LECTURE 1

Business Analyst
A business analyst uses her knowledge and experience, in
combination with the insights generated by a data analyst to make
decisions that affect the business. They work within a business or
organization to identify and implement improvements to help a
company achieve its goals.

The distinction between Data Analyst and

Business Analyst
Data analysts and business analysts both help drive data-driven
decision-making in their organizations. Data analysts tend to work
more closely with the data itself, while business analysts tend to be
more involved in addressing business needs and recommending
solutions.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Data-driven decision-making means making decisions that are
supported by data rather than decisions based on observations, gut,
or even instinct. With the advancement of technology, the data
available to organizations has become tremendous. This
abundance of data provides organizations several opportunities to
understand their performance to a greater degree, optimize their
performance and leverage it for growth.
In simple terms, the process is – collecting, extracting, formatting,
and analyzing insights.

Example

Let’s consider a leading online video streaming (OTT) platform with

several web series under its belt – some successful and some not.
The platform is trying to decide which theme to make a new series
on. A big director approaches the platform with an out-of-the-box
idea that he knows in his gut is a blockbuster idea. The platform
assumes that the director's past success is sufficient proof to back
the project. A huge budget is allocated to produce and market the
series.
The series is made and subsequently launched, and to everyone’s
surprise, its viewership is much below expected. The response is
underwhelming, and the platform is likely to make losses.
How could the platform have avoided losses? Could the platform
have used data points available to it to make an informed, data-
based decision that has more weight than just a gut feeling?
Of course, yes. And this is exactly what more and more OTT
platforms are doing.
There are various factors that the platform could have relied on,
which are not limited to; but include analyzing similar series made
in the past, the director & actors’ past track record, and currently
trending themes in the OTT space among others. The likeliness of
the show underperforming would have been predictable before the
platform took it on.

Advantages of using Data in the decision-

making process
 Risk assessment - As often data-enabled insights help us
identify that carpet bombs that can be attached to a project
that we’re working on. By this, what I mean is that often when
you are working on a project, there are certain risks that you
know about and you do whatever is within your means to
mitigate them. However, there are certain risks that you do not
know about, and often – using data insights in the decision-
making process; helps you identify these risks.
 Trend spotting and predicting outcomes - Data insights can
make it easier for you to gauge trends, which can help you
predict outcomes. You can think about the failed web series
 example that we spoke about earlier to understand this more
in detail. Taking a more practical view of that example, since
the OTT platform commissioned the idea based on the
credibility of the director, let’s say that even data suggests the
same and back his or her credibility and past track record.
When we look at the actors’ track records and trending
themes in the OTT space, here is where data could paint a
different picture and there could be a chance that the actors,
who were part of the series, could be more successful in
genres that were different from this particular genre. Or there
could also be a chance that even though the content theme
that the web series was based on is in trend in the OTT space,
a plethora of content with the same theme on rival OTT
platforms would have added a lot of competition to it and
hence, this could be a red flag that could be suggested by
data. Hence, as we can see from this; trend spotting becomes
much easier with data and as a result taking decisions
through it, by using it as a tool along with your knowledge;
experience and understanding can enhance the precision of
your decisions.
 Gauge customer satisfaction - All organizations strive for
customer satisfaction. They may or may not achieve it. But it
is definitely what they strive for. When we speak about
customer satisfaction, a key challenge is – how do you gauge
customer satisfaction? This is where data plays a key role. To
quote an example, let’s look at FMCG as a domain. In FMCG,
customer loyalty is a key measure of customer satisfaction;
and often this is defined by repeat purchases by a customer. If
we look at the online sales channel, it is often easy to identify
repeat purchases as the company’s website or the e-
commerce platform through which it is selling its product;
often maintains a record of the details of its customers. But
what about offline channels? Often, in India; offline channels
like Kirana stores do not keep individual customer records of
 their purchases and the products they have purchased, and
hence, it's more difficult to measure customer satisfaction. As
a result, marketers have developed a parameter of ‘same-
store sales growth to gauge customer satisfaction in offline
retail channels. Through this example, we can see how data
measurement helps in gauging customer satisfaction through
both online and offline mediums.
 Enables innovation - Often as a Business Analyst, you have to
make decisions on both the market and the product. When we
speak about the product, one of your key inputs would be in
new product development. More often than not, the success
or failure of a product depends on the market. Here is where
data plays a critical role in the decision-making process. Using
data and with the help of a data analyst, you would be able to
study the market – its tastes and preferences and work
backwards to develop the product. Often, this reverse
engineering process of product development, when done
correctly with data is something that helps in ensuring the
success of a new product.
 And lastly, data-backed decisions help improve both external
and internal processes in an organization. External processes
include interactions of an organization with external
stakeholders like its customers, vendors, and distribution &
promotion partners among others; while internal processes
include interactions of an organization with internal
stakeholders, predominantly – its employees.

