Assignment 1: How our Business Works:
Task 1:
How Organisations use information: (P1)
Primary Data:
When business look to improve on their business what they mainly do is a Primary Data, which is data that they collect themselves. So what they might do is go round give round comment cards where customers would give their own opinion about your business or they might just rate you out of 10 or each different factor of your business. An example would be if I was in charge of Chicken Cottage and I wanted to find out how people feel about my shop then I would start a survey which would be primary data, because I’m collecting it myself. The result of the survey would tell me what I need to improve and what I don’t need to improve.
Secondary Data:
Another way that they look to improve on their business is by secondary information. Secondary data is when you get information from other like the internet, television, articles, journals, newspapers, magazines and etc. For example: If I wanted to improve my shop, then I might go through newspapers or websites to see how people improved theirs. By using secondary information I’ll be using other people’s data to see what improvements they got advised to do by their customers.
Qualitative data:
Qualitative research gathers information that is not in numerical form. For example, diary accounts, open-ended questionnaires, unstructured interviews and unstructured observations. Qualitative data is typically descriptive data. For example if I wanted to gather question about how people think about the service of my shop then what I’d do is do an open-ended questionnaires, however I wouldn’t really think about the structure or think about gathering it in an numerical form.
Quantitative data:
Quantitative research gathers data in numerical form which can be put into categories, or in rank order, or measured in units of measurement. This type of data can be used to construct graphs and tables of raw data. For example if I was doing a survey, I’d lay it out in a numerical form and structure; also the questions would be accurate with detailed questions.

Characteristics of good information: (P2)
The Characteristics for good information are the following:
- Valid: For the Information to be Valid, it should then be unbiased, balanced and supportable. For example: Information that I provide for the customers have to be valid, they can’t be up to date. So if on my leaflet it says that I sell chicken nuggets but when he comes to my shop and we don’t sell it, which would mean that he was delivered the out of date leaflet.
- Reliable: The information has to be updated, it should be useful and facts included in the information have to be true. So if I have a sticker outside my shop saying ‘Halal’ then it does have to be true, if not then I’ll be just lying to my customers.
- Fit for Purpose: The information that was provided should be linked for the purpose, if not then it really isn’t going to be useful for the user. For example: if the leaflet that I use for my shop has nothing to do with it then it really isn’t fit for its purpose.
- Accessible: This is when you should be able to do calculations with the data. For example: when I’m closing up and want to see how much I made in a single day, after looking at the readings, I should then be able to check if it is right by doing the calculations.
- Cost-Effective: If I pay a certain amount for the chicken but when I’m selling it, if I sell it more than it I bought it for then it would be cost-effective. So whilst selling the chicken I have to make sure that it’s cheaper than I bought it for.
- Sufficiently accurate: If I’m going round the shop storeroom, looking at what needs to be ordered, then I have to make sure that I’m ordering the products that I need because if it’s not accurate then it would mean that I’ll be short of a certain product that I needed.
- Relevance: If I’m making a leaflet for my shop