The operations manager at my company told me that in his previous role in banking, for over 15

years accurate quantitative analysis was critical to his role in risk analysis. He said however a change
in industry towards education involved a lot of re- learning as it became apparent that a focus on
business analytics was not aligned with the industry’s consideration of the complex qualitative and
quantitative variables that make up a students journey.

Management teams seem to exhibit certain trends when considering their relationship with data.
Initially data analysis leads to insights that prioritise decision making to benefit the entity's
performance and position. Considering the petabytes of data generated by each customer, to not
take measures to understand these insights would put any company at a significant competitive
disadvantage. Greater insight leads to decisions that benefit products/ services, customers,
employees and companies. Furthermore, quantitative analysis has the fundamental value of
allowing managers to avoid judgements based on subjective variables like “instinct” to instead
implement evidence based practice ensuring optimal utilization of time, cost and resources.

As companies grow in scale and connectivity there will be opportunities for optimization for existing
operations that have not yet fully utilised the data they are generating. Managers of the future will
need to consider the varying levels of stakeholders' understanding and confidence of data insights,
particularly in developing skills for interpretation and presentation. The power and flexibility of
quantitative analysis techniques mean that results can be generated regardless of if they are
representative of any trend or benefit, so ensuring correct design and choice of method is critical.
Streamlining, prioritising and "cleaning up" data will provide the best possible sample set for
quantitative analysis to lead to the best and most representative insight.

However, what can begin as valuable insight can quickly lead to over assumptions and confirmation
bias as data is selected and manipulated to support certain outcomes. It is critical to be reminded
that correlation does not equal causation. What’s important to consider is the value of quantitative
analytical skills in a manager’s skillset. Due to the virtual nature of many of these quantitative
analysis techniques it’s important that decisions supported by these results are supplemented by
physical or experimental evidence. Furthermore, it is important that the value and context of the
analysis being performed must always be reviewed for relevance and benefit to the entity's
economic performance and position.

The hardest thing for me to do is to bridge the gap between understanding how these techniques
are utilised in the guided practical exercises to designing how they would be used in real life
situations. When discussing these ideas with my operations manager we agreed that there could be
opportunity for insight by revisiting the value of quantitative analysis for our customer's interactions
with our products after management's decisions historically reflected a choice to proritise core
values rather than a more "data as an authority- driven insight". What seemed to be the point for
personal research and development would be how I could use these techniques for what questions
and for what outcomes that in line with a company’s values for relevance and benefit. It is this skill
that I hope to work on for the rest of my career after its introduction to my skillset via this subject.
Appendix

(Discussion posts in Week 1, 3, 4)

For example, my company is familiar with descriptive analytics via tabular and graphical
representation of customer, employee and company data. This data includes a variety of discrete,
continuous and categorical variables such as customer's interactions with the website (time on page,
clicks per minute etc), employee productivity (time on call, # of calls per day, # of calls that included
sale, total # of sales etc.) and company performance (profit, # of enrolments, # of customers etc).
The customer satisfaction score at my company utilizes statistical techniques to attempt to
quantitatively measure (via value/ number of scores) a historically qualitative measurement
(customer satisfaction) for better feedback on an employee's strengths and areas of improvement.
Managers at my company use a visual representation of the team's sales to provide a snapshot as to
how they stack up compared to weekly and quarterly roles along several characteristics (new and
existing student enrolments). Frequency distribution and measures of central tendency are common
practice to understanding these metrics. Using a scenario analysis based on probability distribution
with a skew towards the end of a study period (equating to maximum number of enrolment sales
points just before close of enrolment with our partner universities) lets the sales team know that we
should expect sales volume to exponentially increase the closer we get to the end of the study
period.

However there is opportunity for development of predictive and prescriptive analytics. Decision
analysis could be valuable to decisions surrounding product acquisition, such as when a new product
is significantly similar to a product currently on offer, and whether or not to acquire the new
product. The company has partnerships with multiple Australian universities and so the product to
be acquired would be degrees and subjects from a particular university that would best service our
existing and new student clientele. The decision in question is when a new product is significantly
similar to a product currently on offer, and whether or not to accquire the new product. This
decision involves:

 Uncertainty: What is unknown is what degrees/ subjects would effectively support existing
and new student career changes and/or progression
 Complexity: There are many factors to consider e.g. cost to company for product delivery via
company platform and also follow-through cost to student, duration, degree of qualification,
additional requirements

Decision Alternatives:

 University A Degree A (new)

 University A Degree B (current)

States of Nature:

 Buy licensing for University A degree A

 Not buy University A Degree A and keep University B Degree A
 Buy University A Degree A and keep University B Degree A
 Do not buy University degree A and sell University B Degree B

Consequences:
  Accquisition of University Degree A (Y/N)
 Retention of University Degree B (Y/N)

Also a scoring model would be of significant value if used to help students assign a weight to the
different criteria that goes into their decision making process when choosing what degree to study.
Currently the company has a website widget called "Help Me Choose" that allows prospective
students to answer a short questionnaire aimed at assisting them in what direction they should take
surrounding the research phase of their study journey. (https://www.open.edu.au/help-me-
choose) However, feedback indicates that the widget is seen as providing very general answers. If
we were to set criteria (e.g. Popularity of course, price, student feedback, university ranking,
duration of course etc.) and let the student assign a subjective weight to each of these criteria, the
resultant recommendations would illustrate to the student the impact of the weighting on their
criteria on resultant options. However, work would need to be done to investigate the relationship
between the criteria and possible sub criteria when regarding the lifecycle and complexity of a
product like a university degree.

This leads on to the use of AHP in the above example with an expansion of the "Help me Choose"
widget to include a combination of qualitative and quantitative options to assist a student's
research. Determining priorities regarding criteria for a student's journey (e.g. career goal via career
start/progression/change, university and faculty choice via location/ranking/ size, career variable via
salary, prestige, job security, enjoyability) would illustrate a more detailed and comprehensive
prediction of a student's journey allowing the company to provide more personalised
recommendations.