Lecture : Business Analytics Primer

By:
Dr. Prithvi Bhattacharya
Lecture Outline

1.1 Introduction
1.2 Basics of Business Analytics
1.3 Life Cycle of Business Analytics
Lecture Outline

1.1 Introduction
1.2 Basics of Business Analytics
1.3 Life Cycle of Business Analytics
 Instructor Details

Lecturer/Coordinator: Dr. Prithvi Bhattacharya

Discipline Leader- Management Sciences

O ffice: UOWD Building Level 4 Room 4.28

E mail: prithvibhattacharya@uowdubai.ac.ae
prithvi@uow.edu.au

Weekly C o n s u l t a t i o n : Thursdays from 10AM-12Noon (online)

https://uow.webex.com/meet/prithvi
 About Me

• Bachelors in Commerce (Honours), India

• Masters in Information Technology, Monash University
• Education: Australia
• PhD in Management of Information Technology, University of
Melbourne Australia
• Professional Certification in Data Science and Analytics,
MIT USA
• SAP Consultant , Accenture Australia
• Previous • Business Analyst, University of Melbourne Australia
work: • Academic Faculty, HCT, UAE

• Towards a Cross- Sectional Framework for Optimal Modelling for

• Current Research Business Problems
• Aligning enterprise systems capabilities with business strategy using
enterprise architecture
 If you’ve got a question…

MANDATORY:
• Check Moodle and Email regularly for latest information

• Please see me during consultation hours via prior email

• If you prefer to email, please use your UOW email ONLY

• I’ll try my best to get back to you within 24h on a
weekday
• If required, we can meet online
Lecture Outline

1.1 Introduction
1.2 Basics of Business Analytics
1.3 Life Cycle of Business Analytics
Why Analytics ?
 Why Analytics ?

Gartner, the world-leading market research firm

reported from a survey of CEOs and senior executives,
reported :

• ‘Digital Capabilities’ has been the top

priority area of investment in 2021 !

• This is essentially translates to “using

technology for business”

https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/ceos-see-growth-in-2021-marked-by-3-shifts
 Why Analytics ?
The CIO magazine, from a survey of CIOs and senior executives, reported :

• ‘Big Data and Analytics’ was the top technology to ‘transform’ organizations in 2021 !

https://www.cio.com/article/189346/exclusive-survey-cios-outline-tech-priorities-for-2021-22.html
 Analytics Today
• In 2021, the analytics platforms market size was estimated at USD 96.3 billion and
• By 2030, it is expected to hit around USD 378.7 billion (almost 4 times !)
 Analytics, or Business Analytics: Defined
Business analytics is comprised of solutions used to build analysis models and simulations to create
scenarios, understand realities and predict future states and recommend remedial measures to achieve the
goals
 Career Opportunities for Business Analytics
Gartner, the world-leading market research firm, reported from a survey of CEOs and senior executives :

• A key element is “Skills & Literacy Shortfall”

• Means
• More Jobs !
• Higher Salaries !

https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/12-data-and-analytics-trends-to-keep-on-your-radar
 Career Opportunities for Business Analytics

Banking

Analytics is needed by every business function in every industry in every

sector in every country !
Career Opportunities for Business Analytics

https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/research-and-surveys/Pages/data-analysis-skills.aspx
 Career Opportunities for Business Analytics

• Data Scientist
• Business Analyst
• Management Consultant
• Operations Research Manager
• Market Research Analyst
• Digital Marketing Manager
• Fintech Managers
• Chief Information Officer (CIO) !
• Others…
https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/research-and-surveys/Pages/data-analysis-skills.aspx
Jobs In Business Analytics
 Salaries !
Burtch-Works, the leading executive recruitment firm, in their 2022 report reveal
• an explosive increase in early career professionals
• increased demand for professionals with 5-10 years' experience.

https://www.burtchworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Burtch-Works-Study-DS_Analytics-2021.pdf
 Business
Management Know-
How
Finance, Marketing, HR etc.
Business Analytics: Defined

Financial Markets, Consumer

Markets, Labour Markets,
Policy Making
Business Analytics
 A. I. ? But Why?
Will AI take our jobs away ?
Will AI change the future of jobs?
What is this “data-driven” business ?
Do I need AI to manage organizations ? Do top companies really use AI now ?

I study business.What do I care about AI ? How “big” is big data ?

Can ChatGPT answer everything?

Does Finance need AI ?
Does Marketing need AI ?
Does HR need AI ?
Is Data Science a “science” ?
Can AI be dangerous for humans?
Is AI not all about computers ?
Business Analytics Pillar 1A:
Artificial Intelligence
 Business Analytics Pillar 1A:
Artificial Intelligence

Predictive AI :
• studies historical data, identifies trends and makes predictions about the future that can better inform
business decisions.

Decision /
Existing Data Predictive AI
Recommendation

Generative AI:
• is all about creating content. It combines different computing algorithms (such as deep learning) to
generate NEW content that is based on the patterns it observes in other content.