DATA
Broadly, there are two kinds of data – structured & unstructured
data.
Structured data is clearly defined data types with patterns that
make them easily searchable. In simpler terms, when a layman
looks at structured data, she can easily make out that this is data.
Structured data typically contains data types that are combined in a
way to make them easy to search for in their data set. This means
that structured data is easily detectable via search because it is
highly organized information. The image on your screen is an
example of structured data. It's neatly segregated into fixed fields.
It’s the data that most of us are used to and like working with to
analyze largely quantitative problems.

Unstructured data is comprised of data that is usually not as easily

searchable. Think about an image or an audio or perhaps a video.
When you think about them, they do not essentially seem like data
or data types. However, a lot of data can be extracted from them,
and hence this potential and possibility of extracting data make
them a part of unstructured data.

Unstructured data, on the other hand, makes the capability to

search much more difficult.
Unstructured data, as evident from its very name, does not conform
neatly to a spreadsheet but may have its internal structure. It
includes everything outside the boundaries of structured data.
While it is unruly, it is also incredibly valuable—unstructured data
has the potential to depict a complex web of information that offers
strong clues about future outcomes.

Unstructured data analysis is a crucial part of the data analytics

process. Think of customer web chats, for example, a platform
where customers commonly dish out their complaints and resolve
queries. When analyzed as a whole, this web chat data can help
guide companies on what to prioritize resolving or what aspect of
the product is driving the most interest. Or social media data, which
can signal customer buying trends before they even start searching
for a product. If structured data could be considered a company’s
backbone, unstructured data is its competitive edge.
Example:

One interesting modern-day example of unstructured data is the

use of it through web-scraping, which often leads to sentiment
analysis, which helps companies gather insights on their products
and services. Often, companies use web scraping as a method to
analyze social media conversations. Through this method, a
program is run on a social media site, which searches for keywords
related to the company’s products and services. Once the keywords
bring out the relevant conversations, the program attempts to
classify the conversation to find the sentiment that is present in it.
The sentiment can be classified as positive, negative or neutral, or
even something else – as per the requirement of the company and
the project. To lead to this sentiment, the program has searched for
certain grammatical patterns and keywords within the
conversations that it has derived from social media sites.
By using such methods, companies are using unstructured data to
get better feedback and insights for their products and services.
Sentiment analysis helps companies narrow down the negative
conversations around their products and then analyzes them to
improve the customer experience.

Semi-Structured

Semi-structured data is a form of structured data that does not

conform to the tabular structure of data but does contain tags or
other markers to differentiate elements and enforce hierarchies
within the data.
Email messages are a good example of semi-structured data. While
the actual content of the email is unstructured, this format does
contain structured data such as the name and email address of the
sender and recipient, and the time sent among others.
Another example is a digital photograph. The image itself is
unstructured, but if the photo was taken on a smartphone, for
example, it would be date and time stamped, geo-tagged, and would
have a device ID. Once stored, the photo could also be given tags
that would provide a structure, such as ‘dog’ or ‘pet.’

Making Decisions
As a business analyst, your primary job would be to make decisions
based on your knowledge, understanding, and insights generated
through data analytics.
Hence, it becomes really important for you to understand data
analytics as an understanding of that domain can act as a
competitive edge in your decision-making.

Data Analytics
Data analytics is the extraction of insights from data using
statistical techniques and technologies.
A big challenge that is often faced by data analytics teams is the
availability of quality data, which they can work with. Therefore,
before moving on to data analytics, let’s see an example that deals
with data collection and data cleaning.
Example
Let’s take the help of a case study to understand this more in detail.
Let’s say that an OTT platform, XYZ is looking to launch a Spanish
series and wants to predict its response in New York.
It forms a research team, which decides that they want to conduct a
primary study of 1000 respondents, 500 of whom are Spanish
speakers and TV show watchers; while the other 500 do not speak
Spanish but watch Spanish TV shows.
They prepare a detailed questionnaire consisting of both objectives
as well as subjective questions that they want all respondents to
answer.
The team splits itself, with some members going to Hispanic
neighbourhoods; while others going to non-Hispanic
neighbourhoods to conduct the interviews.
Now, how many surveys do you think the team needs to conduct to
complete the data collection process for this research?
The exact answer cannot be predicted. However, we’re pretty sure
that it would be more than 1000.

