Course

Business Support Systems with Excel

Faculty
Commerce & Business Administration
Department
Computing Studies & Information Systems
Course code
CSIS 3190
Credits
3.00
Semester length
15 Weeks
Max class size
35
Method(s) of instruction
Lecture
Lab
Typically offered
To be determined

Overview

Course description
In this course, students will build on their knowledge to apply advanced Excel features to create unique business support systems (BSS). Topics include Advanced Functions (Business, Statistics, Logical), Macro's, Power Pivot Tables, User Defined Functions (UDF), What-If Analysis tools and Power BI Dashboards. This is a case-based course where students will be presented with real world capstone business problems and create multifaceted business systems using Excel and the agile system development methodology.
Course content

During our work together in this course, students will:

  • Review the fundamental terms, concepts and theories associated with BSS, computerized decision aids, expert systems, group support systems and executive information systems.
  • Examine business cases that support business decisions, and various planning , analysis and control tasks.
  • Develop the systems using agile planning, analysis, design and implementation of a computerized BSS.
  • Design Power BI interfaces and create custom dashboards.
  • Use what-If analysis tools
  • Use Power Pivot - Recognize that most business support systems are designed to support rather than replace decision makers.
  • Create documenting and training material to support a customized BSS.
Learning activities

Lecture and Lab

Means of assessment
Business Case Assignments     10%-15%  
quizzes  20%-30%  
Midterm 30%-40%  
Final Exam*  30% - 40%  

* Practical hands-on computer exam

In order to pass the course, students must, in addition to receiving an overall course grade of 50%, also achieve a grade of at least 50% on the combined weighted examination components (including quizzes, tests, exams).

Students may conduct research as part of their coursework in this class. Instructors for the course are responsible for ensuring that student research projects comply with College policies on ethical conduct for research involving humans, which can require obtaining Informed Consent from participants and getting the approval of the Douglas College Research Ethics Board prior to conducting the research.

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, the successful student should be able to:

  • Evaluate the differences between a variety of business support systems.
  • Analyze a business problem and create a business support system using Excel.
  • Utilize power pivot tables to rapidly analyze large data sets.
  • Utilize One and Two variables
  • Utilize Scenario Manager
  • Utilize Goal Seek
  • Utilize Solver
  • Utilize Power Pivot
  • Utilize Power BI
  • Present a custom designed business support system (BSS) to management.
  • Demonstrate the knowledge necessary to apply these tools in practical examples.
Textbook materials



• Beginning Power BI: A Practical Guide to Self-Service Data Analytics with Excel 2016 and Power BI

OR as approved by the dept

Requisites

Prerequisites

min grade C in CSIS 1190 OR currently active in the 

PDD Data Analytics

PBD Computer Information System Data Analytics

Corequisites

No corequisite courses.

Equivalencies

Courses listed here are equivalent to this course and cannot be taken for further credit:

  • No equivalency courses

Course Guidelines

Course Guidelines for previous years are viewable by selecting the version desired. If you took this course and do not see a listing for the starting semester / year of the course, consider the previous version as the applicable version.

(Current)

Course Transfers

These are for current course guidelines only. For a full list of archived courses please see https://www.bctransferguide.ca

Institution Transfer details for CSIS 3190
Athabasca University (AU) AU CMIS 2XX (3)
College of the Rockies (COTR) COTR COMP 2XX (3)
Coquitlam College (COQU) No credit
Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) KPU SOBU 1XXX (3)
Okanagan College (OC) OC COSC 115 (1)
Simon Fraser University (SFU) SFU BUS 1XX (3)
University Canada West (UCW) UCW CMPT 2XX (3)
University of British Columbia - Okanagan (UBCO) UBCO COSC_O 1st (3)
University of Northern BC (UNBC) No credit
University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) UFV BUS 160 (3) or UFV CIS 110 (3)
University of Victoria (UVIC) No credit

Course Offerings

Winter 2025