using information p1, D1

types of information

qualitative information 

this is a non numeric type of information that is based on the quality of something. for example if you were testing a new drink, you would say that drink was either nice or not nice. this type of information is dependent on your opinion. this type of information might be used by a restaurant if they wanted to know what meals were more popular. because the customers all have different opinions on the food the information is not fact. to improve the quality of qualitative information a small business may consider to include a short list of answers that people will have to choose from when answering a questionnaire. this will prevent people for giving joke answers and would make the information given more accurate.

quantitative information

this is information that can be proven and is factual information. for example when testing new drinks you may need to know the amount of ingredients that have been used to make that drink. this information is numeric information (number based). this information is used as it is more factual and harder to argue against.

an example of quantitive information is if a business wanted to work out the amount of stock that has been sold in a day. some businesses use an automated system to calculate this information. as a result of using an automated system, they can produce more accurate and useful information and gain an advantage over other businesses. 

primary

this is information that you have collected. an example of this is a survey. this is primary information because you are the source of the information. because you are the source of the information, you know where the information came from, meaning the information is more likely to be reliable and accurate.

sometimes collecting information from primary source will improve the quality of information. this is because if the information is primary, you have collected the information and therefore it will be more reliable. it also takes less time to collect primary information which may give you an advantage over other videos which are using secondary information. 

secondary information

this is information that has been collected by a secondary source. an example of this would be information collected from another company. if you use secondary information, it is more likely that the information is unreliable compared to primary information.

sometimes second information will improve the quality of information. this is because secondary information will usually be more professional and may give you better results when using the information to make important business decisions.

purposes of information

operational support

this is one of the ways in which companies monitor information. an example of this is a company monitoring the Footfall of there company. This would allow a company to know how many customers they get each day. it would also show them what times they had more customers. being able to monitor this information is important as it can tell them how much staff they would need and would tell them what times they would need more staff.

some companies use automated systems to measure the footfall of a company. this can increase the quality of the information as it makes it more accurate and requires less work to produce the information. this will also allow you to make business decisions quicker.

analysis

this is a way in which companies identify specific trends that could increase sales. for example every year at Christmas, companies release more stock that relates to Christmas because it becomes more popular at that time of the year. another example of analysis is finding out that your company is more popular at Christmas. Because of this the company will need to increase the amount of stock to prevent items from becoming sold out.

 

decision making

it is important that a company makes the correct decisions. without correct decision making, a small company could lose money. an example of decision making is increasing the amount of staff when there are more customers. 

gaining commercial advantage 

this is a way of getting an advantage over other companies in you area. for example, a company could increase the amount of time they are open therefore. this would mean that late night shoppers would go to your shop because it is open for longer.