

this is the outcome of the second week

as you can see from this end result the customer satisfaction had slightly gone up. however it did not go up as much as i had hoped and as a result of dedicating a week to improving customer satisfaction i lost a large amount of money and i was no longer making a profit.

week three
1 I slightly raised the prices of things because I was losing too much money
2 I started to build a website to increase the number of customers.

because things did not go as well as i hoped the week before i decided to balance my decisions slightly more. instead of just focusing on one thing i decided to focus on multiple things each week. the first thing i did in week three was raised the prices so they were still slightly bellow the recommended retail price. the reason i did this was because i needed to gain back some of the money that i lost in the last week.

the next thing i did was started to build a website. although i was doing this very early in the game and it was a very time consuming process, i thought it would be a good way of expanding my business and i thought it would give me a commercial advantage over the other companies because i would be able to gain more potential customers that commonly use the internet.

this is the outcome of the third week

at this point i started to notice that my cash in was slightly improving. however i was still very low on money and was also beginning to go bankrupt.

week four
1 I picked the option inject your own capital to get a bit more money
because i did not have a lot of money i could not make many changes to the shop.

at this point i was extremely low on money. the only thing i did this week was injected my own capital. i did this to prevent myself from going bankrupt. because i was so low on money at this point i could not make any improvements to my business

at this point i could see that my business was slowly starting to improve. however i was still losing a large amount of money and my health had also began to go down.
week five
1 because my money was so low i chose to burrow money from my family
2 i asked a friend for staff referral
3 i got more window displays to advertise my shop
4 i got more online training to improve what customers think about me
5 the money i requested in week four was given to me and i received 20,000

at this point my money was really low and was still not making any profit. at this point the money that i had ejected from my capital had not yet been approved so i could not be certain that i would actually receive that money.

the first thing i did was borrowed money from my family. i thought this was a very important choice as it could potentially save my business.

the next thing i did was asked my friend for a staff referral. now that i had a bit of money to spend on improving my business i decided that i needed to get some better qualified staff. the reason for this decision was that the customer satisfaction was still very low and i thought the only way to increase my profit would be to increase the customer satisfaction.

i then got more online training to improve the customer satisfaction. the reason for this was similar to the reason for my last decision.

i then noticed that the request that i sent to retrieve some of my money had actually been accepted. this was extremely good news as it meant i now had a large sum of money that i could use to improve my business. this also meant that i could instantly pay back my family and prevent myself from owing money that i did not own.

as you can see from this week, the end result had drastically improved. i made a profit of 22,985.53 pounds and my customer satisfaction had began to go up. this was good as it meant i was now longer on the verge of going bankrupt and i could finally spend more money on my business.

this was the final week that i played on the small business game. however, now that i look back at this experience i have found various things that i would do differently if i was to play this game again. the first thing i would do differently would be to focus on multiple things each week rather then focusing on one thing. the second thing i would focus on is increasing my sociability. this is important because because having a low sociability means that i was over working my self too much.

information systems p2

click here to see my poster on good information

valid

this is information that is useful to the reader and will benefit the users knowledge. it is important for information to be valid because without valid information the user would not learn the correct information and therefore the invalid information would not be useful to the user.

reliable 

reliable information is information that has been proven and that can be trusted. it is important to have reliable information because without it the user would not know if the information was correct. if the information was not reliable more research would have to be done to ensure that the information is correct.

timely

information is required to be timely. this means this means a plan should be set up before the information is collected. this will include creating a structure for the information so it is easy to understand. time will also be needed to read through the information to ensure that it is correct.

fit for purpose

the information needs to be fit for purpose. this means the information needs to be relevant to what you are trying to find out. if the information is not relevant then it is not fit for purpose.

accessible

all information used should be easy to access. this means the information should be stored somewhere that can be easily accessed when needed. this will make it quicker to find this information and will also prevent the information from getting lost.

cost effective

sometimes bussinesses will need to pay other people to gather information. an examples of this would be a survey. it is important to make sure the information that you are getting is worth the money you are paying to ensure that you benefit.

sufficiently accurate

if information is not accurate then it will not be useful to the reader and could lead someone to making a wrong decision. it is important to collect reliable and correct information to prevent any mistakes.

relevance 

the information must be relevant. this means the information has to relate to what you are looking into. if information is not relevant then it will not be useful. for example. if you were writing a survey about what meals were most popular in a restaurant and you asked people what their job was, that information would not be relevant as it does not relate to the subject and therefore would not be useful.

right level of detail

this means you have to go into the right level of detail depending on what the information is for. for example if you were writing a survey the information should be brief because any more information would be unnessisary and would therefore wast time. however, if you were writing a report the information would be more detailed. if the information was not in the right level of detail it may cause people to make mistakes.

confidence in source 

it is important to be confident in the source. if you are not confident that the source is correct then the information may be unreliable. if you are not confident in your sources further research may have to be done to prove that the source is reliable.

understandable by the user

information must be understandable by the user.if the information is not understandable the user may get confused. this is a problem because if the user does not understand the information it may cause them to make mistakes.