BUSINESS ANALYTICS & Help/Service Desks November 9, 2012; January 18, 2013 Business Analytics, Friday, November 9, 2012 they are looking to bring more direct Help & Service Desks, Friday, January 18, 2013 information in to better Business Analytics Nov 9, 2012 understanding the consumers is important, which is why they partner with retailers and share information. A local manufacturing company does not use information regarding direct consumers but they do analytics on their machines to understand when the machine will need worked on and possibly predicting when it may fail. They also use these analytics to better service their customers and maintain high quality service relationships. The meeting began with introductions. Bill McHenry was the moderator and started with an introduction regarding academia and the view on the growth and importance of Business Analytics. IT EXECUTIVE EXCHANGE 2012-­‐2013 McHenry then used a PowerPoint presentation about Gunthy-­‐Renker to show how they used Business Analytics to change their company. Gunthy-­‐Renker is a direct response marketing type of organization that has many different products. They use direct response to gather immediate feedback about their products and marketing. They take ownership of the product as soon as they decide it is something they want to commit to but they outsource their operations to other companies and therefore this is an extreme case of integrating data from many different sources. Several questions were posed to the ITEE members for their response and discussions. Ultimately the members present would like to be able to integrate all the information to be used throughout their decision making and supply chain processes. Gunthy-­‐Renker looks at the lifetime value of customers in regards to the return on promotional investment from the time when the commercial is shown to the amount of sales. This requires a lot of tracking. Do you calculate lifetime value of customers and if so how do you do this? What are your problems for integrating all of the information you require creating a complete view of your company? At a local insurance company, there is a very large volume of data coming in from devices that are placed in the customer’s car as well as data from the service and claims departments. It is difficult to run a query using all of this data because they are not integrated. Another local company also uses a lot of information from different areas in their business but direct consumer information is not a large part of their process. In the future, The lifetime value of a customer could be useful on an individual and company wide basis. Knowing what the individual customer responds to allows for better target marketing and knowing what profitability each promotion had allows a company wide decision regarding the value of each promotion. The insurance company calculate the lifetime value of a customer by looking at claims and predictive behavior of the driver such as braking times and driving distance and times in order to create a personal evaluation. They no longer want to compare one customer with another and instead make all decisions based on the risks and behaviors of each individual driver but currently they do not have enough information. A local grocery store comapny also calculates the value of customer but on a smaller BUSINESS ANALYTICS & Help/Service Desks November 9, 2012; January 18, 2013 timeframe usually on a monthly or yearly basis. They look at what amount of money is being spent by customers and what they are spending their money on as well as the trends of their spending in order to determine where the customer is in their shopping cycle. They would like to use the information to target market to that customer and better understand who the most profitable and loyal customers are and the patterns associated with them. and using the information to create a model that is used to pick the optimal scenario. The discussion turned to how large BI teams are for the members and whether or not these teams are growing. Another local Insurance company set up a Business Intelligence team in order to target the areas where they were losing money. They began focusing on midmarket and small business in certain areas such as boating or snowmobiling insurance which created profits. There are about 20 people on this team. The manufacturing company uses analytics to stay on top of their service and customer contracts. They have information systems that have been around for many years but it is still a growing area for the company. Another local company is also growing their Business Intelligence and Analytics area. The results of Gunthy-­‐Renker’s study was that they were able to have one version of the truth, they gained the ability to have daily or weekly reports which sped up their decision making ability to a point that it almost may have been too fast, and they were better able to evaluate products and customers. Are you experiences a phenomenon where you are now making decisions too fast, is there a limit on what you should do with your Business Intelligence (BI)? After presenting Gunthy-­‐Renker’s study Dr. McHenry asked the group whether they believed this was a case of Business Intelligence or Business Analytics? The group unanimously voted that this was a case of Business Intelligence because it was not forward looking and that most of the companies present were already doing this. It was then pointed out that Gunthy-­‐Renker may be using decision optimization which is a part of Business Analytics because they are using the best possible information in order to make the optimal decision. A debate arose as to what decision optimization was, with some members saying it was the best solution and others saying that it is looking at different scenarios Analytics that companies are doing may not necessarily be for themselves anymore because boundaries are blurring and information is being shared across the business chain. The amount of data collected is also growing every day and the capabilities of data analytics is increasing rapidly. Machine generated data is contributing greatly to analytics and Artificial Intelligence is being used more often. An area in this field is video analysis, which allows video feeds to be watched and analyzed and then activity outside of the norm is detected. This type of activity is also used in the grocery industry combined with POS data to detect “sweet hearting” where items are not scanned and given to the consumer free of charge and to check traffic flow and consumer behavior while shopping. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology was discussed and the future with this type of advancement. Currently the cost of RFID is too high to be used at the item level because a barcode has no cost aside from the space it takes up and the ink it requires. Self-­‐
