Business Analytics and the Data Driven Organisation

Business Analytics and the Data Driven Organisation

INFS 5117

2017

Assignment 1

(Internal)

Technology Review for Improving

Predictive Analysis of Market Trends

[Your Name]

[Date]

Contents

Executive Summary        3

How organisations predict market trends        3

About [your chosen technology]        3

Benefits of Using [your chosen technology] to Improve Predictive Analysis of Market Trends (Large Organisations)        3

Benefits of Using [your chosen technology] to Improve Predictive Analysis of Market Trends (Small Organisations)        3

References        4

Executive Summary

Business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) and the related field of big data analytics have become increasingly important in both the academic and the business communities over the past two decades. Industry studies have highlighted this significant development. For example, based on a survey of over 4,000 information technology (IT) professionals from 93 countries and 25 industries, the IBM Tech Trends Report (2011) identified business analytics as one of the four major technology trends in the 2010s. In a survey of the state of business analytics by Bloomberg Businessweek (2011), 97 percent of companies with revenues exceeding $100 million were found to use some form of business analytics. A report by the McKinsey Global Institute (Manyika et al. 2011) predicted that by 2018, the United States alone will face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills, as well as a shortfall of 1.5 million data-savvy managers with the know-how to analyze big data to make effective decisions.

The opportunities associated with data and analysis in different organizations have helped generate significant interest in BI&A, which is often referred to as the techniques, technologies, systems, practices, methodologies, and applications that analyze critical business data to help an enterprise better understand its business and market and make timely business decisions. In addition to the underlying data processing and analytical technologies, BI&A includes business-centric practices and methodologies that can be applied to various high-impact applications such as e-commerce, market intelligence, e-government, healthcare, and security

How organisations predict market trends

Business’s market trends predicting is essential for the survival for companies of all sizes because trend forecasting  is going to analyse the prior data such as  review the past sales, market growth or demand of customers to determine the possible market trends and using those information to predict what might happen in  future market . For example, many companies are able to determine potential future sales growth, improve the management of customers relationship and marketing activities through analyse the data and making a predict market trends.  Generally, there are two strategies(descriptive analytics and predictive analytics) that company have to use so as to making the prediction.

Descriptive analytics is a common and well-understood type of analytics, which aims to describe what happened in the past and current  business performance  through analysing the past data(https://books.google.com.au/books?id=-msNDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=what+type+of+data+can+predict+business++trends+and+opportunities&source=bl&ots=5iZHQegMNo&sig=cVsQksUtaYAD17Ey8G3rko1eDYQ&hl=zh-CN&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwji4oC_y7nTAhXFWLwKHVqYC4Y4ChDoAQhDMAQ#v=onepage&q=what%20type%20of%20data%20can%20predict%20business%20%20trends%20and%20opportunities&f=false). This techniques is going to classify , consolidate and characterize data to translate it into useful information, reports or meaningful charts in order to understanding and analysing business performance. For example, when reviewing the sales, the company should monitor the data that might influence the business such as the performance of each sales person, sale volume and how priority products with the best margins and the best payment terms are selling. In addition, company is able to measuring their financial trends by analysing their sales, cost of goods, overheads, cash flow and net profit to determine how their business performance are.  All in all, company have to base on the different key performance indicators collected from business internal ( such as calls, revenue, jobs marketing and cost) to track and review past and current business performance. In addition, a good descriptive analytics relates to visualizing and exploring data, descriptive statistical measure and statistical inference.

Predictive analytics is use in forecasting  the future through detecting patterns, analysing historical data or relationships in these data so as to find out the relationships forward in time by extrapolating(https://books.google.com.au/books?id=-msNDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=what+type+of+data+can+predict+business++trends+and+opportunities&source=bl&ots=5iZHQegMNo&sig=cVsQksUtaYAD17Ey8G3rko1eDYQ&hl=zh-CN&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwji4oC_y7nTAhXFWLwKHVqYC4Y4ChDoAQhDMAQ#v=onepage&q=what%20type%20of%20data%20can%20predict%20business%20%20trends%20and%20opportunities&f=false). This tool is very popular in predicting the consumer behaviour by determining the  past buying history and demographic variables such as incomes, age and education. For example, when designing an advertising campaign, company is able to predict the response of different customers segments by collecting customers feedback and other external information. What is more,  when designing the next season’s demand for new product , company might collect the sale volume, competitive products and people’s income level to predict the new market size. All in all, predictive not only use historical data but also use  external variable data such as weather, stock prices, consumer confidence, material prices for your products, shipping costs, or anything else.( http://www.askingsmarterquestions.com/goal-use-big-data-to-predict-business-trends/)

About master data management

The definition of master data management is a technology which combine business and IT together in order to make sure companies’ official master data assets be uniform, accurate,  consistent and accountable(hype_cycle_for_information_infrastructure_304182). Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describes the core entities of the enterprise including customers, citizens, suppliers, prospects, sites and chart of accounts.  In other words,  the master data is information approved by its own company. Since some time organizations might have various information sources but it could duplicate similar data with little agreement on standard definitions. Master data is type of data that are able to solve this complex situation because master data is an important class of data that manage and govern data as a single source of reference(http://simplicable.com/new/master-data).  For example, product data that describe  product information and specifications and customer data. What is more, the most common type of master data might be customer records  because in a company there are many cases relate to customers data such as marketing, sales and operations but those type of data all have different view of customer data  structure. Applying master data in this case might  increase efficiency of data using because customer data is central to a large number of processes in marketing, sales and operations.

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