Introduction,

Goals,
Course
Overview
Business Analytics
 A quick story
•  Farmer and genie.
 Business Analytics -
Definition
•  “Business Analytics refers to the skills, technologies,
practices for continuous iterative exploration of past
business performance to gain insight and drive
business planning.”
o  - Wikipedia

•  “Business Analytics is the science and art of gaining

a detailed perspective into past and current data
of the organization to enable sustenance and
growth.”
 Course Objectives
•  High volumes of data get captured.
•  Customer demographics, usage, and transactions.
•  Storage and retrieval is cheaper now than before.
•  Usage is a question.
•  Product (or service) similarity among various
businesses.
•  Differentiation is necessary through the usage of
data.
•  “Data is the new Oil”.
•  The outcome of this course is to hone enough skills
to do basic analytics.
 Course Outcomes
•  CO-1: Understand the role of business analytics
within an organization. Also understand the role of a
data scientist in an organization. What does it take
to be a data scientist?
•  CO-2: Understand the basic tenets of data
processing and preparation of data for analysis.
•  CO-3: Understand, and Analyse data using,
statistical and data mining techniques and
understand relationships. Solving business problems
in an empirical manner and understanding the
culture of data-driven organisations. 
 Course Outcomes
•  CO-4: Manage customer lifecycle issues using
analytical and management tools. Learn how to
depict key outputs in visualizations.
•  CO-5: Use analytics in customer requirement
analysis, general management, marketing, finance,
operations and supply chain management. Analyse
and solve problems from different industries such as
manufacturing, service, retail, software, banking
and finance etc.
 Session Plan
•  Introduction, Goals, and Overview of Course (CO-1)
o  Review Syllabus and Expectations
o  Business Analytics – a background and perspective
o  Need to do BA
o  Data and Metrics
o  BI and BA – the connect

•  Basic and Advanced Excel – Prof. Niraj Rathi

•  Data Scientist, BA project (CO-1)
o  Competencies and character of a data scientist
o  What is a BA project?
o  Key questions to ask before starting a BA project
o  Practice session – interactive
o  Concept of Big Data
 Session Plan
•  Analytics Methodology (CO-2)
o  Problem definition
o  Data Dictionary
o  Revise the 3 key questions
o  Data exploration
o  Data pre-processing
•  Break: Expected to do a few things before next sessions.
•  Mapping the customer lifecycle (CO-4, CO-5)
o  The customer lifecycle
o  How Analytics plugs in to manage the customer lifecycle
o  Key problems solved at each stage (5 types of problems)
•  Linear Regression (CO-3, CO-5)
o  Ordinary Least Square (OLS)
o  Simple Linear Regression
o  Multiple Linear Regression
o  An example
 Session Plan
•  Logistic Regression (CO-3, CO-5)
o  S-Curve
o  Concept of Linear Regression
o  An example
•  Clustering (CO-3, CO-5)
o  What is clustering
o  Why to do clustering
o  The foundation of clustering
o  An example
•  Decision Making (CO-3, CO-5)
o  Decision Tree
o  How to run Decision Tree?
o  An example
o  Random Forest
o  How to run Random Forest?
o  An example
•  Break: Expected to do a few things before next sessions.
 Session Plan
•  Time Series (CO-3, CO-5)
o  Concept of Time Series
o  Why Time Series?
o  Elements of a Time Series
o  An example

•  Visualizations and Business Commentary (CO-4)

o  Concept of visualization
o  Some basic elements of visualization
o  An exercise

•  Project presentation (CO-5)

o  Project presentation
o  Feedback
o  Wrap-up
 Recommended Books
•  Statistics For Management by Richard I. Levin, David
S. Rubin, Sanjay Rastogi, Masood Husain Siddique –
Pearson.
•  Business Analytics: Application to Consumer
Marketing by Sandhya Kuruganti and Hindol Basu.
•  Data Science for Business: What you need to know
about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking by
Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett.
 Optional Books
•  Show me the numbers by Stephen Few.
•  The Grammar of Graphics by Leiland Wilkinson.
•  HR Analytics by Ramesh Sounderrajan and Kuldeep
Singh
 My expectations
•  Make notes of each session (as you wish to).
•  Work on the datasets given to you independently.
•  Practice R.
•  Practice Excel.
•  Get familiar with R and Excel.
•  Form groups for the project.
•  Each person does something in the project.
•  Each person presents his/her part in the
presentation.
 Assessment
•  Quiz (5%)
•  Mid-Term Exam (30%)
o  MCQ-based.

•  End-Term Exam (40%)

o  MCQ-based and written.

•  Project (25%)
o  Evaluation parameters are CONTENT, CONVICTION, and DEMONSTRATED
PARTICIPATION.
o  Please ensure everyone participates equally.
o  Those who talk will be construed as the ones who worked.
 BA – Background &
Perspective
•  “Business Analytics is the science and art of gaining
a detailed perspective into past and current data
of the organization to enable sustenance and
growth”.
•  Competition is heating up the marketplace.
•  Customers are giving enough data about
themselves.
•  Socio-economic trends and beliefs.
o  Selling an insurance product to a HNI.
o  Selling to products to people with contrarian views and beliefs.
•  2 types of organizations (going forward):
o  Those who manage their data
o  Those who don’t
 BA – Background &
Perspective
•  Improvement frameworks always existed.
o  On the Battleground.
o  In the Boardroom.
o  Principles are same; place and priority is different.

