CST-42315 (Data Analysis and Management) Assignment For Week-11

1. The document discusses the challenges of bridging the gap between analytics creation and consumption. Common problems include unclear business problems, lack of stakeholder involvement, losing relevance over time, and unreasonable expectations of analytics solutions. 2. It proposes focusing on process, technology, and people to better embed analytics in decision making. Proper communication and alignment between analytics teams and end users is important. 3. A variety of data sources feed into analytics, including social media data, machine data from sensors, transactional data, crowdsourced data, and search logs. Each provides insights but also challenges in handling high volumes and varieties of unstructured data.

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CST-42315 (Data Analysis and Management) Assignment For Week-11

Uploaded by

May Sabal Myo

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CST-42315 (Data Analysis and Management)

Assignment for Week-11

(1) How to convert thought into action and bridge the gap between analytics creation and
consumption?

The Analytics Creation-Consumption Chasm

Analytics is still evolving. Requirements are ambiguous, talent is scarce and managerial bandwidth that
understands analytics is at a premium. So what are some typical symptoms of an analytics investment in
need of saving or at the very least, a new roadmap? The trouble signs are numerous:

1. The business problem is not clear: In a rush to jump on the analytics bandwagon, business
practitioners often forget that the business problem needs to be well-defined for the analytics
solution to be relevant to the problem at hand.

2. Appropriate stakeholder(s) are not involved: If a firm is using analytics to design a promotion
campaign for a certain product, the demand planning teams need to know what’s changing to get
the product on the shelves. Like any project team, the right stakeholders need to be involved at the
right time. This is especially true when multiple functional groups are involved in a specific business
problem.

3. Mystery math: With the explosion in data and the availability of technologies that bring applied
math to the analytics workbench, analytics practitioners begin to regard the technical analysis as an
end in itself. Mathematical techniques are tools necessary to solve the business problem at hand.

4. The right expectations are not set: Sophisticated mathematical techniques are often expected to
act as magic wands, solving any and every problem at hand. More often than not, this creates
unreasonable expectations. As the key sponsor of a failed forecasting project famously said, “Why
should there be any error in the forecast if you have used sophisticated mathematical techniques?”
This was clearly a case of a mismatch in expectations – it was never communicated to the
executive that no mathematical technique, however sophisticated, could accurately predict the
future.

5. Lack of continuity: As basic a management principle as it may sound, the best analytics ideas
tend to lose advantage and diminish in value, due to a variety of reasons ranging from internal
organization changes to getting lost in the shuffle of organizational initiatives.

6. Losing relevance: Analytics needs to be extremely agile to keep up with changing business
priorities. Quite often, the quest for the perfect mathematical technique delays the solution to an
extent that it is rendered irrelevant. For example, a launch pricing analysis is irrelevant after the
product launch has already happened.

Bridging the chasm

It is becoming increasingly apparent that investing in the creation of analytics alone does not guarantee
effective consumption of analytics by businesses.

1. Process: For analytics to be effectively embedded in decision-making, “nudges” need to be

introduced across every stage in the decision-making process.
2. Technology: Technology is radically changing the way data is produced, processed, analyzed
and consumed. On one hand, technology helps evolve new and more effective data sources. On
the other hand, as more and more data gets captured, technology steps in to help process this
data quickly, efficiently and visualize it to drive informed decisions. Now, more than any other time
in the short history of analytics, technology is poised to play a pivotal role in ensuring that analytics
gets better consumed.
3. People: In the end, it all comes down to people. The best of intentions can go awry if the goals of
the analytics professionals and the end business consumers are not aligned. This is even more
critical given the highly iterative nature of analytics, which demands that generators and
consumers work closely on a continuous basis.

(2) List and explain the variety of data sources that feed into the analytics process.

1. Social data comes from the Likes, Tweets & Retweets, Comments, Video Uploads, and general
media that are uploaded and shared via the world’s favorite social media platforms. This kind of
data provides invaluable insights into consumer behavior and sentiment and can be enormously
influential in marketing analytics. The public web is another good source of social data, and tools
like Google Trends can be used to good effect to increase the volume of big data.

2. Machine data is defined as information which is generated by industrial equipment, sensors that
are installed in machinery, and even web logs which track user behavior. This type of data is
expected to grow exponentially as the internet of things grows ever more pervasive and expands
around the world. Sensors such as medical devices, smart meters, road cameras, satellites, games
and the rapidly growing IOT will deliver high velocity, value, volume and variety of data in the very
near future.

3. Transactional data is generated from all the daily transactions that take place both online and
offline. Invoices, payment orders, storage records, delivery receipts – all are characterized as
transactional data yet data alone is almost meaningless, and most organizations struggle to make
sense of the data that they are generating and how it can be put to good use.

4. Crowdsourced data collection is when researchers turn to internet communities to answer

research, survey or feedback questions. Crowdsourced data collection is gaining popularity
because it is convenient, inexpensive and relatively quick.

5. Search data. Quora gets plenty of search requests. StackOverflow is a good source of search data
within Information Technology. There are intranet searches within Confluence and SharePoint. If
those search logs are analyzed properly, then it is clear about potential usefulness and business
application.