Preparing Various Business Software - Essay Example

SAP manufactures:
- SAP ERP Financial Solution,
- SAP.

Intuit Company prepares:
- Quickbooks,
- Quicken,
- TurboTax.

All these software are used by organizations that have a huge database and it is not easy to manage it without appropriate software, for instance, multinational companies, banking systems, airport terminals, etc. Apart from these industries, all these software are marketed also marketed to renowned websites like Finance.yahoo.com, Reuters, and Bloomberg.

Generally Wall Street views all the firms with the ability to provide good returns. In the given 120 trading activities, only Microsoft was the only company that could not end up with positive results, apart from that, the rest of the companies reported positive returns in the given time frame.

One basis of the results computed on the Microsoft Excel sheet along with the graphs, the analysis of 120 trading days’ activity reflects that SAP performed remarkably well earning a gain of around $90,000, whereas Microsoft turned out to be the worst among all five participants reporting a net loss of around $55,000. The other three software designing firms produced mediocre results, presenting net gains of $15,000, $9,000, and £12,000 by Oracle, Intuit, and Sage respectively.

Yahoo! Finance was used as the data source from the stock price data that was retrieved. The reason for choosing this financial database is the element of ease and convenience that Yahoo! Finance provides to its users. The other important aspect of choosing Yahoo! Finance was the ability to convert all the data into excel sheets which provide users the ultimate ease of working on that data.

Since the SAP performed the best among all five participants and Microsoft performed the worst, therefore whatever is the amount of investment can be made equally on these five stocks, the end output will be the same in which SAP would be leading ahead from the rest of the participants. In scenarios 1, 3, and 4 SAP is involved, and it can be observed that SAP is performing much better. The opposite view goes for Microsoft as Microsoft is included only in Scenario 1 due to its sluggish performance in the reported 120 trading days. Microsoft even could not qualify to be part of the other 3 scenarios.

If every scenario is discussed on an individual basis it can be observed that SAP is the top leader and Microsoft is the top loser in scenario 1 in which all five companies were given an equal share of $500,000 to be invested in. Scenario 2 comprised of the two stocks from the largest cap market companies in which SAP and Oracles were included. Here SAP remained well above Oracle. Scenario 3 comprises of two best-performing companies from medium-sized markets in which Intuit and Sage were included. Here Sage performed marginally well from Intuit. The last scenario contains two stocks, each selected as the best performing from large and medium-sized markets. SAP and Sage are the constituents of this scenario and clearly, SAP beat Sage by a huge amount of $155,000.

Based on the results obtained under scenario 1, the fifth-best possible scenario that can be the most worthwhile among all five companies in the scenario in which SAP and Oracle are included. This scenario would result in the highest earnings as compared to all other scenarios that can be developed.

Microsoft Excel provided immense help in the analysis of these four scenarios. The application of plotting graphs with different styles is undoubtedly proved to be a key explaining factor in analyzing the scenarios with a first outlook. Besides these graphical presentations, excel applications in relating to its formulae also assisted in the analysis. Overall, Excel proved its capability in performing this analysis ensuring a well-deigned and understandable approach to the users.