Subject Code: DATA4000

Subject Name: Introduction to Business Analytics

Assessment Title: Individual Case Study

Student Name:

Professor Name:

Date: 4/24/2021
Part A: Case Answers

1. Application of Analytics on Industry:

In the first case i.e. Artificial Intelligence in Germany, it has been analyzed that although
Germany was quite late in the adaption of analytics like AI but their government is making hard
efforts to become global leaders in technology by galvanizing AI in almost their all industries
such as the retail industry of Germany, Insurance industry, automotive industry and healthcare
industry. By implementing AI, the industries are driving towards digitalized future and enhanced
customer experience.

In the second case i.e. Why Blockchain Transform Healthcare demonstrates that healthcare
industry is now grappling with blockchain technology to get possible solutions for future that
plague the industry today. By adopting blockchain in the industry will help them to create
database of health information so that doctors could have an access to electronic medical system,
with high security.

2. Problems to be Solved:

By using analytics i.e. AI, the retail companies like Otto and Zalando can sort out the issues of
fraud as AI help companies to create customer experience and offer several payments and
options of delivery during cyber week. The companies like Siemens and BMW understands the
customer’s preferences and demands by improving predictions about what people actually wants
to buy. The algorithm of AI predicts with accuracy of 90% that provides best solution to
companies who face issues in understanding customer’s needs. AI improves the issues of
operational efficiency in the insurance companies such as by analyzing the data to gain future
insight.

Similarly, the analytics of Blockchain potentially sort out the problem of fraud and security in
the healthcare companies. Such as Med Rec can use blockchain for the purpose of improving
records and allow patients to check record securely without waste of time and money. It will
reduce the counterfeit implications of drug which is currently costing very high to
pharmaceutical companies. Blockchain will minizine the cost of admin by eliminating the
intermediaries with automated activities.
 3. Types of Analytics:

In the case of AI in Germany, it has been analyzed that three types of analytics have been used
i.e. Descriptive, Predictive and Prescriptive. Descriptive analytics help companies to analyze the
trends for future such as Otto use this kind of analytic which help them to analyze the customers
preferences or which product have more demand. Automotive companies like BMW and
Diamler use prescriptive analytics to guarantee 100% reliability of their technologies like self-
driving cars by looking at the past trends and data for forecast. It helps these companies to
identity when to slow down or works like human driver etc. While predictive analytics helps
companies to gain future insight such as Allianz used predictive analytics in their Defendant Hub
that ultimately helped them in their process of injury claim.

In the case of blockchain, the health care industries use various analytics i.e. descriptive analytics
helps them to analyze the past data of customers and on such data, they make outcomes for
future. The industry also uses predictive analytics to predict what will happen in future and made
clinical trials for new treatment that can improve patient and care outcomes.

4. Challenges:

One of the major challenges of using AI analytics is that they are quite costly for medium or
small companies. Although all the organizations of Germany are investing to implement AI but
they have to consider that its implementation does not have much cases in market which means
people do have experienced so it would a huge risk to invest such big amount in this technology.
However, implementation of AI may also lead companies to face security issues as it provides
access to more data today.

Similarly, the major challenge for the implementation of blockchain is the issue of privacy as
blockchain and privacy does not really work with each other. The system of public ledger fuels
the system where privacy of lacks especially in healthcare industry where patients suffers the
issue of privacy as their data is stored in public ledger which is not secure.

5. Recommendations:

In order to have successful implementation of AI and the technology of blockchain, it would be

suggested that companies should firstly become familiar with these technologies i.e. they way to
use them or their benefits with drawbacks. This could be done by taking advantage of online
information and the available resources to get familiarize with the basic concepts of these
technologies. Secondly, stakeholders should hire experts of professional of these technologies in
order to make appropriate use of these technologies. As it has been explained above, these
technologies contain privacy or security issues that can only be eliminated if handled properly by
experts.

