These are projects posted by the students of Dr. Gove Allen at Brigham Young University. These students have taken one semester-long course on VBA and generally have had no prior programming experience

Monday, December 9, 2013

User form to create charts - John Harris

Over the summer I interned with a Restaurant company. A few of the most important metrics that we monitored were average weekly guest counts and average check amount. The company collected data from each restaurant and compiled it into a massive database. The problem was that not everyone had access to the database, knew how to query the database, or analyze the results. During one of my first weeks there I built a chart of our weekly guest count to display seasonality and trending, and many members of my team were blown away that we actually had that data. In the marketing department we want to know average guest count during a promotion so we can measure the effectiveness, or to see when restaurants tend to be slow so we can run our most powerful promotions during those times. I was surprised at the lack of use for such an important metric for a restaurant. Several times I would ask about the effectiveness of past promotions or campaigns and no one could tell me a number because it was so hard to get the data. I built a tool to analyze guest count data in a way that is easy to use and easy to understand. This project is based on that need, and using the guest count data set, it automates chart creation for easy interpretation. Ideally, this tool will allow anyone with access to this worksheet to view and understand historical trends of the data without having to query the database or know how to select or build charts in excel. 

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