The team going to Hispanic neighbourhoods may share the

questionnaire with respondents, who speak Spanish but do not
watch TV in that language.
The team going to non-Hispanic neighbourhoods will definitely
share the questionnaire with respondents, who do not speak
Spanish and do not watch TV in that language.
To get to a defined target of 1000 respondents, with 500 of them
speaking Spanish and watching TV in that language, while 500 of
them not speaking Spanish and watching TV in that language, there
is a chance that the team may have to conduct 2000 – 2500
surveys.
The process of going out and conducting interviews to generate
usable data is known as data collection.
The process of going from 2000 or 2500 surveys that the team may
have had to conduct as part of data collection to 1000 relevant
ones is known as data cleaning. In this process, the team is going
from a large data set to a relevant data set that fits the objective of
its research.

Types of Data Analytics

There are 4 predominant types of data analytics - Descriptive,
Diagnostic, Predictive & Prescriptive.

Descriptive analytics
Descriptive analytics answers the question: What has happened
and what is happening right now?
Descriptive analytics uses historical and current data from multiple
sources to describe the present state by identifying trends and
patterns. Descriptive analytics uses basic arithmetic like average,
sum, and percentage changes among others. Many times in data
analysis, descriptive analytics is the first step that helps
organizations understand the facts of what has already happened.
Example:
An analyst looking at a large database of account holders of a bank
can extract information about the average incomes of account
holders, their average age, their average withdrawals, and their
frequency of withdrawals among many other such parameters that
can be defined by basic arithmetic calculations.
Another example could be a manufacturing unit, where an analyst
can get historical insights regarding the company’s month-wise
production, production per worker, the average wage per worker, the
ratio of the value of raw materials purchased per month, and sales
among other such parameters.
As we can see, in both the examples of descriptive analytics, we
can know what has happened earlier and how the same metrics are
performing right now.

Diagnostics Analysis
Diagnostic analytics answers the question: Why did this happen?
Diagnostic analytics uses data, which is often built on descriptive
analytics to discover the reasons or causes for past performance. It
is oftentimes referred to as root cause analysis.
Example:
Let’s say that an unusually high number of people come to the
emergency room of a hospital complaining of similar symptoms.
After testing them, it is found that about 70% of them have Disease
A. Descriptive analytics helps us get to the final number of people
having Disease A. However, it is Diagnostic analysis that can help to
make correlations between the symptoms and determine what
symptoms point to Disease A.

Predictive Analysis
Predictive analytics answers the question: What is likely to happen
in the future?
Predictive analytics applies techniques such as statistical
modelling and forecasting to the output of descriptive and
diagnostic analytics to make predictions about future outcomes.
Predictive analytics is often considered a type of “advanced
analytics,” and frequently depends on technology.
Example:

Whenever an individual applies for a loan, the bank or financial

services company where she has applied, asks her for documents
like her Aadhar Card, and PAN Card among others. The reason for
this is that they want to access the individual’s CIBIL, which is a
credit score, and along with it comes the credit history of the
individual. Through the CIBIL report, the bank can access various
aspects of the individual’s credit history, which include: The types of
credit instruments held by the individual – like active credit cards,
past credit cards, active loans, and past loans among others
1. The types of loans given to the individual – like whether the
individual has accessed an auto loan, home loan, personal
loan, consumer loan, education loan, or say a loan against
property.
2. The loans that the individual has applied for – you would not
believe it but even if you apply for a loan that does not get
approved, it still shows up on your CIBIL report and affects
your credit score.
3. The repayment history of the individual – which includes
insights on whether the individual has paid her EMIs on time,
does the individual pay her credit card on time, or whether
has there ever been a delay in EMI, interest, or credit card
payment.
The core idea behind accessing an individual’s CIBIL is to predict
the likelihood of the individual defaulting on loan repayments in the
future.