Part B: Role of Analytics in Solving Problems

1. Case of Amazon:

In the above explained two case studies, two major analytics have been used i.e. Artificial
Intelligence and Blockchain that are helping industries to enhance their operations and improve
their efficiencies. It has been analyzed that in Germany, the government is planning to invest
$500 million in AI to provide quality services to people. Similarly, blockchain technology is
widely helping healthcare industry to improve their medical research, data management and
privacy and security. These two analytics are widely adopted by global organizations and one of
its biggest examples is Amazon.

Amazon is a global and leading multinational technological firm of USA which had a major
focus on cloud-computing, e-commerce, digital streaming and AI. The company is widely
known for their disruption of well-established firms through mass scale of technological
innovations. It is regarded as the largest marketplace of globe, provider of AI assistant, platform
of live streaming and platform of loud computing. Amazon is a largest internet firm with regards
to their revenue and market capitalization. As in this contemporary time, where entire world is
facing serious issues due to Covid-19, businesses are asked to maintain social distancing and
follow all SOPs. Various organizations are installing camera-based software that are helping
them to stay open and allow them to show not only customers and workers but also insurers and
the regulators that the organizations are enforcing and monitoring safe practices. In order to
solve this issue, recently Amazon has launched artificial intelligence bases system of tracking for
the purpose of enforcing social distancing at their warehouses and offices. This help Amazon to
reduce the risks of contracting the new virus among their workers. The company has taken this
initiative due to intensifying scrutiny from lawmakers that whether they are doing enough to
protect their staff or not. By installing AI tracking system, the warehouse of company highlights
workers keeping a safe distance in green circle while those employees who are closer will be
highlighted in red circle. This system mainly called as Distance Assistant, use footage of camera
in buildings of Amazon to identify areas of high-traffic (Reuters, 2020).

However, the blockchain analytics is helping Amazon to resolve the issue of supply chain,
provide high transparency and real-time tracking of good from one party to other. The customers
of Amazon have complained recently about the late deliveries as pandemic of Covid-19 has
raised their demand as a result, customers face issues in deliveries. In order to resolve this issue,
Amazon is using blockchain i.e. Quantum Ledger Database which is transparent database that
help company to track or trace any information. It is a digital ledger of distribution where all
information is stores in chronological order that makes it quite easy for people in Amazon to
track the order and get all the required details. The utilization of these analytics not only resolve
the issues which Amazon is facing but also improving the efficiency of company in this
contemporary time (Sharma, 2020).

PART C: Developing and Sourcing Analytical Capabilities

1. Ingrain Analytics in Decision-Making Process:

The competitive business environment had led organizations to focus on the utilization of
analytics for driving out best strategic decisions as business analytics allow manages to
understand the shifts and risks in markets. Today, instead of going got hiring new talent, pricing
solutions, organizations prefer to embrace analytics to make decision that improves efficiency,
profit and risk management. According to McKinsey report, the organizations who use analytic
tools not only make better decision but also enjoy operational efficiency, robust profit and
improved consumer experience. The rise of advance analytical tools such as AI, Big Data etc.
combined with other analytic technologies enable businesses to process more efficient
information and drive insight faster. These analytics have enhanced the ability of companies to
evaluate the target performance and assess their value (Talent Edge, 2019).

However, the advance analytics tools are transforming the process of decision making at every
step of transactional cycle and enable teams to gain deeper visibility into targets. From utilizing
the granular data to personalize services and products to scale the digital platform to match seller
or buyers, organizations are using business analytics to have faster and decision making on fact-
based. It helps organizations to take customer-centric decision that help them to identify the
critical inefficiencies in operations. The analytics further help to make decision regarding new
patterns from customers and workers, allows leader to interpret and understand their interactions
and allow leader to work with specific department for the purpose of enhancing the experience of
customers. Moreover, analytics tools could help businesses in making decisions regarding
business efficiency that helps to maximize resource and time and ensures better performance
across the company (Wilson, 2017).