shopping is another type of technology, which is where the consumer has a type of scanner or smartphone application that allows users to scan the items they put in their carts and then BUSINESS ANALYTICS & Help/Service Desks November 9, 2012; January 18, 2013 pay through this type of software thus avoiding checkout lines. An issue that is created with this type of technology is the theft or misuse of technology to pay for a less expensive item and take a more expensive one. Optical recognition software is being used and developed in order to combat this type of theft. Systems like this then create more data that can be collected and analyzed in order to continue the growth and betterment of business analytics. Who is going to be analyzing this data, an analyst with business training or a business person with analytics training? It was decided by the group that both business knowledge and analytical training are important. The ideal person for many of the companies has both types of knowledge and teams should also have both times of people. A representative from a local manufacturing company pointed out that they are currently growing their BI department and looking to move forward technologically through ideas such as putting IP addresses on their products in order to better sense what is happening with this piece and predicting when or if it will fail. They are also currently facing the issue of having their products being sold on the Internet without their control, which could fundamentally change their sales channels. Ultimately they feel that the business should be in control but the Business Intelligence and Analytics area should play a role in this type of decision making. The dark side of big data -­‐ the way it can be used against you -­‐ was also discussed. An example that was given, Firestone was sued because they had done testing of tires and knew that there was a problem with their tires that resulted in many deaths. Because they had kept the results, they had to provide this information in a lawsuit. Finally the need to celebrate and encourage business analytics was discussed. Many of the jobs created in this area do not have a structured growth ladder. There are different levels of analysts and it may be important to develop a career path for these individuals that do not require them to give up the analytical side of their jobs. Analytics is critical to the success of the companies and should be seen as important in all companies and not just ones that are doing advanced analytics. What type of program should be offered educationally to fulfill the needs of the local companies? Currently there are two paths available to students wishing to work in the analytics area. The first path is a MS in Business Analytics that focuses on enterprise analytics and is specialized to provide students with a lot of skills in database analysis, statistics and analytics. The second is an MBA with business analytics concentration, which is geared towards students who will become end users with better analytic skills. The group felt that both would be useful because it is important to be able to analyze the data but also to use it correctly to make the decisions that are required. Help & Service Desks Jan 18, 2013 The topic of the January 18th meeting was help and service desks with questions such as whether or not they are still needed now that social media is so available and prevalent, if they are even more needed due to the amount of devices being used and how to run these services efficiently and effectively. What are Companies doing? Some of the companies present said that they use interns for their help desks as well as outsourcing these areas to other companies and other countries. Others mentioned using different levels of help desks and requiring different types of personnel at each level. There are help desks for end-­‐users as well as for company associates and personnel. Some companies are using self-­‐help by making apps and searches that allow end-­‐users to search their problems and topics and then use BUSINESS ANALYTICS & Help/Service Desks November 9, 2012; January 18, 2013 the information to solve their own problems to cut down on calls and help-­‐desk use. Many of the companies are using one call center and then routing the questions to other companies, such as Microsoft or Verizon, based on products that are being called about. Problems and Concerns One of the concerns with bringing help desks back in-­‐house is the cost. It is important to provide service and help desks where you have workers and employees. So a global presence may be necessary for the help desk but it is also important to have control over the help desk. Another suggestion is to use more automation, which may cost more upfront but can allow for less employees and 24-­‐hour assistance. Another concern is retaining employees. To combat losing employees it may help to offer small promotions, specific training and merged levels of help desks in order to allow for room to grow without a change in employees. and do not speak English. Another suggestion was using technology and apps to translate both online and automated on the phone. Personal Devices Another area of discussion was employee personal devices and whether or not this increases or decreased the need for help desks. People will always be loading and using their own apps on their own devices, which may interact or react to your apps. It is also a question of whether or not the company itself will provide and/or pay for the employee’s devices. Some members also use Citrix desktop environment. It allows users to connect to their own desktops from their own devices, which helps Evaluating customer with security but is a trade off satisfaction after they device costs for the service have interacted with costs. the help desk personnel is an important way to assess what each department is doing well and what areas need to be changed. There is also a problem with the knowledge of the person answering the call or concern. Some of the help desk personnel do not have the necessary skills or knowledge to handle the nature of most of the calls coming in. A solution for this would be to have knowledge base available for use by all members of the help desk. Another concern is having people who are overqualified answer level 1 inquiries and problems without paying them more. A way to encourage these people to perform tasks that they feel are below them is to provide a different title, a small pay increase or offer more training and skill sets to be added to their resumes. A final concern was language barriers with many companies suggesting using a third party to have a person translating as a middle partner to help those customers who call in Client Satisfaction Evaluating customer satisfaction after they have interacted with the help desk personnel is an important way to assess what each company/department is doing well and what areas need to be changed. Some of the companies are using email surveys to determine client satisfaction, which are sent after the client has been helped. Other companies use random sample call surveys that occur after the phone call. Most of the companies present said that they follow up in some way to those customers who are extremely pleased, displeased or had a lot to say. It is important to find a balance between getting enough responses to make a difference and flooding the consumers with inquiries for surveys and responses. (Prepared by Brittany Michael, Shravan Parepally, and Prof. B. S. Vijayaraman)