Prescriptive Analysis
Prescriptive analytics answers the question: What do we need to
do?
Prescriptive analytics is a type of advanced analytics that involves
the application of testing and other techniques to recommend
specific solutions that will deliver desired outcomes. In business,
prescriptive analytics uses machine learning, business rules, and
algorithms.
Example:
Travel websites use prescriptive analytics by going through several
iterations and combinations of factors such as travel patterns,
conditions, and consumer demographics to optimize their pricing
and sales.
An interesting example of this could be in the hospitality industry.
Using a prescriptive analytics model, a luxury hotel may find that
during the off-season, increasing their room tariffs and offering free
additional services such as free spa appointments, and a couple of
complimentary meals is likely to boost bookings compared to their
initial strategy of lower tariffs with few additional services.

LECTURE 2

Benefits of data-driven decision making

1) Data allows for informed, smarter, and faster
decision-making
Accurate and high-speed data analytics allows businesses to make
decisions in real-time, and confidently. Being able to make
decisions on the go and efficiently helps save organizations
precious time.
Example:
Let’s think of an FMCG company that makes – let’s say – pre-mix
pancake batter. During the product process, a certain metric – say
the temperature of the batter measured by a sensor being at a
certain level may indicate that the batter is ready for packaging. The
production line would then automatically move the batter to the
packaging section, post which it would be ready to be put in boxed
and subsequently shipped. With the sensor in place, as opposed to
a person manually checking the temperature, the organization can
reduce its lead time and make faster decisions on the go.

2) The second benefit is that data-driven

decisions help an organization reduce its costs
When an organization starts to analyze its data its actual costs
become evident. This visibility helps organizations get a better
understanding of how the business is performing and make
necessary adjustments to optimize costs. Often, the biggest
challenge for any business is cost.
Example:
We would take the help of a leading Business Analytics company,
which was working on a project to reduce costs for a leading
American airline. It started its analysis by historically analyzing cost
structures; which included salaries, cost of parking slots, cost of
food & beverages provided onboard, cost of entertainment provided
onboard, and fuel among other heads. It then looked at the areas of
cost reduction, in combination with customer preferences
concerning flight timings & services they preferred onboard. Many
first-hand interviews and surveys were conducted and after making
sense of the data collected and analyzed through analytics, a
decision was taken to remove jalapenos from in-flight meals. Yes,
you heard that right. This decision to remove jalapenos from in-
flight meals was how the airline company started its cost reduction
exercise.
3) The third benefit is that making decisions
through data makes way for improved efficiency
Data analytics enables organizations to understand bottlenecks in
the business and take action to simple processes. Operational
efficiency can also be improved by analyzing customer behavior to
identify behavior patterns and optimize the customer experience.
E.g., a problem statement for a business analyst that can be solved
using data can be reducing wait time at the check-out kiosk of a
supermarket.

From a product development perspective,

making decisions through data helps to identify
market trends.
Organizations can use data analytics to analyze trends and identify
need gaps and areas of new product development or innovation.
This helps to stay competitive through changing demand patterns
and take necessary steps in anticipation of what customers may
need in the future, or the direction the industry is headed towards.
Do recall that in the first module; we spoke about how the newer
trend in product development, which is to first study the market and
then move towards the product.
Let’s take the airline industry as a broad example here. Often, you
might have observed that different markets have different tastes
and preferences regarding what they want in the sky. Middle
Eastern airlines like Emirates, Etihad Airways, and Qatar Airways
have their core company philosophies in luxury and hence, they
account for a full-service experience onboard. However, if you
wanted to launch an airline in an emerging market like India, would
you follow the same philosophy? The answer would most likely be
no. One can easily use historical data and current industry patterns
to analyze that in India, full-service carriers do not work, largely due
to the price sensitivity of consumers, while booking tickets. A lot of
full-service airlines like Kingfisher, Jet Airways, and Air India among
others have struggled in the country. Access to their cost and sales
data, which are publicly available, coupled with research on the
insights that Indian fliers make their purchase decisions, would be
suggestive of the trend of how low-cost budget carriers have been
more successful in the country. Hence, this could be a case of how
data can help you identify a market trend and enable better
decision-making; while you craft your offerings.

