QUESTIONS

1.

Many predictive analytic models are based on neural network technologies. What is the role of neural networks in predictive analytic? How can neural network help predict the likelihood of future event. In answering these questions, specifically reference Blue Shield of Tennessee. The first business that needs up-to-date information in its data warehouse is Pitney Bowers. For 90 years, Pitney Bowes has been the leader in postage meters and machines. Order postage by phone. buy postage meter supplies and more. Retailers understand clearly that 80 percent of their income is derived from 20 percent of their customer base. That is why loyalty programs surged 10 years ago, in an effort to grow and retain their core customer numbers. However, loyalty programs only work by offering discounts to customers on products they have already decided to purchase. They do little to increase revenue through up sell or cross sell tactics. They are also challenged to fully quantify the effect one departments actions and activities have on other parts of the store and business. Multiple business analytics sources, all measuring different processes are making it difficult, if not impossible to make good decisions that positively and directly affect the bottom line. It is crucial to have good business intelligence and up to date data warehouse because they deal with customers and key in customers data every day. Each day they serve to almost 1.5million North American. They key in customers order which is the data and depends solely on the system to generate customers order. Any lack of data or system could lead to mistakes in order or shipment. The second in the rank is Center Corp. Centre Corp uses business intelligence in its health care IT solutions. Their clients are physicians, hospitals and patients. They need to be prepared and gather data for financial, resource management, product and service management and operational management. They have to update their warehouse but not everyday,

regular update is considered okay because patient does not come everyday. And data for their physicians, doctors remain the same unless there are changes. Last in the rank that can have the most out of date data in the warehouse and still be effective is British Petroleum. They use Business Intelligence (BI) to forecast time and cost for new oil-drilling project. Its okay for them to still run effectively without up do date data warehouse because usually oil-drilling project takes up years to be finish. And the data can be generated not by days but it takes years to generate a whole lot of information regarding where and what cost involve to start new venture of oil-drilling. Basically information in database warehouse depending on what time of business they run. Is it about retailing, manufacturing or purely about people. The most up to date warehouse are crucial for business operations that deals with orders that comes in every minute.

2.

What if the Richmond police began to add demographic data to its predictive analytics system to further attempt to determine the type of person (by demographic) who would in all likelihood commit a crime. Is predicting the type of person who commit a crime by demographic data (ethnicity ,gender, income level, and so on) good or bad? Business intelligence (BI) refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products or departments, or by associated costs and incomes. When talking about BI it has close relation with the usage of information system (IT) in a company. First thing first, subordinate or higher management need to be exposed to what benefits BI provides them with. Empower them with the advantages of using BI. Advantages of BI are to improve data accuracy and minimize errors, reduce time and cost spent creating reports, enable fact-based decisionmaking, detect issues and opportunities, provide self-service information at any time, improve performance, monitor and control business objective. Second, provide incentives for the right behavior. Make it easier to do the right thing than to do the wrong thing. This involves taxing undesirable behaviors as well as incenting desired behaviors. For example, establish light governance over projects that align with standards and heavy-handed governance for projects that are breaking the rules. Provide self-sufficiency tools at no cost and charge for services that users continue to delegate. In

addition, leverage peer pressure by helping key influencers uplift their ITsmarts and broadly telegraph their accomplishments. Thirdly, business needs to create common definitions. Without common definitions, a BI implementation cannot succeed. And lack of agreement is a widespread problem in companies today. For example, finance and sales may define gross margin differently, which means that numbers will not match in effect, negating the value of automation. To combat this kind of problem, business need to get subject matter expertise throughout lines of business from front-, middle- and back-office staff. Forth, assess the current situation. Business should analyze the current business intelligence stack and processes and organizational structures surrounding current BI implementations. Both IT and the business should be involved. Lastly, business should create a plan for data storage. Many organizations begin with an isolated data mart, since its quick and cheap, but consider that this tactic means additional data storage needs arise, which can grow out of control within a few years. Something else to consider is whether to build and maintain a physical data warehouse or go with the virtual operational systems. Traditional data warehousing means duplicating data, which means bringing in operations systems in real time will be next to impossible. Business can save space with an abstract definition layer, but this is difficult to design, as is any metadata repository. Before even considering which vendors to choose, business first must resolve this issue.

