Summary

Summary Unit 3 Assignment 1

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Module
Unit 3 - Information Systems

Institution
PEARSON (PEARSON)

Book
BTEC Level 3 National IT

Throughout this report is the work of which achieved me the highest possible grade. All of my work was to distinction standard throughout the 2 year course. BTEC LEVEL 3 UNIT 3 Information systems P1,P2,P3,P4,P5,P6,M1,M2,M3,D1,D2

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Unit 3
Assignment 1
Types of information
There are two main types of data that I will be referring to throughout my report, this
includes: Qualitative and quantitative data.
Qualitative data is both personal and subjective.
An example of a qualitative question from Teasbourne Language Centres would be- ‘how
could we improve your experience at TLC?’ (This question would be aimed toward the
students). Another example would be- ‘Why did you choose TLC over other Language
centres?’ (This could be aimed both at the staff and students).
Quantitative is factual (typically number based) and usually obtained through
straightforward processes.
Examples of quantitative data from Teasbourne Language Centres include:

• Students attendance
• Their grades
• How many students are within the centre
From the results of these questions numeric data can be formed.
Primary data
Primary data is data collected by yourself. The data can be obtained through direct
observations, surveys, interviews or logs. Primary data is reliable as you know where it came
from and it is raw (unaltered).
In Teasbourne Language Centres primary data could be gathered by creating a survey and
asking students to complete them. Primary data collected from TLC include data such as:

• Students attendance
• The personal details of each student
• The grades from within the Centre.
Secondary data
Secondary data is collected through external sources. These external sources include: the
internet, television, articles in magazines and newspapers and stories provided by word of
mouth. Secondary data is a lot less reliable as you cannot be certain if the data is accurate or
not (the information may be altered to benefit the author).
Teasbourne Language Centres may use secondary data to identify how well their
competitors are doing (their pass rate percentage), if the competitors are doing a lot better
than the language centre action may be taken (for example- hire better qualified teachers).
Secondary data is usually a lot cheaper and very easy to obtain the only issue is the accuracy
of the data. Primary data on the other hand is expensive but you can trust it.

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Matthew Lloyd-Jones

,Unit 3
Assignment 1
An examples of secondary information from within the TLC include could include data such
as the centres competition (the grades other centres around you are achieving).
Sources of information
Internal information
Within a business each department produces information which is of value to other
departments. Gathering the information across from all departments of the business can
provide the senior management with reliable insights. Examples of internal information
from within TLC include:

• Attendance
• Punctuality
• Grades
• The students personal information
• The finance department will set budgets for each of TLCs departments.
Administration- The administration shall be responsible in the most part for providing the
reports from across the organisation. Administration also will chase up deadlines for
interviews, missing payments and things of this nature.
Finance- The information produced covers the revenues or income, costs or expenditures,
assets or capital items, liabilities or known future costs and investments.
Manufacturing- Information about what resources are used (ensuring they will not fall short
of stock during manufacturing) and the timescales in which the products will be produced.
Marketing- The information the marketing sector provides includes the Sales performance
(e.g. comparing one sales area against another, comparing one year’s sales against another,
comparing the sales of particular products across a number of years). They would also
provide information about the Competitors (e.g. prices, delivery, terms and conditions).
Personnel- Information about the people that the organisation employs, such as their
contact details, jobs, grades, skills and any extra training they may need.
Purchasing- The purchasing department provide information on how well their suppliers
perform. They analyse them by price, lead-time, the problems when they arise, and by
product availability.
External information
There is a lot of external information available to organisations which can help in the
process of decision making. Free data can be seen to as suspect (unreliable) although the
government does publish a lot of trustworthy data.
There are many commercial databases that an organisation may choose to purchase from
their providers, especially if the data has direct relevance, such as such as detailed
information about their potential clients in a geographic area.

