Version 1.0

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26-04-2022

The Four Seasons Music Decision Support System Copyright © 2022 Valkyries Technology (Australia) Pty Ltd Additional owners of copyright are acknowledged on the acknowledgements page. Every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge copyrighted material. The authors and publishers tender their apologies should any infringement have occurred

The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of the pages of this work, whichever is greater, to be reproduced and/or communicated by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the institution (or the body administrates it) has sent a Statutory Educational notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) and been granted a license. For details of statutory educational and other copyright licenses contact: Copyright Agency Limited, Level 15, 233 Castlereagh Street, Sydney NSW 2000 Telephone: (02) 9394 7600. Website: www.copyright.com.au

Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of study, research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the written permission of Valkyries Technology (Australia) Pty Ltd including, but not limited to, any network or other electronic storage. Enquiries should be made to the publisher via [email protected] or marked for the attention of the permissions editor at the address below

For use of The Four Seasons Music decision Support System. This License Agreement (this “Agreement” of this “License Agreement”) is made and effective as of 25-05-2022 (the “Commencement Date”) by and between Valkyries Technologies, a company organized and existing in Australia, with a registered address at 14 Freyja Walk, Toowoomba QLD 4350 (“Licensor”) and Four Seasons Music, a company organized and existing in Australia, with a registered address at Shop 1, 10 Concerto Crescent, Toowoomba QLD 4350 (“Licensee”). WHEREAS:

1. Licensee wishes to obtain a license to use the Decision Support System (hereinafter, the “Asset”), and
2. Licensor is willing to grant to the Licensee a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Asset for the term and specific purpose set forth in this Agreement, NOW, THEREFORE, in consideration of the foregoing, and of the mutual promises and undertakings contained herein, and other good and valuable consideration, the parties agree as follows: 4.1 The Licensee cannot use the Asset, for purposes other than as specified in this Agreement and in Item 8 of the Schedule. 4.2 The Licensee may permit its employees to use the Asset for the purposes described in Item 8, provided that the Licensee takes all necessary steps and imposes the necessary conditions to ensure that all employees using the Asset do not commercialize or disclose the contents of it to any third person or use it other than in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. 4.3 The Licensee will not distribute, sell, License or sub-License, let, trade, or expose for sale the Asset to a third party. 4.4 No copies of the Asset are to be made other than as expressly approved by Licensor. 4.5 No changes to the Asset or its content may be made by Licensee. 4.6 The Licensee will provide technological and security measures to ensure that the Asset which the Licensee is responsible for is physically and electronically secure from unauthorized use or access. 4.7 Licensee shall ensure that the Asset retains all Licensor copyright notices and other proprietary legends and all trademarks or service marks of Licensor. 5.1 All Intellectual Property Rights over and in respect of the Asset are owned by Licensor. The Licensee does not acquire any rights of ownership in the Asset

All trademarks, registered trademarks and the company names in the manual are the properties of their respective owners: “Four Seasons Music” Version 1.0

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This is a guide for the different stakeholders in “Four Seasons music Decision Support System (DSS)” developed by Valkyrie’s technologies. This user manual this is especially for employees in Four Seasons music the system for making optimized decisions in selecting suppliers, vendors, and shipment centers across different countries. The user manual also describes how optimal costing choices can be achieved by using this system.

This user manual can help maintenance personnel and employees within the Four Seasons music company the more efficiently manage information and make informed decisions. It can also act as an integrated platform for accurate forecasting and cost optimization for the company.

Best feature 1 The formulas and functions used in the Decision support system design are capable of providing optimal outcome for business in Four Seasons music. Standard universals excel formulas and functions are used that are widely applicable. Best Feature 2 In future, this DSS can be used for analysing similar data sets such as customer data and company profit and sales data four identifying most optimal choices for The Four Seasons business.

The following diagram identifies the primary users of the decision support system for Four Seasons music designed by Valkyries technologies: Figure 1: Uses of the DSS: Key features tree diagram

• CPU: 64-bit (x64) processor with clock-speed of 1.4 GHz or higher • RAM: 8 GB • Network adapter: 1 Gps • DSS installation directory space: Over 200 GB

• Windows 7 and later operating systems • Microsoft Office suite (MS Excel 365)

For any kind of user assistance from the developers' company Valkyries technologies, the following information can be helpful: Valkyries Technologies 14 Freyja Walk Toowoomba QLD 4350 Call Ph: (07) 3628 6794 Write to Email: [email protected]

Some of the primary precautions involved in the utilization of the decision support system in Four Seasons music include:

• I. Accuracy of information: It is necessary to make sure that the data sets used for the inputs in a Decision support system of Four Seasons are accurate. Otherwise, there can be risks of incorrect projections and incorrect decision-making.
• II. Information accessibility: In order to ensure complete information access ability in the DSS, no document protection mechanism has been applied. This ensures that freely access DSS structure and use for different benefits as per requirements.
• III. User privacy and confidentiality: The internal organization information gathered and analyzed with the DSS can include confidential data such as personal details of customers and other stakeholders. None of the users is at liberty to share/disclose any of this information to external entities.
• IV. Intellectual property rights: All intellectual property rights are protected under the trademark protection laws defined by the Australian government (Australian Government, 2022). Complete compliance with the legislative guidelines needs to be maintained for avoiding any legal complications in the use of the DSS.
• V. Acceptable use policies: Responsible use of organizational data and personal data of stakeholders is necessary to be exercised at all times while using the DSS in this case. According to the acceptable use policies, users are restricted to:
• use other computer systems within the organization for accessing the DSS
• provide commercial access to the DSS to external entities
• send unauthorized emails to randomly selected groups of people from the data sets

The most primary step is to download the decision support system excel file on any compatible computer device meeting the software and hardware requirements specified above. The file can be stored in a separate folder for convenience. Figure 2: Opening the DSS in MS excel Opening the excel file provides access to the decision support system for Four Seasons music. Detailed customer data, profitability data and sales data can be added in the relevant sheets accordingly.