3.

In the movie Gattaca, predictive analytics were used to determine the most successful career for a person. Based on DNA information the system determined whether or not an individual was able to advance through an educational track to become something like an engineer or if the person should complete only a lower level of education and become a janitor. The government then acted on the systems recommendations and placed people in various career tracks. Is this a good or bad use of technology? How is this different from the variety of personal test you can take that inform you of your aptitude for different careers?
Shelf placement is an amazing bit of marketing science. Marketing people gather into rooms and hold endless meetings about how to get consumer to buy more because of where items are on the shelf. All it is this: the most profitable items for the store are always placed at eye level. The best bargains are usually high up on the top shelves and not easily reached, or on

the bottom shelves where consumer are less likely to look. Top and bottom shelves also usually contain discontinued brands and products. Sometimes these items can be found on the clearance carts, but often they are there on the shelves, marked down to 50 percent or less of the original retail price. For breakfast cereal products, things are almost the same. The famous brand are being arrange usually on the same line and next to each other. Their benefits and types of cereal are almost the same except for the brand name itself. The sugary cereals are where children can grab them. The good cereals are at the top. They do that so a kid can grab a box of crap and persuade their moms to buy. Data warehouse is where information on operational databases are operated. Business uses data warehouse to determine which of those cereals are considered as famous brands, which are less likely to be purchase by consumer, which are most favorite and many other consideration of shelf placement. Most data warehouses are multidimensional databases where each layer in the data warehouse represents information according to different dimensions. Data warehouse support decision making because it contains summarized information on each products in a store.

4.

What role can geographic information system (GISs) play in the use of predictive analytics? As you answer this question, specifically reference FedExs use of predictive analytics to (1) determine which customers will respond negatively to a price increase and (2) project additional revenues from proposed drop-box locations. Before using data warehouse, I need to put into consideration few aspects such as how up-to-date must the information be and what data-mining tools do my business needs. To create a data warehouse, it is basically a snapshot of database information and loaded into a data warehouse. I need to know whether my information changes every second or what because if it does, then a data warehouse is not possible. Then, I need to choose the best data

mining tools that all users (me and workers) can fully exploit all of the features of it. Business intelligence provides the key performance indicators that help managers focus on improving operational efficiency and customer satisfaction in a competitive market. Their systems were cumbersome to maintain and suffered from data integrity issues. Information was not available early enough, and data discrepancies resulted in low user confidence. Store operators and managers spent a lot of their time gathering data, which left less time for running the business. Our client needed to provide actionable information daily to operational management. The business objectives were:

To understand and reduce the cost of operations, and To improve on the high level of customer satisfaction for which the chain had become known.

To address these two key areas, a range of performance indicators needed to be delivered on a daily basis, for the restaurant. Speed is crucial and data had to be aggregated and performance indicators calculated by the start of the next business day. In considering the technology options, an online analytical processing (OLAP) software tool offered the best promise of meeting the needs of a wide audience and delivering consistent information quickly. With this approach, business data could be aggregated rapidly and uniform performance indicators calculated for each menu requested as well as the predicted use of toppings. Supported by consistent data from the point-of-sale (POS) system and data warehouse, the OLAP solution was to serve an audience that includes all operation process. There are two important indicators in our OLAP system which is financial metrics and customer satisfaction metric. Financial metrics include ; orders and sales (actual, comparable and budget), food cost and menu mix (quantity

and percent). While customer satisfaction metrics include; Average pizza making time, customer complaints and average hold time. For us, the OLAP tools spreadsheet interface has proven to be very handy for developing standard reports as well as for ad hoc analyses; but not the key success is training. Higher management and workers need to be familiar with the system to ensure that it runs smoothly. Operational business intelligence is very effective when intelligently deployed and used by the organization. In the competitive and often narrow-margin restaurant business, business intelligence can help keep the dough rising, whether you serve pizza or any other cuisine.