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Matthew Lloyd-Jones

,Unit 3
Assignment 1
Reliability is often related to quantity, so a large targeted dataset from a trustworthy source
can be valuable to an organisation. Examples of external information used by TLC include:

• Grades of other language centres (both locally and nationally)
• Laws and regulations they will have to abide by

Good information
Valid- the information shouldn’t be biased, it should be verifiable and represent something.
Valid information from within the TLC could include information such a pass rate percentage
and the attendance of the students.
Reliable- Does it fit in with the facts you already know and how trustworthy is the source
you acquired the information from? One way of ensuring the data is accurate is by carrying
out more research. The TLCs students will have to fill out their personal details as they enrol
onto a language course, this is reliable as the students are doing it themselves.
Timely- The information should have a deadline meaning that the information is to hand
when needed. Also you need to ensure that the information is accurate and up to date. TLC
will need to write up reports on attendance and grades from time to time, in meetings when
a contract is being issued it is important that all the information is going to be provided and
to hand, it is also important that the information is up-to-date.
Fit for purpose- is the data shown in the most appropriate format (e.g. graphs), does the
information convey the answers to the questions asked with proof and is it written to the
right level (more on this topic is written under- ‘understandable by the user’ below). When
presenting the stats and figures of how well the TLC College is doing in an opening evening,
it is important that the information is conveyed in the simplest way both grabbing the
attention and impressing the potential student.
Accessible- The information must be accessible ensuring you do not waste time re-writing
the data. You may need to do calculations with the data; if the data was only in the report
then you would have to find the data and retype it for when you need to do calculations,
this would be a waste of time. Using the contract scenario once again, the person who is
assigning the contract should be able to access all the information needed; the attendance,
punctuality and grades (which may come from different departments) in order to make the
contract plausible to fulfil.
Cost-effective- The cost of acquiring the data should be a lot less than that of the money
gained from knowledge acquired with the data. Before the TLCs College was created they
may well have carried out experiments in which they could identify if the college would be a
success or failure, they’d ask questions such as: would you like to take a course on learning a
new language? How much would you be willing to pay? And so on, the data they received
would be cost effective as they would have identified how many people they should
estimate to see in the opening year and because of this- the finances. If it’s well over what

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Matthew Lloyd-Jones

, Unit 3
Assignment 1
they expected they may wish to expand and if the results come back negative they may wish
to relocate or begin with a smaller scale.
Sufficiently accurate- The information needs to be as accurate as possible but it doesn’t
have to be exact. A great example from the TLC would be the estimation grades for the
students. Based on the past grades they can estimate an accurate prediction which will be
sufficiently accurate.
Relevance- Was the information collected used directly to purpose or was the information
irrelevant. There is no point gathering data if it is not directly relevant to the decision you
wish to make with it. If the student has a raised concern about the attendance but is doing
well academically they may not need all of the other data such as the grades and work ethic.
Having the right level of detail- You need to capture enough detail for the purpose that is
required, but no more. For example; in TLC instead of showing all of the students past
grades on a piece of paper they could show a pass percentage which would show the
average grades the college produced.
From a source which the user has confidence- You need to know how believable it is. Seeing
information on one shady website may hint to the user that the information is not accurate
but if several articles are written from trustworthy sources with the same information then
it would be more greatly accepted. An example in TLC; The TLC has competitors. When
researching how well the language colleges are doing around them by searching online they
may come across a few pieces of false information. On Wikipedia for example it may say
89% achieved their target grade however while on a government website you see the
results were actually 79%. You need to ensure the information is factual before taking
action.
Understandable by the user- It must be at the user’s level. The information must be
understandable for the person who it is intended for. An example being a bookkeeper could
should some finances to their administrant with panic and the admin will have no idea what
is going on. The bookkeeper should translate the information to the admins level of
knowledge when presenting the information.
Business functional areas
Upon being good sources of information, parts of a business wish to gain a good
understanding of how they perform. They want to use the information to help them
improve (perform better).
Sales
The sales department is interested in which products they have sold, to whom and for what
price. Sales analyses include data on sales organised by:

• Product and product group
• Store, location or outlet and various groupings by geography, the store size and the
organisation hierarchy
• Salesperson (for bonus purposes)
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Matthew Lloyd-Jones

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