2. Organize and Coordinate analytics capabilities:

Business analytics is currently on the forefront of organization’s goals. Operating in this

competitive and complex environment, leaders around the globe can no longer only trust their
gut. They are in need to organize and coordinate analytics capabilities for sustaining their
position in market. Although most of the advance and large organizations have subset the
capabilities which they need to engage but the challenge is to push such capabilities deeper into
firm. It is a fact that analytics is not a project but a continuous cycle of understanding and
improving the performance of business. The firms who have mastered the implementation of
analytics needs to further focus on seven principles to organize and coordinate the analytics
capabilities. Such as, firms need to understand their current state and take a staring point for
implementation, they need to ask smart questions like which analytics would drive out value,
how to measure goal against rivals etc. (Miranda, 2016). To organize capabilities, they have to
listen carefully by understanding what signal matters and having an ability to integrate and
decipher such signals into coherent reflection of performance. The firms need to accelerate
insights which is vital for automate data delivery to people and process which will help in
making decision and actions at lower cost. To organize and coordinate analytics capabilities, the
firms needs to enhance the capabilities of visualization to engage customers. To have analytics
capabilities firms needs to build a culture of fact-driven to drive execution of streaming in
business activities and finally, firms should practice the right and exact fit analytics and invest in
such tool that fits their needs and powerful enough to help business grow (Deloitte, 2018).

3. Source, Train and Deploy Analytics Talent:

Talent analytics is basically a platform that used to produce and provide insight into workers,
potential pool for hiring, such insights are highly used for the creation of better understanding of
employee’s strength and their issues and the way to improve. However, the sourcing, training
and deployment of analytics talent could only be managed by HR leaders as only they have a
potential to do so (Campling, 2020). The HR leaders could do this by following steps i.e. by
identifying available tools for utilization before making any investments in training the available
talent analytics. It is quite imperative to comprehend the ways under which the team of business
could generate data. This can assist in identifying and understanding the gap of need-based and
developing the exact skills that are required from analytic team. Secondly, HR leaders
comprehend the level of comfort with analytic team. It is considered appropriate for managers of
HR to form a group of analytic teams into those who are willing to analytics and also
comprehend with different analytics levels that can be used to form best professionals in HR.
Thirdly, they should generate the culture of data drive as the analytics teams must be well-
prepared with sufficient training and the data availability which is already existing in the firm
(Yuen, 2016).
References:

Campling, B. (2020). What is talent analytics and how do you start using it? . Retrieved from
https://blog.recruitee.com/talent-analytics/

Deloitte. (2018). Building your data analytics capabilities. Retrieved from

https://www2.deloitte.com/ng/en/pages/deloitte-analytics/articles/building-your-data-
analytics-capabilities.html

Miranda, L. (2016). Building an effective analytics organization . Retrieved from

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/building-an-
effective-analytics-organization#

Reuters. (2020). The system, called Distance Assistant, uses camera footage in Amazon’s
buildings to also help identify high-traffic areas. Retrieved from
https://nypost.com/2020/06/16/amazon-to-use-ai-tech-in-its-warehouses-to-enforce-
social-distancing/

Sharma, K. (2020). How is Amazon using Blockchain to increase its efficiency? Retrieved from
https://www.blockchain-council.org/blockchain/how-is-amazon-using-blockchain-to-
increase-its-efficiency/

Talent Edge. (2019). How Business Analytics Improve Decision-making. Retrieved from
https://talentedge.com/articles/business-analytics-improve-decision-making/

Wilson, A. (2017). How Advanced Analytics Can Improve M&A Decision-making. Retrieved
from https://deloitte.wsj.com/cfo/2017/04/25/how-advanced-analytics-can-improve-ma-
decision-making/

Yuen, D. (2016). How To Find, Develop and Retain Your Analytical Talent . Retrieved from
https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/1908515/how-to-find-develop-and-retain-your-
analytical-talent