Chapter 12 Enhancing Decision Making 544 ence and business n making? How do business inte! analytics support de Chapter 2 introduced you to the different types of systems used for supporting management decision making, At the foundation of al of these decision support systems are a business intelligence and business analytics infrastructure that supplies the data and the analytic tools for supporting decision making What Is Business Intelligence? Business intelligence (Bl) is a term used by hardware and software vendors and information technology consultants to describe the infrastructure for warehousing, integrating, reporting, and analyzing data that come from the business environment, including big data. The foundation infrastructure collects, stores, cleans, and makes relevant information available to managers. Think databases, data warehouses, data marts, Hadoop, and analytic platforms, which we described in Chapter 6. Business analytics (BA) is also a vendor- defined term that focuses more on tools and techniques for analyzing and understanding data. Think online analytical processing (OLAP), statistics, models, and data mining, which we also introduced in Chapter 6. Business intelligence and analytics are essentially about integrating all the information streams produced by a firm into a single, coherent, enterprise-wide set of data and then using modeling, statistical analysis tools, and data mining tools to make sense out of all these data so managers can make better decisions and plans. Purdue College of Agriculture, described in the chapter-opening case, is using business intelligence and analytics to help farmers make some very fine-grained decisions about fertilizer levels, planting depth, and irrigation requirements for small sections of fields or individual plants. It is important to remember that business intelligence and analytics are products defined by technology vendors and consulting firms. Leading providers of these products include Oracle, SAP, IBM, Microsoft, and SAS. A number of BI and BA products now have cloud and mobile versions. The Business Intelligence Environment Figure 12.3 gives an overview of a business intelligence environment, highlighting the kinds of hardware, software, and management capabilities that the major vendors offer and that firms develop over time. There are six elements in this business intelligence environment: * Data from the business environment: Businesses must deal with both structured and unstructured data from many different sources, including big data. The data need to be integrated and organized so that they can be analyzed and used by human decision makers. * Business intelligence infrastructure: ‘The underlying foundation of business intelligence is a powerful database system that captures all the relevant data to operate the business. The data may be stored in transactional databases or combined and integrated into an enterprise data warehouse or series of interrelated data marts.512 Part Three Key System Applications for the Digital Age FIGURE 12.3 BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS FoR DECI: ’ SUPPORT SION Business intelligence and analytics require a strong database foundation, a set of analytic tools, and an involved management team that can ask intelligent questiong and analyze data, Business Intelligence Infrastructure Data trom Business Analytics Business man \ Toolset ones Data Warehouses: ——>|_ Data Marts mai Managerial Users and Call centers Analytic platforms? tring Methods Web data OLAP vi Reporting and query toot pee ern ae 7 sean Social media data ee Performance yaceqen Stores Balanced score card ‘Suppliers User Interface Governmental and Reports economic data Deenvoards Scorecards Desktop Mobile ‘Web portal Social media * Business analytics toolset: A set of software tools are used to analyze data and produce reports, respond to questions posed by managers, and track the progress of the business using key indicators of performance. * Managerial users and methods: Business intelligence hardware and software are only as intelligent as the human beings who use them. Managers impose order on the analysis of data using a variety of managerial methods that define strategic business goals and specify how progress will be measured. These include business performance management and balanced scorecard approaches focusing on key performance indicators Bhd tndusty suategc analyses focusing on changes in tne nord mest environment, with special attention to competitors. Without strong senior management oversight, business analytics can produce a great deal of information, reports, and online screens that focus on the wrong matters and divert attention from the real issues. * Delivery platform—MIS, DSS, ESS: The results from business intelligence and analytics are delivered to managers and employees in a variety of ways, depending on what they need to know to perform their jobs. MIS, DSS, and ESS, which we introduced in Chapter 2, deliver information and knowledge to different people and levels in the firm— operational employees, middle managers, and senior executives. In the Past, these systems could not share data and operated as independent systems. Today, one suite of hardware and software tools in the form of a business intelligence and analytics package is able to integrate all this information and bring it to managers’ desktops or mobile platforms.Chapter 12 Enhancing Decision Making 513 Data visualization tools facilitate creation of graphs, charts, dashboards, and maps to make it easier for users to obtain insights from data, (© WicoEINino/Shuterstock * User interface: Business people often learn quicker from a visual representation of data than from a dry report with columns and rows of information. Today's business analytics