WIA1007 / WIE2003 INTRODUCTION TO DATA SCIENCE

TUTORIAL 2
1. MAI Corp which manufactures bicycles and related equipment and clothing, is
interested in gaining a better understanding of its customers. While the company has
a CRM system that contains information about customer contacts with the firm
(phone calls, queries, and orders), there is interest in obtaining more data about what
customers think and are saying about the company and its products. What might be
some useful sources of additional data? What issues might be associated with
collecting, sorting, and analysing this data?

Interview method – Data can be collected through interviewing the customer with
some basic business or product related questions. Answers collected can be noted
down in the form of notes, audio or video and this data is stored for processing. This
interview can be conducted through telephone, face to face and email.

Issues faced:
 Inconsistent data collection standards
 Participation in interview – must be voluntary

Survey method – A process of research where a list of relevant questions are asked
and opinions are noted down in the form of text or vote. Data can be obtained
through both online and offline mode such as website survey forms, social media
polls and email. The survey answers are stored for analysing data.

Issues faced:
 Untrusted data – might be fake responses
 Complicated forms can lead to nonresponse or respondents filling in answers
at random simply to complete the survey
 Poor efficiency when dealing with a huge list of data

Observation method – A method of data collection in which the researcher keenly

observes the behaviour of the target audience. For example, observing a group of
customers and their behaviour towards the products. The observed data is collected
in the form of text, audio or video and will be sent for processing.

Issues faced:
 Poor quality data - negatively influence decisions made
 Necessary approvals – get approvals from customer to record their
purchasing experience
 2. Read the following article :

MTF Biologics gains better insights into business processes and practices with BOARD

About MTF Biologics

Headquartered in Edison, New Jersey, MTF Biologics has spent more than 30 years
honouring donated gifts by developing innovative, effective allograft solutions to help people
heal. From orthopedics to wound care to plastic and reconstructive surgery, we have
become a force in scientific progress and patient advocacy.

The Need
MTF Biologics, formerly known as The Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation (MTF), in
2008 saw the need for more robust reporting and better analytical tools for both the technical
and business sides of their non-profit organization. As part of this initiative, MTF Biologics
began researching business intelligence tools that met the organization’s requirements and
could scale for future analytics or planning needs. The team tasked with this project
evaluated both BOARD and IBM’s Cognos solution, and decided to move forward with
BOARD for a variety of reasons.

The Solution
MTF Biologics chose BOARD for four of its core offerings and capabilities. As a non-profit
organization, MTF Biologics was interested in an affordable, yet robust solution to meet its
reporting and analytics challenges and with the scalability to meet future planning needs.
With its all-in-one business intelligence and planning capabilities, BOARD’s total cost of
ownership is significantly lower than that of the competition. Additionally, MTF Biologics was
looking for a solution that offered both a user-friendly interface and ease-of-use for all users.

“We chose Board because it met our needs of having a robust business intelligence tool that
had clear, straightforward approach to presenting critical information,” said Leeza Mathews,
Manager IT MIS, MTF Biologics.

With BOARD’s self-service environment, users can easily search for information, interact
intuitively with their data, and perform in-depth analyses with the utmost simplicity.
Furthermore, the programming-free approach empowers business users to rapidly develop
and maintain sophisticated analytical and planning applications with minimal IT support.
Lastly, the team at MTF Biologics was impressed by the graphical and visualization
capabilities of BOARD.

The Results
“With Board, we are able leverage its analytic and reporting functionality to effectively
monitor performance and make key business decisions,” said Leeza Mathews.

Today, MTF Biologics uses BOARD for much more than traditional business intelligence.
MTF Biologics has an advanced analytics and planning strategy that includes the use of
BOARD for budgeting processes, sales reporting, operations reporting and planning,
interactive reporting, trend spotting, and customized reporting and dashboarding. MTF
Biologics will continue to leverage BOARD’s many reporting, analytics and planning
capabilities in its formal and evolving organization-wide BI strategy. With BOARD, MTF
Biologics has gained better insight into its business processes, improved reporting on
financials and streamlined budget process – and there’s much more to come.
1. How the BI tool help to increase MTF Biologics productivity?
 BI tool help MTF Biologics save time on data entry and report making by
eliminating manual data entry. By using well-configured BI system, MTF
Biologics can decrease the amount of time spent on data entry and
performing calculations without mistakes. BI tool provides fast reporting and
data visualization needed to enhance better decision making.
 BI tool helps improve operational efficiency by allowing MTF Biologics to track
where their money is being spent and helps to put their company fund to good
use. By implementing BI strategy, MTF Biologics is able to reduce wasteful
overproduction and overprocessing of medicine while maximising work
efficiency.
 BI tool helps MTF Biologics to gain customer insights by understanding
customer behaviours and patterns in order to determine a profitability curve
for the healthcare business. By utilizing BI tool, MTF Biologics can create
patient profiles and send customized messages and recommendations based
on patient history.

2. List the functionalities of BI tools. In your opinion, which is the most important
function? Why?
Functionalities of BI tools:
1. Dashboard – allows continual tracking of important business metrics by delivering
relevant, easily understood real-time data to business leaders. Users can
consistently stay up-to-date on their company’s performance without having to go
through a pile of reports.
2. Reporting – allows users to view the best and worst performance of their
business thus supporting better decision-making.
3. Mobile BI – refers to accessing data and performing analysis on mobile devices.
Mobile BI ensures users to explore their data on mobile devices without being
reliant on their desktops. This means that users can design dashboards, reports
and perform data analysis whenever and wherever they want.
4. Data visualization – present complex information in simple formats. Data
visualization gives users a real-time overview of their business in the form of
graphs, charts and summaries.
5. Data integration – process of combining data from multiple source systems to
create a unified sets of information to provide the opportunity for additional
insights. Data integration provide seamless data delivery and ensure the
integrated data sets are clean and consistent to meet the information needs of
users.
The most important function of BI tools is data visualization. Data visualization helps
users in fast and critical decision-making by delivering data in the most efficient way
possible which is through visual context. Data visualization not only allows users to
gain insight into their vast amount of data but also benefits users to recognize new
patterns and errors in the data by highlighting the trends and outliers. Visualized data
is important to give users a better prediction of sales volumes and future growth.