Introduction

This book is based on my experiences teaching Microsoft Office applications to over 2000 students at San Jose State University. When I started teaching, I was not satisfied with the textbooks that were available to me. They were too expensive for a short course. They contained materials that were either too advanced or too basic for the typical student. The content didn’t allow for much interaction between the instructor and the student, consisting mainly of self-paced activities unrelated to practical business-related tasks. And they were not useful as reference material; the students could not find answers to their “How do I do?” questions. I thought I could do better.

The result is this text book. It includes dozens of practical tips to greatly decrease the time spent performing everyday tasks. It teaches how to use graphics to create beautiful documents, charts, and presentations. It also serves as a reference guide to quickly find how to perform everyday tasks in Word and Internet Explorer.

The book was created to match the needs of a typical college student, with its content based on my own experiences, both as a student and as an instructor, and on the responses to several hundred student surveys. Because my students come from many different countries, cultures, and backgrounds, I’ve used clear and simple words to make the ideas easily accessible. Each chapter in the textbook covers a set of related skills within a single application.

Typically, students already know how to operate a computer and perform basic tasks in Word. They have grown up with Internet Explorer. Therefore, chapters discussing these applications contain no explanatory text, focusing instead on shortcuts and graphics, and on exploring the use of some less well-known features. These chapters are mainly useful as reference guides.

By contrast, most students are far less familiar with other Office applications. The Excel portion of the book starts with chapters covering the basics. Later chapters gradually get more complex. Shortcuts are included in these chapters too, but the main focus is on clear explanations of fundamentals, backed up by multiple practice assignments.

Two graphic mediums, PowerPoint and Excel Charts, have their own chapters. In business it is not enough to have a good idea. You also need to sell your idea by presenting it in a professional and creative manner. You’ll learn how to make presentations that stand out from the crowd, drawing attention that could help to boost your career.

In order to keep prices down, color has not been used in the printing of this book. Where the use of color has been necessary to illustrate a design element, links have been provided to a textbook website. Updates, graphics files, and Excel files that accompany the text are also posted here: www.cob.sjsu.edu/Bus91L/TextBook.

Several exercises in the book are based on a company called “Java Juice”, which does not exist.

Java Juice *

Basic Company Information

Java Juice is a new company, formed in April 2005. The company is a privately owned S1 corporation. Its CEO is Mike Splane, an experienced controller and a business professor at San Jose State University. The purpose of the company is to operate one or more restaurants that combine the sale of light meals, coffee, and juice drinks. The first store was opened in San Jose, California. The targeted customers for the business are retirees, office workers, college students and couples. The store is decorated using a movie marquee theme.

Location

The first Java Juice store opened in September 2005. The store is located at 231 North Fourth St. in San Jose, California. This location is approximately one quarter mile from the San Jose State University campus, and 4-5 blocks from the main entertainment district in downtown San Jose. Parking is available in two public parking lots and one parking garage located within a four block radius. On-street metered parking is also available.

Customer Demographics

A foot traffic study showed an average of 148 pedestrians per hour pass by this location in the daytime. In the evenings, this number increases to 227 pedestrians per hour. The extra evening foot-traffic is generated by several theaters and restaurants located within a five-block radius. The study also looked at the proportion of pedestrians who enter other restaurants in the area, and found a capture rate of 23%. Based on this study, we estimated a capture rate of 34 customers per hour during daytime hours, and 52 customers per hour in the evening. The average customer was expected to spend between 30 and 45 minutes in the restaurant. Our experience has closely matched these projections.

Additional Sources of Revenue

Take-out orders are a significant percentage of early morning sales. The store began offering a delivery service in March 2006, covering six counties in the San Francisco Bay region. Revenue has also been generated from souvenir sales.

Lease Details

The location is on the ground floor of a two-story building. The total floor space of the restaurant is 2000 square feet. Of this footage, only 1200 square feet is available for customer seating. The seating area contains twelve tables and forty-eight chairs. The remainder is used for restrooms, storage, and food preparation. Monthly rent to lease the building is $4.30 per square foot, or $8,600 per month. Java Juice has a three-year lease on the location, with an option to renew for an additional two years at the end of year two. The lease allows Java Juice to make alterations to the property at Java Juice’s expense, subject to approval from the property owners, SKM Investments Inc. Such approval is not to be arbitrarily withheld without just cause.

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