MATH1053 Quantitative Methods for Business

Quber – People moving from A to B to C

Quber has moved forward from the first successful report and you have just returned from your well-deserved break. They now want your expertise and financial insights to support them to strive forward and help further in giving back to the drivers while developing a strong customer base. It has encouraged Quber to expand their services to offer carpooling services and develop innovative ideas which they want you to analyse and in turn provide insights. They are excited about these potential upcoming developments; however, they want these numbers to back up their innovative ideas. They think you have the maths skills needed and you are the right person for the job – you are a business number crunching guru now J

Quber’s next plan involves your quantitative skills in determining the number of different types of Quber rides roaming around the city of Adelaide and the viability of this move with the objective to maximise revenue in the business. The plan is to introduce a carpooling service because customers pay less per ride by teaming up with each other while Quber maintains the revenue per ride. Quber see this as a popular ride choice and want to determine the impact on their revenue per month.

Another question is about building insights for their company and their drivers, in particular to understand which ride services are being requested across different event types. If Quber sample their data from customers and send recommendations to drivers about upcoming events, Quber can take advantage of the insights from customer behaviour and supply the demand needed at different events. In particular, this company has a bias towards Wine & Food events because they know people start to drink and the necessity of safe ride home is always on the cards J 

The next task you have been assigned is in preparation of a press release relating to the current customer ratings for each Quber ride service. They want to make sure their benchmarks they will release to the public are trustworthy and accurate. Therefore, they have provided you with a sample of customer data relating to the different Quber ride services. So, can a bad review hurt your rating?

Finally, Quber has improved their app to allow more data and insights to be delivered to both the drivers and customers. You have been told to join forces with the marketing team to analyse the latest fare data and an essential insight needed is to provide customers with the fare price, so they can make an informed decision. Quber wants you to develop a model which can be used by their customers to predict the fare price based on the average distance they are going to travel after they have selected their origin and destination.  

Once again you will need to prepare a report for Quber. They are entrusting you to produce a vibrant and substantially informative report which makes sense in every day non-technical language as well as business jargons. So, no mind-numbing mathematical calculations in the report body, otherwise you won’t get those Quber vouchers for you and your friends to and from their favourite Wine & Food events, sporting events or the next big festiva

The report needs to be as follows:

Introduction

Purpose

Provide a qualitative description of report contents/problems addressed in the report  and what insights the analysis will provide.

Write this introduction after you have a clear understanding of the content of your report.

Ensure you have explained what the report will contain.  Follow the length guideline (given on the previous page).

Report Body

Describe your linear programming solution in terms of the maximum revenue and the optimum number of rides per Quber ride service.  For the number of rides, if needed, explain whether you are rounding up or down and why.

Discuss the potential impact on the maximum revenue and the optimal number of each Quber ride services if there is an extra $100,000 in the drivers’ total cost being budgeted .

Discuss the potential impact on the maximum revenue and the optimal number of each Quber ride service if the price of QuberX rides are increased by $5 .

Also, discuss the potential impact on the maximum revenue and the optimal number of each Quber ride service if the price of QuberBlack rides are decreased by $6.50

Based on your analysis which of these four options would you recommend Quber to undertake?

Conclusion:

Summarise the main findings of your report.

Do not use direct quotes.  Indicate whether the report fulfilled the purpose as stated in the introduction.

Recommendation: Base these on your report body discussion. Do not introduce new information in the recommendation.  resent options for resolving the issue (purpose) presented in the introduction.