The scenario analysis page gets updated automatically based on the customer data and sales data entered on the other pages. Based on the scenario analysis calculations, all the visualization charts get updated providing an overview of the business situation for each scenario. The scenarios identified in this DSS help in the calculation of the most optimal exchange rate selection in different cases where the number of sales, discount for orders, and other types of attributes vary differently.

The visual charts and utilization of functions in excel such as cell styles markup help the user to identify the levels of different costs in a color-coded manner. implementation of eight different options for the business with the different combined use of store markup and supply markups and different exchange rates can be efficiently compared using the visuals in the decision support system. Figure 3: Comparison visualisation of the 8 scenarios

The decision's support system for Four Seasons music business is a computer-based programme that has the capability to support judgments, decisions and courses of action within the organisation. Maintenance of profitability in the Four Seasons music business and making the most optimal decisions regarding which of the choices can result in higher profitability for the business in terms of discounts, vendors selection, supplier selection and exchange rate selection for shipping is highly complex. The decision support system, in this case, uses simple software solutions for analysing available data and comparing profitability under different situations for the company. This DSS is capable of processing a large amount of data across different areas and analyse such data to provide sales trends and future predictions useful for the company.

• Profitability calculation: The DSS solution in this case provides profitability calculation based on different scenarios and the selection of different types of suppliers and freight providers at different times. Using this solution, the company can make that are to be most profitable for the company under variable situations.
• Large customer or sales data analysis: The DSS in this case is capable of handling large-scale data company data gathered from different sources can be directly imported into the system for analysis.
• Data visualization: Data visualization charts included in the DSS efficiently show information about the regional distribution of company sales for different types of products as well as overall sales trends over particular periods of time (Refer to Appendix 1).
• Scenario planning and prediction: The DSS provides insights and projections about eight different types of scenarios based on the available options that the company can choose from. No comes up different scenarios also presented in an automated visualized manner that makes it easier for the managers to select the most optimal choice.
• Freight cost calculation: Automated freight cost calculation can also be performed by the system since appropriate formulas and functions have been used based on alternative exchange rates in Austria (AT) and Singapore (SG).
• Optimal discount evaluation: Application data of different rates of discounts in different orders can be retrieved directly from customer data sets and sale data sets. Impact of such discount on orders over overall profitability of the company is calculated by the DSS providing an idea about the necessary actions that are required to be taken.
• Supplier and other service providers selection: Different freight services, suppliers and vendors have different rates that are required to be collectively considered for calculating profitability on sales and expenses. The DSS is capable of implementing mathematical operational functions to determine the options in which expenses can be minimised and greater profitability can be achieved.

• Any new and updated customer data can be update from the updated company reports and these specific rows and column might be placed in the existing customer table in the DSS
• From this customers’ data table, automatically the VLOOKUP functions are going to sort out the orders table (Refer to appendix 3)
• The changes can be seen on the Report worksheet in cells U4, V4, W4, X4, Y4, Z4 and AA4.
• Changes can also be seen within the “scenario summary” and the “Calculations” worksheet.

• Fixed expenses can be updated in the calculations worksheet who wants the relevant fixed expenses are changed accordingly in the data input worksheet
• These calculations are done over six months’ time (on half yearly basis)

• The customer table data can be easily replaced if there is any new set of customer data available
• Relevant rows and columns can be selected and replaced using copy and paste functions within the excel worksheet

• In the item or instruments table, directly data sets can be imported from external sources
• Alternatively, instruments table data can also be copied from other data sets directly for updating

• Data in the suppliers table is required to be filled in manually by obtaining information from the centralised business information platform and invoices

• Within the calculations table, certain range inputs I require to be provided from other data worksheets for calculating the total amount of sales and percentage discounts.

• Data related to variable expenses and fixed expenses are also required to be referenced to the Data-input or Report worksheet
• Excel functions such as SUMIF(), Simple mathematical operators (+,-,/,*), SUM (:), and Sum () are used to calculate different fields from Data Input or Report data sources

• Incorporating changes in the existing data sets can reflect on the values in the D column of the calculations worksheet
• Changes can also be observed if changes are done in other worksheets within the Scenario summary worksheet and the visual charts (Refer to Appendix 2)

Australian Government, 2022, Australian Intellectual Property laws, Available at: https://www.austrade.gov.au/international/invest/guide-to-investing/running-a-business/understanding-australian-business-regulation/australian-intellectual-property-laws#:~:text=Australia%20has%20a%20well%2Ddeveloped,are%20issued%20and%20protected%20natio Zhang, J, 2011, "Ethical Issues in Information Systems", International Conference of Information Technology, Computer Engineering and Management Sciences, pp. 321-323.

• Decision Support System: A computer-based system that helps an organisation to make optimal decisions
• Spreadsheet Key Terms o Scenarios: Variable types of outcomes from different decisions made based on costs and profits associated with supply, sales, and freight processes. o Customers table: Data table consisting raw information about customers who have purchased different products form the company o Charts: Graphical representations of different attributes such as sales, profits and projected profit margin outcomes. o Instruments table: Data sheet consisting of the information about the products sold to cutomers, prices and expenses involved for the company o Mark-up: Difference in price in which a product is sold by the retailer and the price in which it was purchased by seller