NUS-ISS Business Analytics Practice, by Dr Barry Shepherd

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Dr. Barry ShepherdSenior Member, Business Analytics PracticeInstitute of Systems Science, National University of [email protected]

Business Analytics Practice

How do we “do” Business Analytics?


What is Business Analytics?

The process of extracting useful knowledge from data to solve business problems





• Statistical Analysis• Predictive Modeling• Association Finding• Link analysis• Data Visualisation• Graph/Network Analysis• Sequence Finding• Data Clustering• Outlier Detection• Text Mining• Many more….

• Customer Segmentation & Profiling• Customer Acquisition & Retention• Campaign & Promotion Analysis• Measure Sales Force Effectiveness• Spend Analysis• Market Basket Analysis• Demand Forecasting• Warehouse Planning• Inventory Management• Logistics Optimisation• Healthcare Management &

Optimisation• Analysis of Clinical trials• Fraud Detection• Market & Credit Risk Analysis• Many more….

The process of using techniques such as….

To perform tasks such as….

In domains such as…


How do we “do” Business Analytics?

• I have lots of data, it must be useful, go find me some insights

• Let’s build a big data warehouse then see what we can do with it

• We have just bought XYX tool/algorithm, go use it

Start with a business problem!

Understand what data is available, needed, could be useful

Identify an analytics approach/strategy

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Business Analytics Practice



Discovery: Find me some Insights!

What is an insight?


Finding Insights

• Insights must be useful and actionable

• Insights often happen when you are looking for something else


Finding Insights

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Starting Hypothesis & Questions

Verify, Evaluate, Test,Explore, Visualise

New avenues to explore,Serendipitous insights

• Where do you think your inefficiencies are?

• What feedback are you getting from customers?

• Is the Pareto principle at work?(the 80/20 rule)

• What caused the anomalies, outliers?

New/Amended Hypothesis

Start with some hypotheses, questions to answer…..


Business Analytics Pitfalls

• Remember to get off!

• Have a clear exit criterion

• Avoid perfectionism

• Do a quick first-cut solution as a ball-park measure of success


Business Analytics Pitfalls

• What data do you have?

• What data do you need?

• What data could be useful?

Success is more often achieved by getting better data rather than tweaking an algorithm

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Institute of Systems Science, National University of Singapore

Mission: To Inspire and prepare Infocomm leaders to innovate over the course of their professional careers

• IT graduate education,• Professional development

courses• Consultancy …

Data & Analytics

NUS-ISS Business Analytics Practice, by Dr Barry Shepherd