Module 1: Introduction

Fundamental
Concepts,
Process & Tools
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ABOUT THE COURSE
The course focuses on developing deep analytical
skills, business knowledge and innovative solutions
needed to efficiently transform a real-world data
set into actionable intelligence for business.
Students will gain a solid foundation through
utilizing data analysis and data visualization to
identify market insights, recommend data-driven
solutions enabling business growth.
 LEARNING SCHEDULE

Module 1: Introduction Module 4: Operation Analytics

1. 8.
Data Analytics Fundamental Concepts, Process Marketplace analysis
& Tools
Lab 1a: DA in Excel 9. Individual Assignment
2.
Excel Fundamentals for Data Exploration
Lab 3a: DA in Tableau
Lab 1b: DA in Excel 10.
3. Introduction to Tableau
Exploratory data analysis in Excel
Lab 3b: DA in Tableau
Module 2: Customer Analytics 11.
4. Problem Solving with Tableau
Customer Segmentation
Lab 2: Data Storytelling Expert sharing 1
5. 12.
The Techniques of Persuasive Data Storytelling Data analytics in Sales Management
Module 3: Marketing Analytics Expert Sharing 2
6. 13.
Paid Media Data analytics in Insurtech
Module 3: Marketing analytics
7. 14. Group presentations
Data in Ecommerce
 MARKING GUIDE

Final marks and grades are subject to ASSESSMENT ASSESSMENT ITEM AND VALUE
confirmation by the School Assessment NUMBER DUE DATE (/100)
Committees which may scale, modify or
otherwise amend the marks and grades Individual assessment
for the unit, as may be required by Mini projects: Perform Data
University policies. 1. analysis for a real-world 50%
business problems
Note: To successfully complete this unit,
students must: Due: Session 9
Achieve a minimum of 50 marks; Final group projects
Attend 80 percent of class time. See 2. 50%
attendance requirements in the section of Due: Session 14
class policies and rules below.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

01 02 03
TYPES OF DATA
WHAT IS DATA THE FIRST STEP: PROBLEM
ANALYTICS &
ANALYTICS? UNDERSTANDING
PROCESS

The Definition & Importance of Four types of Data Analytics
Data Analytics ● Descriptive analytics
● Diagnostics Analytics
Data Analytics ● Predictive Analytics
Career & Tools ● Prescriptive Analytics
Identify business problems
(TOSCAR framework)
Disaggregate business
problems (Logic trees)

Data Analytics Process Convert business problems

to data problems
01
WHAT IS DATA
ANALYTICS?
 WHAT IS DATA
ANALYTICS?
The Definition & Importance of DA
What is
data analytics?
Data analytics is a process of
inspecting, cleansing,
transforming, examining and What are the common
modelling data with the goal outputs of data analytics?
of discovering useful • Reports/ Dashboard
information and supporting • Ad-hoc analysis
decision making • Predictive/ Statistical model

Why data analytics?

Data analytics helps business optimize its performance by
making better decision
- Increase business revenues
- Improve operational efficiencies
- Optimize marketing campaigns & Customer Services efforts
 WHAT IS DATA
ANALYTICS?
Career & Common Tools

CAREER
TOOLS/ SKILLS
As a data analyst, you might work in one of many different For Data Management
industries. Sometimes, your career path might take you deeper into
the specialized knowledge of that industry.

• Business analysts
For Data Analysis
• Financial analysts
• Operations analysts

• Marketing analysts
• Business Intelligence Analyst
For Data Visualization

More advanced in programing role: Data Scientist, Data Engineering

 02
TYPES OF
DATA ANALYTICS
& PROCESS
 4 TYPES OF DATA ANALYTICS

Prescriptive Analytics
IMPACT

How can we make it happen?

Recommendation of actions each agent should
take based in their profile

Predictive Analytics
What will happen?
Senior look-alike model: Predict which agents are
likely to become senior

Diagnostic Analytics
What did it happen?
Root cause: Criteria, Mis-recruitment from
leaders, Move to competitors

Descriptive Analytics
What happened?
Dashboard: Number clients over time

COMPLEXITY
4 TYPES OF
DATA ANALYTICS
Exercise : Sort the statement below into their appropriate type of data analytics

What happened to sales Are sales stronger this How many weather
the last time we had a month than last? models predict a hot
hot summer? summer this year?
If the likelihood of a hot
summer is measured as
an average of these five
weather models is above
58%, we should add an Did the weather affect
evening shift to the beer sales?
brewery and rent an
additional tank to
increase output
Did that latest marketing Have the number of
campaign impact sales? views gone up?
 DATA ANALYTICS PROCESS

PROBLEM DATA DATA

UNDERSTANDING PREPARATION VISUALIZATION

1 3 5

2 4

DATA DATA ANALYSIS

UNDERSTANDING
03
THE FIRST STEP OF
DATA ANALYTICS:
PROBLEM
UNDERSTANDING
 3 STEPS OF PROBLEM
UNDERSTANDING

DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS
PROBLEM
(LOGIC TREES)

IDENTIFY CONVERT
BUSINESS BUSINESS
PROBLEM PROBLEM TO
(TOSCAR) DATA PROBLEM
IDENTIFY
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Ambiguous/ High
Truly understand the problem & Convert the business
What business level/ Biased
problem into a correct & specific problem statement Business Problem
gives you

THIS 1. I think we have not exploited the most from our

existing customers. We should do some Cross-sell now.

