You are to include the following particulars in your submission: Course Code, Title of the TMA, SUSS PI No., Your Name, and Submission Date.
Read the following Case Study. Create appropriate Excel models to analyse it. You need to have your models in an appropriate xlsx Excel file. You should only submit one workbook for this TMA. It is individual assignment and there is a severe penalty to refer to others work.
All questions will need to be answered in your Excel file. The answer for each question must be in its own worksheet. Organise your workbook with worksheets as follows: Cover, Q1, Q2, and Q3. The Cover worksheet should contain your Name, PI Number, Seminar Group, Assessment Name and Module Code.
Each model should fit into one worksheet (A4 page), with user-friendly formatting and layout, clear documentation and print-ready state. You must provide answers to the individual questions posed in the problems.
Note that for take-home assignment, students are expected to research beyond the school textbook and course materials.
Refer Sample TMA and Sample TMA solutions as your guide to the standard expected. See also the rubric below given for grading each problem.
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TMA Grading Rubric |
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Criteria |
Percentage |
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Correctness (Numeric answer) and proper documentation |
80% |
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Formatting (For professional quality & bonus for advanced features and in-depth analysis and comment) |
20% |
For your submission, you will need to upload a single Excel workbook (xlsx) file for grading via Canvas. Please remove any VBA or Macro from your workbook.
Marks awarded to your assignment are based on the following guidelines:
1. 80% of the marks are allocated to the content of your answers:
The marks awarded to what your answers cover depend on the extent to which they cover the key points that correctly and comprehensively address each question.
The key points should be supported by evidence drawn from course materials and, wherever relevant, from other credible sources.
2. 20% of the marks are allocated to the presentation of your answers:
Wherever applicable, the marks awarded to how your answers are presented depend on the extent to which your answers:
form a sound reasoning by developing those key points in a clear, logical and succinct manner;
provide proper and adequate in-text citations and referencing to content drawn from course materials and other credible sources;
strictly follow APA formatting and style guidelines1, in particular for:
• in-text citations and end-of-report references;
• the identification of figures and tables;
use, wherever relevant, the specialised vocabulary and terminology commonly used in discussions about the topic(s) covered by each question;
provide a reference or bibliography at the end of the main report;
include the less relevant details in an Appendix;
use sentence constructions that are grammatically and syntactically correct;
are free from spelling mistakes; present the workings, numerical formulations and results in a logical manner that follows the APA formatting and style guidelines;
design and present graphs, diagrams and plots that follow the APA formatting and style guidelines;
are highly original;
have proper formatting, which may:
• include a properly formatted cover page;
• respect the answer length/word count set out in the assignment guidelines, if any is prescribed;
• present answers in paragraphs with proper spacing and page margins;
• include page numbers and appendices, if necessary.
The COVID19 pandemic has put tremendous strains on the healthcare systems of countries all over the world. The high infection rate coupled with a low recovery rate means that the active patient population grows rapidly. This is despite the efforts of social distancing measures such as circuit breaker (CB) and movement control orders (MCO) to "flatten" the infection curve. Thus, the local Health Ministry has been working hard with the rest of the Government to expand physical facilities and medical equipment. However, it is not so easy to increase the number of healthcare professionals in such a short period of time.
The Health Ministry is now planning to add another tier of healthcare assistants. The Ministry has creatively named them "health buddies" to supplement the existing healthcare workforce. These health buddies will report to nurses and will be tasked with simple activities like monitoring readings, talking and attending to the basic needs of patients. For such activities, the buddies can be rapidly trained in a day or two and deployed to the hospitals and isolation centres. The entry requirement is 3 GCE O Level passes with a credit in English Language. The system of “health buddies” can provide an essential service and employment opportunities to thousands of people who have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic.
Terry is excited by this new mass recruitment tender as it provides an opportunity for him to scale up his business. He has already gotten his accounting department to compile Table 3 which shows the internal recruitment cost based on the number of candidates to be sourced for each exercise. As a veteran in the business, he can already discern economies of scale as well as the law of diminishing returns reflected in the costing.