Existing Data Generative AI New Content

 Business Analytics Pillar 1B:
Data Science
• Data Science is the application of tools, processes, and techniques towards sourcing,
combining, cleaning, preparing, transforming and examining large datasets.

• Data Analysis/ Data Analytics is the examination of large data sets to identify trends,
develop charts, and create visual presentations to help businesses make more strategic
decisions.

• Data Mining is the process of sorting through large data sets to identify trends or
‘typicality’ or and relationships in data
Business Analytics Pillar 2 :
Big Data
Business Analytics Pillar 3:
Business Know-How

Micro (Organizational) View

Macro View
 What about …..?
• Business Intelligence
• It is the process of collecting, storing and analysing data from business
operations.
• It does not usually predict the future
• Data Analytics
• Data Engineering

“What's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other

name would smell as sweet”
- William Shakespeare
 Business Analytics In Action
• Customer Churn Analysis
• Analyze huge volumes of historical, demographic and sales data to predict when a customer relationship is
beginning to turn sour and to find ways to fix it .

• Dynamic Product Pricing

• understand how certain dynamics, from time of day to weather to the seasons, impact demand for goods and
services to dynamically set price for their goods/services

• Intelligent Fraud Detection

• understand an individual customer's typical behavior, such as when and where the customer uses a credit card and
determine a transaction to be genuine or fraudulent

• Pre-emptive Plant Maintenance

• monitor equipment and predict, in advance, when maintenance and repairs will be needed, thereby reducing
unexpected breakdowns.
 Business Analytics In Action
• Auto Stock Replenishment
• equip robots with computer vision and machine learning to scan shelves to determine what items are low or out of
stock or misplaced

• Product Recommendations
• understand customer's past purchase history, their demographic profiles and profiles of similar customers to
determine what products and services to recommend

• Virtual assistants
• implement a platform for machines to converse with customers and then take actions based on the requests or
requirements voiced by them

• Smart Financial Advising and Algorithmic Trading

• enable the customers to keep track of their expenses, determine the spending trends, provide recommendations on
monetizing savings through automated trading
 Analytics For Finance: Use Cases
According to Forbes, 54% of financial service organizations with 5,000+ employees are using artificial intelligence.

• Risk assessment: Using AI to determine whether someone is eligible for a loan

• Fraud detection, management and prevention: AI systems analyze a person’s buying behavior and trigger an alert
if something seems out of the ordinary or contradicts the ordinary

• Financial advisory services: AI algorithms can analyze a person’s portfolio (or the latest trends or most types of
relevant financial information) so that you can receive the information

• Trading: AI can use algorithms for automated trading of stocks or cryptocurrencies

• Personalized Banking and All-Time Availability: Using AI, customers can check their balance, schedule
payments, look up account activity, ask questions with a virtual assistant and receive personalized banking advice
whenever it’s most convenient, wherever they are.

• Making smart underwriting decisions: AI solutions are helping banks and lenders “make smarter underwriting
decisions” when it comes to the approval process for loans and credit cards

https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/research-and-surveys/Pages/data-analysis-skills.aspx
Analytics For Marketing: Use Cases
 Different Types of Business Analytics

Categorised into 3 broad types

◦Descriptive Analytics
◦Predictive Analytics
◦Prescriptive Analytics

◦There is also diagnostic but that’s apart of

descriptive mostly
Different Types of Business Analytics
 Descriptive Analytics
What happened and why

Type Explanation

Central Tendency Central tendency represents the center point or typical value of a dataset.
EG: what are the average sales per quarter?

Dispersion Dispersion (also called variability, scatter, or spread) is the extent to which a distribution is stretched or
squeezed.
EG: How much do the sales vary ?

Shape and Form Shape and form of the data provide general features of the data, often very useful for data exploration and
diagnostics

Association Association is any relationship between two measured quantities that renders them statistically dependent
EG: Do sales depend on product prices?

Type
Causal modeling
Value estimation
Classification
Clustering
Co‐occurrence Grouping
Similarity Matching
Network Link Prediction
Change Point Detection
Forecasting Time Series
Value estimation and forecasting time series are different because forecasting time series using past data of one time period where as value estimation you have data about multiple things
As a business
anlayst you
Predictive Analytics must figure
out this
Explanation
Causal modeling attempts to help us understand what events or actions actually influence others.
E.g.: “Will a particular drug help decrease blood pressure level in patients”.
Value estimation attempts to estimate or predict, for each individual, the numerical value of some variable for that individual
E.g.: “How much will a given customer use the service?”
Classification attempt to predict, for each individual in a population, which of a (small) set of classes this individual belongs to
E.g.: “Among all the customers, which are likely to respond to a given offer?” Which customer will buy and which one will not
Clustering attempts to group individuals in a population together by their similarity, but not driven by any specific purpose
E.g.: “Do our customers form natural groups or segments?” - In clustering you don’t know the groups
Co‐occurrence Grouping (also known as frequent item‐set mining, association rule discovery, and market‐basket analysis)
attempts to find associations between entities based on transactions involving them.
E.g.: What items are purchased together?
Similarity Matching attempts to identify similar individuals based on data known about them; it can be used directly to find similar
entities
E.g.: “Find people who are similar to you in terms of the products they have liked or have purchased”.
Network Link Prediction attempts to predict connections between data items, usually by suggesting that a link should exist, and
possibly also estimating
the strength of the link.
E.g.: “Since you and Karen share 10 friends, maybe you’d like to be Karen’s friend?”
Change Detection in a time series data attempts to detect changes quickly that are significant for either action to be taken or as a
result of an action taken
E.g.: “Has there been an increase in global temperature over a period of time to alarm us about global warming?”
Forecasting Time Series involves taking models fit on historical data and using them to predict future observations
E.g. “What will be the temperatures for the next few days in a city?”
 Prescriptive Analytics –solution