software suites feature data visualization tools, such as rich graphs, charts, dashboards, and maps. They also are able to deliver reports on mobile phones and tablets as well as on the firm's web portal. For example, Tableau Software enables including data from spreadsheets, corporate databases, and the web, ‘Another example is the process mining software used by Siemens AG to visualize and analyze its business processes (see the Interactive Session on Technology). BA software is adding capabilities to post information on ‘Twitter, Facebook, or internal social media to support decision making in an online group setting rather than in a face-to-face meeting. Business Intelligence and Analytics Capabilities Business intelligence and analytics promise to deliver correct, nearly real- ime information to decision makers, and the analytic tools help them {uickly understand the information and take action. There are six analytic unctionalities that BI systems deliver to achieve these ends: » Production reports: These are predefined reports based on industry- specific requirements (see Table 12.4). "Parameterized reports: Users enter several parameters as in a pivot data and isolate impacts of parameters. For instance, you 9 enter region and time of day to understand how sales of ‘region and time. If you were Starbucks, you might in the East buy most of their coffee in the morning, est customers buy coffee throughout the day. ) different marketing and ad campaigns in each of pivot tables in Section 12-4.)514 Part Three Key system Applications for the Digital Age [Taste taa_ EXAMPLES OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PREDEFINED PRODUCTION REPO} RTs BUSINESS FUNCTIONAL AREA PRODUCTION REPORTS 01 sales team performance; cross-sellin Rise Forecast sales; s pe ‘ss-selling; sales cycle times Service real enter Customer satisfaction; service cost; resolution rates; churn rates Marketing Campaign effectiveness; loyalty and attrition; market basket analysis, Procurement and support Direct and indirect spending; ofcontract purchases; supplier performance supeyehen Backlog; fulfilment status; order cycle time; bill of materials analysis Financials General ledger; accounts receivable and payable; cash flow; profitability Human resources Employee productivity; compensation; workforce demographics; retention * Dashboards/scorecards: These are visual tool performance data defined by users Ad hoc query/search/report creation: These allow users to create th own reports based on queries and searches. * Drill down: This is the ability to move from a hi: more detailed view. s for presenting igh-level summary toa Forecasts, scenarios, models: These include the ability to perform lin forecasting and what-if scenario analysis and analyze data using standa1 Statistical tools. of FedEx’s predictive analytics system ranges from 65 to 90 percent, Predictive analytics are being incorporated into numerous business intelligence applications for sales, marketing, finance, fraud detection, and healthcare. One of the most well-known applications is credit scoring, which S used throughout the financial services industry. When you apply for a ner dit card, scoring models process your credit history, loan application, and ita to determine your likelihood of making future credit payments f e insurers have been analyzing data for years to identify most likely to generate high costs.: Gone are the days when marriages were arranged by parents. The booming Indian economy acell opened a lot of job avennes for young Indian men and women primarily in big cities, Living independently, earning good salaries with no time and desire for traditional matchmaking where aunties and family connections typically arrange the meeting of boy and girl, these tech-savvy youth nowadays prefer internet sites to seek suitable match for themselves. Consequently, lot of matrimony sites like CommunityMatrimomy.com, Shaadi.com, Tanbulya.cm, AssistedMatrimomy. com have come up in the recent past and are doing brisk business.Matrimony.com,a Chennai ‘based company, is probably one of the leading -matrimony sites at present with 60 percent market share, consolidated revenue of 335.54 crore rupees and 7,45,000 paid subscribers as in the year 2018. In his views expressed in an interview with Financial Express, Murugavel Janakiraman, Founder and CEO of Matrimony.com, expressed the huge growth potential of online matchmaking services, since as of 2018, online services account for only 6 peroent of the wedding services industry. Apart from India, Matrimony.com also has a strong presence across South Asia, UK, US, Dubai, Sri ‘Lanka and Malaysia. “Although the firm provides matchmaking services through various channels like telesales team, ‘customer support team, sales team but the major revenue comes from its website. Once logged in, ‘the online user needs to fill the profile form to get registered as a member. However, the success rate for a profile to get positive response depends on the profile information , ‘Off late Matrimony.com started receiving alot of complaints, especially from its male snembers. The male members complained that very low from women in certain they had to spend a emcee e 4 information in the amount of ie i ing ye certain fil profile. Matrimony.com ‘and certain a information as mandatory and © Spe Monvmandatory, butt SOON Tlie cases. Besides Chapter 12 Enhancing Decision Making 515 TECHNOLOGY What Women Want—Analytics Powering Matrimony.com that the majority of the male members are not filling the non-mandatory fields. For example, in the profile form, there is a non-mandatory field of About Me” which answered a lot of questions about an individual and was important to yield response to the profile. However, it was seen that the majority of its male members