Each module in the Business Intelligence course will last for two weeks. At the end of the two weeks you will be required to submit to your boss a comprehensive summary of all the relevant material. You can assume the following conditions apply for each assignment of this type:
Assume I am your boss, the CEO of the company, and that I attended a luncheon in which they keynote speaker gave a presentation on an interesting and intriguing current topic about analytics and business Intelligence. The talk was very interesting and I signed up for an advanced presentation on the topic in two weeks. The keynoter suggested several articles for us to read and research in order to prepare for the next presentation. I consider these to be important talks that have the potential of transforming and improving how our organization operates.
Currently my schedule is so busy that I will be unable to do the required reading and research. I am going to need to enlist help from others in the organization. This same scenario has happened in the past and I was always disappointed because my lack of preparation deprived me from getting the full benefit from these educational experiences. Since my schedule is always too busy I have decided to hire someone to do this research and present me with a summarized report explaining all the important details of what I should know before attending the advanced presentations. The person hired will hold a prestigious position in the organization. I have selected several of the company’s best employees to complete for this position. I will compare their reports and hire the person who does the best job. Because this position is considered to be so vital to helping the CEO accomplish the organizational mission it comes with a large salary increase. You really want this promotion.
The first reading and discussion for week 1 started with Golsby-Smith examining the different types of problems addressed by analytical and rhetorical methods. The second reading and discussion, Competing on Analytics, focused on the persuasive argument by Davenport in favor of using analytics to support business decisions.
For week 2 the chapters from the Davenport book introduced us to his framework (DELTA) for mapping an organization’s current analytic status according to the DELTA framework. We will continue our investigation of this framework in future modules.You don’t need to spend much time on these chapters for this paper. You may use some of the material from these chapters to enhance the argument made by Davenport in the previous article. However, it is not necessary as we will address this material in a lot more detail in future modules.
Hint: The Harrah’s Casino case gives us an in-depth real-life example of how Gary Loveman used analytics to create Harrah’s marketing plan, their customer relationship plan, and their employee rewards program. One of the most effective ways to teach your boss about the most important concepts is to present a real-life example (Harrah’s) and support the most important concepts with material from the other readings.
In this assignment you need to integrate all the materials that you have covered over the whole two weeks. I suggest you outline everything you work on during the module — highlighting the most important concepts, ideas, and opinions of the authors so that you are ready to integrate all the material and craft a coherent summary report. Integrating and summarizing the important concepts and ideas will require a lot of serious thought, reflection, and creative writing. It is not something that most people can do at the last minute. You should start preparing yourself from day one in order to be prepared to do your serious writing in the last few days before the deadline.