Type Explanation
Simulation Simulation attempts to show the eventual real effects of alternative conditions and courses of action when the real system
cannot be engaged.
E.g.: “How can we minimize the response time of serving customers in a call centre ? ”.
Optimization
Optimization attempts to derive optimal solutions based on several objectives. The objective most often considered is
the operational cost to be
minimized.

E.g.: “How can we give the best balanced diet to workers at the minimum cost?”

Logic‐based Logic‐based prescriptions involve incorporating the expert knowledge into the prescriptive analytics models and is based on
prescription rules represented by
mathematical functions.

E.g.: “How can we do prescriptive maintenance planning for all our machines in our factory ?”
 Different Types of Data

Categorized into 3 broad types

◦Structured Data
◦Semi-Structured Data
◦Un-Structured Data
 Different Types of Data

Structured Data – softwares such as oracle, mysql will help u do this

• Data that fits neatly within fixed rows and columns in relational databases and spreadsheets.
• Examples of structured data include names, dates, addresses, credit card numbers, stock
information, geolocation, and more.
 Different Types of Data

Semi-Structured Data
• Data not in rows and columns but in some other sort of structure
• Based on Industry standards
• Examples : data as XML, JSON , NOSQL formats

XML json
 Different Types of Data

Un-Structured Data
• Unstructured data is essentially everything else.
• It may be textual or non-textual, and human- or machine-generated.
• It can be of any form like text, image audio, video etc..
• Examples : data from text files, emails, websites, twitter feeds, Facebook and Instagram
posts, movie clips, surveillance camera footage, sensors…
Analytics Terminology
 Analytics Terminology

• Each column/field in a dataset is called a variable

• Categorical vs numerical
• Each row/record in a dataset is a case/observation/datapoint:
• Customer, tax return, applicant, day, application,… Predictors Response
• Can have an outcome/ response variable
A jungle of Software for Business Analytics
For class we using SAS python
and SQL
But Can’t ChatGPT do Analytics ?
 Is Business Knowledge Needed Anymore ?

• Right Technology in Wrong Context:

• Useless at Best, Harmful at Worst!

• In this era of digital revolution, business education has become more important than ever !

• A fundamental understanding of how business operates within its core functions namely
• accounting & finance,
• marketing
• supply chain mgt
• human resource

• This is absolutely crucial to strategically use this cutting-edge technology to create

business value.
Are We Humans Needed Anymore ?
Are We Humans Needed Anymore ?

A Healthcare algorithm in USA failed to flag African patients as at risk !!!

Zillow wrote down millions of dollars, slashed workforce due to algorithmic

home-buying disaster !!!

A Dataset trained Microsoft chatbot to spew racist tweets !!!

Amazon AI-enabled recruitment tool only recommended men for jobs !!!

Target analytics violated privacy !!!

Idea Exchange
Describe a scenario from your work/life in which it
would be useful to use business analytics .
What questions would you aim to answer using
analytics?

Copyright © SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.

Lecture Outline

1.1 Introduction
1.2 Basics of Business Analytics
1.3 Life Cycle of Business Analytics
 Life Cycle of Business Analytics

Building of the AI Time to evaluate

What’s the issue Collect the data Clean it technique, models the results and Deployment
accuracy needs to see if you are
happy with the
be around 80%
model
 Life Cycle of Business Analytics

1. Business Understanding: stating your goal and defining your question(s),

2. Data Understanding : exploring the data, determining if the data that you have is appropriate

3. Data preparation : data cleansing and wrangling

4. Modeling: building models to summarize data, quantify the relationships, make predictions

and/or prescribe solutions.

5. Evaluation: Evaluating the model to see its fit

6. Deployment: Deploying the solution and prepare report for communicating the results to the

appropriate audience
 Video Tutorials on SAS Viya

Basics of SAS Viya

https://video.sas.com/detail/videos/sas-visual-analytics_/video/4420977648001/overview-of-sas-vi
sual-analytics?autoStart=true&page=1

Getting Started with SAS Viya

https://video.sas.com/detail/videos/on-sas-viya/video/6106569850001/accessing-content-in-sas-d
rive?autoStart=true

https://video.sas.com/detail/videos/on-sas-viya/video/6106571457001/organizing-and-sharing-con
tent-in-sas-drive?autoStart=true
Questions?

Copyright © SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.