were not filling, this field since its time-consuming. Moreover, the members felt there is an urgent need to reduce the number of mandatory fields. Another problem being faced by Matrimony.com was that it was operating through a lot of channels like telesales and field sales in addition to its website, and this made it difficult for Matrimony.com to integrate all the data at one place so as to provide right services to its members, Matrimony.com was collecting huge data from telesales, field sales team and 350 micro websites having more than three million subscribers. However, since all this data was not integrated, the firm was unable to discern on what basis certain male members are getting more response as compared to others. Matrimony.com wanted to know the correlation between mandatory fields and non-mandatory fields in getting positive responses. It felt an urgent need to advise its male members on how to fill the mandatory fields and non-mandatory fields of the profile form so that it is able to garner maximum responses. In light of these problems and stiff competition from other e-matrimony sites, Matrimony. com decided to do a complete analysis of the big data that it had collected so far from all its channels so as to offer customized services to its members to eradicate their problems with the service. The strategy and analytics team at the company decided to implement an enterprise-wide marketing suite, which would enable them to analyze vast amounts of data quickly to maximize marketing efforts towards their customers. Matrimony.com chose IBM for implementation of advanced analytics. IBM offered IBM ExperienceOne and SPSS predictive tools for analysis of the data collected byN 4 Part Three Key system Applications for the Digital Age satrimony.com 18M ExperienceOne combines aaecemgacons of 18M Enterprise Marketing Management, WebSphere Commerce and IBM get epereacience to know the custorners and for active customer engagement. However, all the current data of the site was stored in an open-source database MySQL, which posed compatibility issues with the IBM suite of applications. Migrating the data now Reena eae z ig the marketing strategy of the firm, increasing costs and time. So, it took the aid of another firm Xerago, based in the US, which specialized in customizing and configuring IBM Campaign management solutions. Xerago ‘customized and re-configured the Matrimony. com's database drivers to build a perfect handshake between MySQL and IBM suite. Now, all the data from different channels were analyzed by applying IBM ExperienceOne and SPSS predictive analytical tools of IBM. SPSS was able to generate descriptive statistics based reports and predictive marketing models while Cognos tool was used for score-carding, monitoring, reporting, etc. ‘The enterprise marketing management suite of IBM included IBM Campaign to build cross channel ‘campaigns for Matrimony.com, IBM EMessage to send and track email to all inbound and outbound channels, and IBM Interact to offer personalized ‘marketing to the customers. This empowered ‘Matrimony.com to run analytics on customer data like never before and find answers to its marketing problems. The results presented by the TBM solution were indeed shocking for Matrimony. ‘com It discovered through the application of IBM solution that in most of the cases, the male regular smokers used to hide their smoking habits and fill the profile information for smoking habits as ‘social smokers (the site provides three options for smoking habits, ie., non-smokers, social smokers CASE STUDY QUESTIONS +1, What were the challenges which Matrimony. ing? how can big data analytics ‘challenges such as one's profile). To and regular smokers in the ve more d that women ga as compared to Matrimony.com in revealing surprise, it was analy preference to regular smokers social smokers, Consequently, advised its male members to be honest their smoking habits in the profile information form. The firm shares another example where on analysis of voluminous text data, they figured ested when men write that women are most intere about their hobbies and least when they write about their expectations. This information was highly useful for inclusion in profile descriptions of men on the site. Moreover, it was found that there are three fields (for male members) in the profile form which showed no correlation with getting a positive response from women members. Subsequently, these three fields were eliminated from the profile form for men, Acknowledging, the benefits of analytics, the firm admits that campaigns are most effective when they go beyond communication, and suggest the customers through analytics the most suitable product, and determine channel propensity. Some metrics of Matrimony. ‘com which confirms the campaign effectiveness post-application of analytics to customer data are—reduction of three ficlds from the profile information form, early rises in alliance interests by at least 5 percent, growth in sales by at least 8 percent, As a result, Matrimony.com has been able to achieve unmatched customer satisfaction and better campaign effectiveness. Sources _htp://wwrw.io in/case-tudy/matrimonycom-uses- analyticeigure-outwhatawomen-vant, http //www03 bm com/ press/in/en/pressrelease/44120 rs; hitp.//www.informationweek In/informationweek/nevs-analysis/296152/analytics-match; htp./ /werw xerago.com/bharat-matrimony-for-my-sql html; thtps:/ war youtube com/ watch?v = VrHyNINPC: http://www. financialexpress.com/industry/wedding-serviceslargely. unorganised this-presents-good opportunity for‘us murugavel janakiraman /1187696/ satisfaction achieving unmatched custome! and campaign effectiveness? 4, Discuss the features of IBM ExperienceOne and marketing management suite as understood from the text