Oklahoma Travel Management Program: Performing Differential Analysis Excel or with Pandas

This case is designed for students to work with real data to perform differential analysis. Using data from the state of Oklahoma, students are tasked with determining whether the state should create a centralized travel management program. The costs of establishing and operating a centralized department must be weighed against potential savings. Students manually categorize Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) into one of six travel expense categories and then merge these categories back into the larger dataset for use in the differential analysis. The case can be completed using either Excel or Python.