Robust data monitoring systems are useful from

a security perspective.
All businesses face security threats. Organizations can look into
and diagnose the causes of abnormal behavior by analyzing the
relevant data using diagnostic and predictive analysis. This helps to
identify and address vulnerabilities and introduce monitoring
systems that raise alerts in the future to ensure immediate action.
A common example of this is net banking. Let’s say that you are on
an online shopping site and you decide to pay for your order via net
banking. When rerouted to your bank's page, you mistakenly key in
the wrong password while logging in and hence, the login doesn’t
go through. You then go back to your cart and attempt the
transaction again. This time, your key in the correct login ID and
password, and now when you proceed ahead. You may observe that
your bank will ask you for additional security authentication, maybe
an OTP, or an answer to a security question. This is because, when
you attempted logging in earlier, there was a deviation from your
regular login pattern that was flagged by the system, and hence, an
additional security authentication came in. Now this deviation could
be anything – it could be keying in on a wrong password, or even
perhaps forfeiting the login attempt when a wrong password was
keyed in. Banks have created such systems, which monitor click
data - to enhance their security.

Data Analytics allows for personalization.

Organizations have access to data across both online & offline
channels. Analytics allows them to understand their customers
better which helps to create extensive consumer profiles and gain
specific consumer insights to tailor a personalized experience for
each consumer. Using this information, predictive analytics can be
used to identify product recommendations that are likely to boost
sales.
An example of this could be an individual setting up a new home
who goes on to purchase household items like drinking glasses,
cutlery, and crockery from an online shopping website. The website
can access this customer’s order history, cart items, searches,
reviews as well as clicks of products visited while on the website.
Using analytics, the website can analyze the individual’s behavior
and decide which specific recommendations to pitch to the
individual. For instance, the website may start recommending items
like coasters, table cloths, or even electronic kitchen items to the
individual.

A plethora of marketing benefits arise out of

data-driven decisions.
Marketing and analytics go hand in hand. Marketing teams use data
analytics regularly to gauge the success of marketing efforts and
improvise if needed. It helps organizations get a better sense of
their target audiences, provides useful insights into their behavior,
enables methods like A/B testing, and even assists with pricing
setup.
To understand this more in detail, you can take the example of an
FMCG manufacturer, who has recently launched a new variant of
cream biscuits and wishes to evaluate two website banner
advertisement designs for the biscuit using A/B testing. A/B testing
is an experiment that allows you to determine which option
performs best and thus is likely to lead to more conversions.
Having shown the two design options at random to two different
sets of viewers on Facebook, the manufacturer finds that option A
is more effective in garnering click-throughs and eventual
purchases.
Using this information, the manufacturer can now fully launch the
more successful banner across various platforms.
Analytics allowed the FMCG player to gauge the success of their
banners before launch, aiding their future marketing efforts.
For our first case on data-driven decision-making, we would be
looking at Amazon and its tryst with the grocery retail space in the
US.

Amazon Case Study:

In 2017, Amazon forayed into the grocery space in the US after its
acquisition of Whole Foods, a major offline retailer. This rang alarm
bells for all major offline grocers in the country. Suddenly, these
grocers were forced to bolster up their online ordering and delivery
services, in an attempt to level the playing field. The acquisition
allowed Amazon to finally tap into a huge space they had their eye
on – offline grocery stores. Many speculated that this deal would
allow Amazon to dominate grocery sales both online, which was via
Amazon Fresh, and offline through Whole Foods. Some industry
experts also wondered how Amazon Fresh and the newly acquired
Whole Foods would stack up, in a way competing against each
other.

Whole Foods was an American multinational supermarket chain

started in 1980 and built its reputation as a brand known only to
stock products that are free from artificial preservatives, colors,
flavors, and even hydrogenated fats – broadly organic & natural
food. The supermarket chain had massive success with stores
opening up all over the United States. However, by mid-2000, the
mainstream soon caught on. Conventional stores started to stock
similar offerings, but at a more affordable rate. Financial troubles
started to ensue, and investors were unhappy. Amazon’s proposal
to acquire the supermarket chain came as a huge relief.

A set of industry experts believed that for Amazon, the Whole Foods
acquisition was a way to boost sign-ups from Prime memberships
in return for discounts on groceries. The second set of experts
believed that the acquisition was to help educate Amazon about the
world of offline grocery businesses, which would then lead to the
company opening up large mainstream grocery chains across the
country. This second set of experts was right; when in 2020,
Amazon Fresh, the e-commerce giant’s online retail offering,
commenced offline operations. When Amazon purchased Whole
Foods, many industry experts believed that Amazon Fresh and
Whole Foods would compete against each other. However,
research conducted across Amazon Fresh & Whole Foods stores
tells us that Amazon Fresh customers represent a different
demographic compared to that of Whole Foods. The former is more
popular with frugal, price-sensitive, and diverse shoppers, while the
latter is popular among wealthier, health-focused shoppers. Whole
Foods is known for its broadly organic & natural food, which
primarily meant - high prices.