THIS 2. I want to increase number of senior sales member

because they are our key contributors in revenue.
What we should Valid & Specific
produce before Problem Statement
OR THIS 3. I want to do a segmentation for all our conducting any
customers so that we can customize our offer. analysis
 WHY IDENTIFYING BUSINESS
PROBLEM IS IMPORTANT?

Very 1st step in every exercise

Well-defined problem is winning half of the battle

Defining it in the wrong manner can lead to unwanted efforts

IDENTIFY
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Business problem: “I want to increase revenue from our existing customers.
Can you help us do a propensity model to point out which existing customers
we should target?” — Sales Director of an e-commerce company

IDENTIFYING UNDERLYING TROUBLES: WHAT MAKES THIS PROBLEM

REAL AND PRESENT?

USE THE TOSCAR FRAMEWORK

 TIPS TO FORMULATE TROUBLE
✓ Don’t let interpretation (or solution ideas) creep into your definition of “trouble.”
IDENTIFY ✓ Ask whichever unclear, un backuped → Ask specific
BUSINESS PROBLEM ✓ Ask “Why now?”
✓ Ask “What success looks like?”

Business problem: “I want to increase revenue from our existing customers. Can you help us do a
propensity model to point out which existing customers we should target?” — Sales Director of an
e-commerce company

Trouble Owner Success Constraint Actor Reference

• Why? • Sales Director? • How do we • How many • Sales • Have we tried
• Why existing • Customer measure communications Team/Director this in the past
customers? Management success? can we do with a • Customer • What are the
• Why now? Director? • Average spend customer in Management results
• Where does it fit • Who would own from existing day/week/mont • CEO • How are the
in your priority? the customers? h? • Operation team current Cross-
• Do we have any implementation • % of customers • How much can • Brand sales to existing
Cross-sell ? Are the buying over a we spend? communication customer
practice in counterparts in time period? • Do we have CRM & Marketing handle?
place? the Organisation • Can this success in place?
• Any competition aligned? be achieved by • Do we capture
benchmarks? some other behavioural
manner? data? How much
past data do we
have ?
IDENTIFY
BUSINESS PROBLEM

Business problem: “I want to increase revenue from our existing customers.

Can you help us do a propensity model to point out which existing customers
we should target?” — Sales Director of an e-commerce company

Business statement: “Increase x% revenue from existing customers in next y

months to reduce reliance on new customers by identifying which customers
are likely to X-sell”
IDENTIFY
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Exercise : Sort the statement below into their appropriate type of data analytics

Business problem: “Elite sales team contribute ~70% revenue but we do not
have enough of them. While we are struggling with building Elite sales team
from recruitment, I want to convert those who used to be a Elite members in the
past so that we have enough team” – Sales team.

What questions will you ask to come up with a proper problem statement?
 3 STEPS OF PROBLEM
UNDERSTANDING

DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS
PROBLEM
(LOGIC TREES)

IDENTIFY CONVERT
BUSINESS BUSINESS
PROBLEM PROBLEM TO
(TOSCAR) DATA PROBLEM
 DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM

Logic Tree Fundamentals

▪ A Map for “Dividing & Conquering” Techniques to build Logic Trees
▪ MECE Principles
▪ 5 types of Logic Trees & Testing method
DISAGGREGATE
Note 1: Logic tree are a "map" of your problem,
BUSINESS PROBLEM good tools for "dividing and conquering“
Logic Tree Fundamentals

Planning for business problem solution without the help of an Issue Tree can lead you to two situations:
(1) An INCOMPLETE list of possible hypotheses.
(2) A HUGE list with hundreds, even thousands of hypotheses.
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM Note 2: Logic trees should follow MECE
Logic Tree Fundamentals principles

MECE stands for “mutually exclusive, Mutually Exclusive Not Mutually

collectively exhaustive”. Exclusive

Collectively
Mutually No Overlapping Branches Exhaustive
Exclusive
A B A B
The branches of the tree don't overlap
or contain partial elements of the
same factor or component.
Collectively No Missing Branches Not B
Exhaustive Collectively
Taken as a whole, your tree contains Exhaustive A B
all of the elements of the problem, not
just some of them. If you are missing A
parts, you may very well miss the
solution to your problem.
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Logic Tree Fundamentals

Under 25 ILP

ULP

Customers
25-35
Customers

35-60 Traditional

Over 60 Others

Divide by the age group Divide by the product type

when they bought product they bought
 DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees
What it is this A famous framework from each Structuring the “how to increase store sales” problem using
Technique technique like technique each technique

A math equation
Algebraic The probability equation Increase $ spent per
derived from the Increase # of customers
Structure “Profits = Revenue – Costs” customer
drivers of a variable

