From an Unstructured Business Situation to Business Insights: Making Data Give Up Their Secrets with Database Querying

• In Event: AIS Education Issues

Abstract

This case prompts students to satisfy executives’ needs for information about restaurant operations by querying a database with data about diners’ bills and payments, purchase orders, invoices, EFT payments, food inventory and waste, and conversion costs. The case is staged with a wide-ranging discussion among the executives about how to analyze data from the restaurants to avoid unnecessary expenses and be more profitable. Students are directed to identify risks the company is subject to and opportunities that it could take advantage of, develop querying objectives for the risks and opportunities, prepare a process diagram, communicate the risks/opportunities, querying objectives, explanations of query sequences, and querying results in a report, and present the results for one risk or opportunity to the class. Through these activities, students practice making sense of an unstructured business situation as they analyze and present evidence of business outcomes.

Authors

• A Faye Borthick, Georgia State University

• Jonene M. Fine, Dixon Hughes Goodman, LLP