Imagine you are a senior executive working for Talent Finder. How will you advise Terry in responding to the "buddies tender"?
(a) Construct a model to compute the number of “health buddies” to be hired based on the number of patient population. How many “health buddies” will be needed if the patient population is 50,000? What would be the expected profit if Talent Finder should quote a price of $130 per head based on a patient population size of 50,000? (Note: expand your model as needed). (22 marks)
(b) Create a data table to analyse how profit will change based on the prices $60, $90, $130,
$170, $200, and the estimated patient population size shown in Table 2 above. Apply single-colour graded conditional formatting to the profit table. To meet tender requirements, create another data table to show how many “health buddies” will be needed for the various patient population sizes quoted by the Health Ministry. What is the maximum profit? What is the minimum profit? Apply conditional formatting to highlight the cell with maximum profit in yellow, and the cell with minimum profit in pink. (13 marks)
(c) Interpret your profit table. How would you advise Terry to quote for the tender? Explain the reasons for your answer. (5 marks)
Overall presentation, layout and formatting
Your models for Q1 must be neatly laid out and presented. You must apply appropriate colours, alignment, labels and formatting of numbers. (5 marks)
Terry is confident of winning the "health buddies" manpower tender. At the same time, he is worried. There is so much paperwork to be done in order to recruit a great number of candidates in a short period of time. The computers in the office are good only for word-processing and printing. He decided to invest in an Information System (IS) for the future of his business. He found two off-the-shelf systems that he could procure quickly: i) Basic Talent Scout IS priced at $60,000; and ii) Enterprise HR IS priced at $600,000. And he needs to make a decision as to which of these two systems he should purchase.
Besides maintaining employee data, the Enterprise HR system has a rich set of features including payroll processing, claims management, leave process automation and performance appraisal tracking. These can also be accessed online over the Internet by both the staff and the HR personnel. However, it will require yearly system maintenance for bug fixes and enhancements which will cost an additional 15% of the system cost in the first year. This maintenance cost will increase by 9% each year. By comparison, the Basic Talent Scout system is focused only on recruitment processing, but it is cheaper and requires no maintenance. Both vendors have advised that the commercial lifetime of their systems is 6 years.
To conserve cash, Terry plans to use a bank loan to finance the purchase. His corporate bank charges a preferential rate of 4% per annum, but any loan taken must be repaid in equal instalments on a monthly basis for a duration of 6 years. He has also been advised by his accountant that the required return on investment for any company investment is 12%.
Coincidentally, Terry learnt of another tender being put out by the Ministry of Health to manage the HR affairs of the health buddies after the pandemic subsides, which is predicted to be within 3 to 4 months. However, there will still be remnant asymptomatic patients that need to be cared for. Hence, it expects to retain some 15,000 health buddies for the long-term. And this will grow at a rate of 5% per year as their job role will be gradually re-scoped for elderly-care moving forward into the future. The tender requires the supplier to provide automated online HR services that provide leave management, claims processing and employee data keeping and performance report tracking. The tender states an indicative service fee of between $24 to $35 per head per year. Suppliers will have to compete on price and service reliability.
(a) Compose a model to analyse the bank loan needed to finance the purchase of the 2 alternative information systems at the indicated prices. Compare the monthly instalments needed to repay the loan. What is the total amount of interest to be paid on each of the loans? What is the equivalent annual interest to be paid on each of these loans? State any assumptions needed by your model. (14 marks)
(b) Determine which information system Talent Finder should invest in. Justify your answer quantitatively with a suitable analytical model. Is the investment worthwhile based on your analytical model? Explain your recommendations. (16 marks)
Overall presentation, layout and formatting
Your models for Q2 must be neatly laid out and presented. You must apply appropriate colours, alignment, labels and formatting of numbers. (5 marks)
(a) Drawing upon your experiences in the MonsoonSIM business simulation game, illustrate, with an example, how you could have run your virtual business more adaptively to changes in market conditions. (10 marks)
(b) Discuss how Terry can apply Strategic Planning to his business, especially during this period of COVID19 crisis. (10 marks)
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