A break down of the The Marketing Funnel Increase % Increase % Increase $

Process “Awareness -> Opinion -> Increase
Must learn structure
problem’s underlying
Consideration->Preference- store traffic
who pick of pickers spent per
process into its stages up product that buy buyers
>Purchase”

A proven qualitative The 3Cs of Strategy Improve Improve

Conceptual Improve Improve
Hard to master Frameworks
categorization of a “Customer, Company, product store
Prices Awareness
problem’s parts competition” portfolio visibility

Sell more to
A slicing up of the Sell more to
people who
Segmentation problem into its Customer Segmentation Sell to non buyers people who
bought more
visible parts bought once
than once
Easy but
less insights A Yin-Yang-like
division of the “Supply vs Demand”
Opposite Through non-marketing
problem into its “Internal vs External” Through marketing actions
Words action
opposite “Financial vs Non-Financial”
complementary parts
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - ALGEBRAIC STRUCTURES (1)
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - ALGEBRAIC STRUCTURES (1)

Most people see them done and think they can

easily do it, but it all goes downhill when they
actually grab a piece of paper and attempt to do
these trees.

So, here are three methods to actually create your

“mini-equations” to break down each bucket:
#1. Use a sum of segments
#2. Use a proven formula
#3. The "Dimensional Analysis" method
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - ALGEBRAIC STRUCTURES (1)

#1. Use a sum of segments

This is my least favorite method because it

doesn’t go too much into the structure of the
problem, but simply slices it out. However, it
can be useful. For example, if you’re working
with a conglomerate and their profits are
down, it might be useful to segment that
conglomerate into its different businesses.

Ex: if you’re trying to understand a company’s

market share drop in a certain category, it
might be useful to just break it down into the
market shares of its product lines
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - ALGEBRAIC STRUCTURES (1)

#2. Use a proven formula

Most of the time you don’t need to reinvent

the wheel. If you know a formula that fits the
problem well, just use it
 DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - ALGEBRAIC STRUCTURES (1)

#3. The "Dimensional Analysis"

method Customer

This method is amazing because it lets

you break down almost any metric
into a formula really quickly – the only
thing to be careful with is to not lose
meaning in the process and end up
with a formula that is mathematically
right
 DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - ALGEBRAIC STRUCTURES (1)

# of seniors last
Quarter
#3. The "Dimensional Analysis" method : Existing juniors
promoted
# seniors
# of seniors this promoted this
Customer Centric: New recruited
Quarter Quarter
Revenue = # of Customers * Revenue per Customer juniors
promoted
Sale Centric:
Revenue = # of Sales * Avg. Ticket
= # of stores * Avg. Revenue/ store Fail criteria 1

Product Centric:
Revenue = Quantity * Price # seniors
demoted this Fail criteria 2
Quarter

Fail criteria 3
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - PROCESS STRUCTURES (2)
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - PROCESS STRUCTURES (2)

Here are a few examples of how you can break down the problem’s underlying process to
have a clear, MECE structure to solve different problems
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - PROCESS STRUCTURES (2)
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - PROCESS STRUCTURES (2)

Suggested Answer
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS (3)

Conceptual frameworks are structures based on categories of concepts. They usually come straight from theory but can be
adapted if you understand it well enough. Examples of these frameworks are the 3Cs, the 4Ps, Porter’s 5 Forces, “People,
Process, Systems” framework. There are many other examples of a lesser known, but widely used framework. Below is a
piece of example about Inventory Management
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees -
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS (3)
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - SEGMENTATION (4)
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - SEGMENTATION (4)

Segmenting is essentially cutting a slice of the problem. For

instance, you could segment a company’s customers by age
group (0-20, 21-40, 41-60, 61+), by gender (male, female), by
country, etc.

Another example: you could segment a company’s revenues by

product line, by country, by type of customer, by month, etc

You will learn more about SEGMENTATION in our next lecture.

DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - OPPOSITE WORDS (5)
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - OPPOSITE WORDS (5)

Two appropriate times to use it are when you need a

quick structure just to organize speech and when you
can’t find another type of structure to work with
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees - ALL 5 TREE TYPES
DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Techniques to build Logic Trees – COMBINED METHODS
 3 STEPS OF PROBLEM
UNDERSTANDING

DISAGGREGATE
BUSINESS
PROBLEM
(LOGIC TREES)

IDENTIFY CONVERT
BUSINESS BUSINESS
PROBLEM PROBLEM TO
(TOSCAR) DATA PROBLEM
 We convert the smaller problems into datasets.
CONVERT BUSINESS PROBLEM This is where we ask questions such as:
TO DATA PROBLEM
• What kind of data do you need based on the above hypotheses?

• Which variables do you require and how would you collect them?

• Which tasks should be prioritised?

 KEY TAKEAWAYS

When you come across a problem to solve, don’t dive

into the data. Put a structure around it, make sure you
cover all the aspects, understand what is the most
important factor, layout possible hypothesis and data
requirements and then solve the problem.