Therefore, with Whole Foods & Amazon Fresh, the e-commerce

giant is catering to a larger, more diverse market and we’re pretty
certain that a lot of data insights on consumer demographics and
buying patterns were analyzed by the company; before acquiring
Whole Foods and this has been a primary reason for the success of
the venture. Through the Whole Foods example, we saw how
Amazon used data insights as part of its mergers & acquisitions
strategy, with great success, in the grocery retail space.
Now, let’s look at how a video-based data generation is a form of
unstructured data that enhances the experience of the customer. If
we compare Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods as a store, the former
comes across as smaller and less lavish compared to the latter.
The items available at Amazon Fresh are more local, and the
interiors are simpler, which makes them cheaper, quicker to build,
and easier to run. Amazon Fresh stores have given rise to the use of
video analytics like never before to make processes efficient and
faster.

Amazon Fresh’s ‘Just Walk Out’ enabled stores are one such
example. In these stores, customers enter using their credit cards.
They can then proceed to go about searching for the items they
need, as they would in a normal grocery store – but here there’s a
big difference. As they pick up the items they want and place the
items in their shopping bags, cameras and sensors detect these
products taken or returned and ultimately placed in the shopping
carts and keep track of them. When the customer is done shopping,
they can simply ‘just walk out and the total bill amount is charged to
their credit cards used upon entry. As evident from this case, by
eliminating checkout kiosks for a cashier-less shopping experience
and using sensors, Amazon has helped save customers some
precious time.

Over time, Amazon would have access to tremendous amounts of

data which would enable them to constantly improve their
computer vision systems and algorithms. As the technology gets
better, the ‘Just Walk Out’ system can be used at several stores in
their now large grocery business. By simply modifying existing
stores to fit this new system, Amazon saves time as well as money
that it would need for additional space & personnel. Another way
through which Amazon is attempting to develop a cashier-less
checkout is Amazon’s Dash Carts. You log into the Dash Cart using
your Amazon app, and the cart has cameras and sensors installed
that detect and identify the items you drop into your cart. You can
then automatically pay from your account without having to wait in
line during check out.
Therefore, we can see how – through the help of video-based data
generation, Amazon is changing the way consumers shop in-store,
while also saving costs.

Data-driven-decision-making in Manufacturing
McKinsey is a leading management consulting firm, which does
sector agnostic work and has offices worldwide.
Traditionally manufacturing processes were done by staff manually
checking and writing down production as well as operation and
maintenance histories. These methods were - time-consuming,
open to bias & lacked quality of Analysis. The current
manufacturing process involves monitoring as a crucial aspect.

Applications of Data-driven-decision-making in
Manufacturing
Three Main Applications:
1) Predictive Maintenance: Analyzing the historical performance
data of machines to forecast when one is likely to fail, limit the time
it is out of service, and identify the root cause of the problem.

Data can be used by manufacturers by maximizing the operating

time of machines by anticipating their failures and determining
breakage of machines even before it happens –—or be ready to
replace them when it does—thus Minimizing Downtime. Predictive
maintenance through data typically reduces machine downtime by
30 to 50 percent and increases machine life by 20 to 40 percent.

2) Yield-energy-throughput analysis: To ensure individual

machines are efficient while operating, helping to increase their
yields and throughput and reduce the amount of energy they
consume.

3) Profit per hour maximization: Scrutinizes parameters that have

an impact on the total profitability of an integrated supply chain
right from raw materials purchasing to final sales – providing
intelligence on how best to capitalize on given conditions.
Profit-per-hour-maximization optimizes the interaction of machines
and processes to dynamically maximize profit generation in
production and supply chains. Encompassing every step from
purchasing - production – sales. Dynamically maximize profit
generation in production and supply chains.

This is a typical case of how data-driven decision-making helped a

manufacturer maximize PPH by integrating sales and production.

LECTURE 3
The distinction between Data Analyst &
Business Analyst
Data Analyst means the person who is involved in structuring and
telling a story using data insights that will help business and
organizational leaders take better decisions.

To be effective in their roles, data analysts must possess the

technical skills necessary for data mining, hygiene, and analysis,
along with strong interpersonal skills to communicate their findings
to decision-makers
Key Skills: - Data visualization and presentation skills, Microsoft
Excel, Structured Query Language (SQL), and R or Python or similar
programming knowledge.

Business Analyst
Business analysts are responsible for using data to inform strategic
business decisions.