•  Kaizen, Six Sigma, Quality Models.

•  Competitive Intelligence.
•  Company Performance.
•  Native analytics have always been done (simple
aggregations and trends).
 Need to do BA
•  Ability to cope with Competition.
•  Ability to cope with substitute products or services.
•  Targeted-marketing.
•  Exciting offers.
•  Customer profiling.
•  Accurate forecasts.
•  Accurate promises to the external stakeholders.
•  Accurate reporting to management.
•  “If the rate of change in the marketplace exceeds that
of the organization, the end is in sight” – Jack Welch
•  “There is nothing more unequal than the equal
treatment to 2 unequals” – Kenneth Blanchard
 Data and Metrics
•  What is data?
•  What is a metric?
•  Does data lead to metrics?
•  Example of data and metrics.
•  So, is data the basis for management of a company
or metrics?
o  “What you cannot measure; you cannot manage”.

•  What is more complex to comprehend – data or

metrics?
Exercise: Data
Date Closing Price

01-Aug 990

02-Aug 985

03-Aug 995

04-Aug 1000

05-Aug 1010

06-Aug 1040

07-Aug 560

08-Aug 555

09-Aug 550

10-Aug 575
 Exercise: Data
Closing Price
1200

1040
1000 990 995 1000 1010
985

800

600
560 555 575
550

400

200

0
01-Aug 02-Aug 03-Aug 04-Aug 05-Aug 06-Aug 07-Aug 08-Aug 09-Aug 10-Aug
 Exercise: Data
Date Closing Price

01-Aug 990

02-Aug 985

03-Aug 995

04-Aug 1000

05-Aug 1010

06-Aug 1040 Corporate action this day when the

07-Aug 560 company approved and affected a
bonus share of 1:1!
08-Aug 555

09-Aug 550

10-Aug 575
 Exercise: Data
Date Closing Price Closing Price
600
01-Aug 495
580
575
02-Aug 492.5
560 560
555
03-Aug 497.5 550
540
04-Aug 500
520 520
05-Aug 505
505
500 497.5 500
495 492.5
06-Aug 520
480
07-Aug 560
460
08-Aug 555
440
09-Aug 550
420
01-Aug 02-Aug 03-Aug 04-Aug 05-Aug 06-Aug 07-Aug 08-Aug 09-Aug 10-Aug
10-Aug 575

Never, ever jump to a conclusion on seeing data.

 Exercise: Metrics
•  Company A spends Rs. 3,00,00,000/- on their
advertising expenses.
•  Company B spends Rs. 6,00,00,000/- on their
advertising expenses.
•  Can we conclude that B is spending more than A?
•  Now let us look at their revenues.
•  Company A has an annual turnover of Rs.
300,00,00,000/-.
•  Company B has an annual turnover of Rs.
1500,00,00,000/-.
•  Company A spends 1% of their annual turnover on
advertising whereas company B spends 0.4%.

Never, ever look at a metric in isolation.

 Exercise: Metrics
•  Compare with the revenue.
•  Compare with the business model.
o  Company A is launching a new product.
o  Company B is selling an existing product.

•  Compare with the industry type.

o  Company A is into construction.
o  Company B is into hatcheries.

•  Compare with the maturity of the organization.

o  Company A is a growing brand.
o  Company B is a well-known brand.
 BI and BA
•  Business Performance Reports.
•  Trends.
•  Business Intelligence.
•  Data Warehouse.
•  ETL (ELT) – Extract, Transform, Load.
•  Can we say that before the advent of BI and BA, there
was no empirical management?
•  Advent of cost-efficient computing.
•  Complex models and methods of Analysis.
•  Customers are price-sensitive.
•  Customer acquisition, management, retention/attrition.
•  Customer Pull-back.
•  Targeted (and specific) marketing.
 Business Insights
•  “An analyzed and well-qualified information
derived from enterprise data that is probably known
or yet-to-be-known to the stakeholders, but is of
value to one or more stakeholders”.
•  Analyzed and well-qualified
o  Using the right tools after setting the right purpose.
•  Known or yet-to-be-known
o  Existing knowledge or new perspective.
o  Acceptance higher when it fits into knowledge/thought process.
o  Acceptance may be difficult when radically different.
•  Is of value to stakeholders
o  Valuable when it strengthens or challenges their current thought process.
o  Status-quo?
 Business Insights
•  Time
o  Quarter-end, Year-end, end of season, new stock arrivals, new product
launch, etc.

•  Interest
o  Discipline, level, role, internal, external.

•  Prejudice
o  Existing bias, pre-conceived notions, past knowledge, gut feel.
 Way Ahead
•  Learn the relevant skills and techniques.
•  Develop the data-driven mindset.
•  Incremental improvements orientation.
•  Business orientation versus model orientation.
•  Opportunity to business transformation.
•  Multi-faceted profession.
•  People-friendly.
o  Assertive?
•  Confidentiality.
•  Leap of faith?
•  Moment of Truth.
Thank You