Key Skills: - Critical thinking, Problem-solving, Communication and

Process improvement. These professionals must have a firm
understanding of their organization’s objectives and procedures to
analyze performance, identify inefficiencies and propose and
implement solutions. Business analysts must have at least a
working knowledge of the technology involved in analysis, though
the need for hard technical skills is generally lower than for data
analysts.
Key
Data Analyst
Differences
Focus A data analyst would use data to find
patterns and correlations and even build
models to see how data responds to his
models.
Process A data analysis process done by a data
analyst involves doing a thorough
analysis and experimenting with data
mining processes so as to give a good
visualization of what the data is saying.
Data A Data analyst finds if his data source is
Sources inconsistent or requires some changes
and then updates the data source as and
when needed.
Transform A Data analyst is able to transform and
update the data & the database as and
when the need arises.
Data Quality A data analyst presents a lot of
theoretical data with various other
probabilities.
Field of Data Analyst is concerned with Predictive
Business Anal
A Business Analyst enga
reports, KPIs (Key Perfo
matrix (to display and visua
business metrics in a sin
identifying patterns that
organization.
A business analyst is
carrying out a detailed ana
insights collected and doin
study of the same.
A Business analyst follows
that involves pre-planning a
all the sources of data an
information needs to be ke
be removed.
A Business analyst genera
transformations and chan
with appropriate planning.
A business analyst pres
version/ conclusion of the
data set.
Business Analyst is c
 Key
Data Analyst Business Anal
Differences

Analytics and Prescriptive meaning analytics that Retrospective (Diagnostic)

answer the questions – analytics meaning it answe

 What is likely to happen in the  What has happened?

future? (Predictive)  What is happenin
 What do we need to do? (Descriptive)
(Prescriptive).

Business Analyst Case Studies

Case Study 1:
Company: Airbnb
Airbnb Inc. is an American company that is an online marketplace
for lodging, primarily home stays, vacation rentals, and tourism
activities. The platform is accessible via a website and a mobile
application, the company is based in San Francisco, California.
Their problem statement was low sales and bookings through their
platforms.
Their solution was Professional Photography.
Joa Zadeh, Product Lead at Airbnb was responsible for boosting
the bookings and sales of Airbnb. He achieved this by focusing on 1
key aspect “Professional Photography”. Their hypothesis: “Hosts
with professional photography will get more business, and thus
hosts with professional photography will sign up for photography
as a service”.

But like any other sensible business would do they decided to test
the idea and built “Concierge Minimum Viable Product (MVP) i.e. (a
minimum viable product where you manually guide your user
through the solution to a problem) to test whether this model will
work or not.
Once the results came in, their gut instinct about the idea became
apparent as they showed that Professionally photographed listings
got 2 to 3 times more bookings; even breaking the market average.
In mid-to-late 2011, Airbnb experienced exponential growth with just
20 experienced photographers.
To take steps a step further Airbnb took certain measures:

 Watermarking photos for authenticity.

 Provide “Professional photography” as a service.
 Increasing requirements of “Photo Quality”.
 Airbnb had cracked the code with professional photography
and by February 2012; Airbnb was doing 5,000 shoots per
month thus continuing to accelerate the growth of the
professional photography program.

Thus, Airbnb not only improved on the key aspects that they had but
also tested the same whether their idea and perception of the
market will work favorably or not.
Case Study 2:
Company: Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble Company is an American multinational consumer
goods company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was founded
in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble.
Procter & Gamble makes a lot of cleaning products and is
constantly trying to improve and revitalize its cash-cow products (a
metaphor used for a business or a product, which exhibits a strong
potential in terms of returns), but despite the efforts of highly-paid
experts, they were stalled in their efforts to invent a better cleaning
fluid solution.
Solution:

 Procter & Gamble took guidance from an outside agency named “Continuum”.
 Continuum’s team first analyzed people's cleaning behavior, especially how they
mopped, thus focusing on recording, testing, and rapid iteration during the
investigating phase.
 They found out that for minor spillages, drops, etc. people were going for brooms
and wet cloth and thus were not even using mops.
 This was an eye-opener for the design team as they looked at the problem now
from a different perspective.
 The mop and not the liquids were the key.
 They noticed the makeup of floor dirt - which is part dust and hence is better
picked up without water and innovated on the cleaning tool itself, giving P&G a
$500 Million-dollar innovation - the Swiffer, a more user-friendly style of mop - in
the otherwise stagnant cleaning industry.
Thus, after simply observing and implementing a consumer-centric
approach, the company created an entirely different product
category. Secondly, they treated this as a problem faced by a
startup as it is a good way to take off enterprise blinders. Thirdly
and most importantly, the case showed how the temptations to use
surveys and quantitative research, and the insights from one-to-one
observation can unlock an entire market segment.
Analytics Lesson Learned: Sometimes starting at the beginning,
with a reconsideration of the fundamental problems you’re trying to
solve, is the best way to make a cash cow product - lucrative, but
not growing - back to a high-growth industry. After all, if you don’t
see your customers through naive eyes, someone else will.

Case Study 3:
Company: Clearfit
Clearfit is a SaaS provider of recruitment software aimed at helping
small businesses find job candidates and predict their success. It
was founded in 2007 by founders Ben Baldwin & Jamie
Schneiderman. Their initial plan offered a $99/month (per job
posting) package.
Problem Statement: Clearfit’s customers were confused as the
price and the monthly subscription offered by Clearfit were very
cheap as compared to typical fees of job postings i.e. $300 + per
job posting. This created scepticism in the minds of the customers
as they were used to paying higher fees.
Solution:
Clearfit’s Ben and Jamie decided to close down their monthly
subscription model and switch to a model that the customers
understood. That is a per-job fee. Clearfit launched its new plan with
a price point of $350 for a single job (30 days) and saw an
immediate increase in sales by three times. This increase in volume
and the higher price point improved revenue by 10x.
This is because customers expect a certain price tag on Branded
goods and thus feel sceptical when prices are too low. E.g. ₹100
clothes at ZARA will create scepticism in the minds of the buyer.
Thus after making the changes customers found it easier to
understand the model and could easily compare the value against
other solutions.
Analytics Lesson Learned: Price testing must be done following
customers’ views and testing different price points qualitatively (by
getting feedback from customers) and quantitatively (using
statistical data and demographics).

Case Study 4:
Company: Yes Bank
Yes Bank is an Indian bank headquartered in Mumbai, India, and
was founded by Rana Kapoor and Ashok Kapoor in 2004. It offers a
wide range of differentiated products for corporate and retail
customers through retail banking and asset management services.

Problem Statement: Rana Kapoor gave loans to companies that

were unable to pay back / companies on the verge of bankruptcy.
This created the problem of Non-Performing Assets or bad loans,
which are loans issued by banks that cannot be repaid by the
borrower. After the IL&FS meltdown in 2018, the Government
became alert and introduced rules for banks to disclose their Non-
performing Assets. Of the 30,000 loans that were given out by Yes
Bank, 20,000 turned out to be NPAs.
Possible Solution: Yes Bank should have been more stringent in
analyzing and issuing loans to avoid bad loans. The companies
which were issued loans should have been checked for their
background to avoid giving out loans to companies on the verge of
bankruptcy.
MECE - Mutually Exclusive and Completely
Exhaustive
It is a problem-solving technique that divides the problem into
various parts and forms a kind of an Issue Tree (a tree diagram
containing sets and sub-sets of the factors which are mutually
exclusive and completely exhaustive concerning the problem to find
a viable solution.

To understand this concept better we’ll look at a case study being

solved using the MECE technique/ approach:-
Let’s take an example of a company XYZ which manufactures cars.
Now the company wishes to increase its profits, this problem can
be analyzed as follows:-
We will now construct an Issue tree to better visualize and
understand this problem. The Issue tree will be created as follows:-
There are two ways to increase profits - Grow Revenue or Reduce
costs, further to grow the revenue we have two options - Grow No.
of customers and increase customer lifetime value.
In order to grow the number of customers, we can Improve
products, Improve marketing, Improve sales & service and Increase
distribution. To increase customer lifetime value, the company
needs to improve customer loyalty, Upsell & Cross-Sell, and/or
Increase prices.
Cost can be reduced in two ways - By reducing fixed costs or
reducing variable costs. Fixed costs can be reduced by reducing
overheads, reducing rents, or reducing equipment costs. On the
other hand, Variable costs can be reduced by reducing raw material
costs, reducing logistics costs, or reducing service costs.

For e.g., if suppose company XYZ wishes to Increase profits by

reducing costs, it can be done by reducing variable costs, which can
be done by reducing any of the parameters as stated in the diagram
i.e. by reducing raw material cost or logistics cost, or service costs.