Question

Search the Internet and/or the University Library using a phrase such as, "companies that use data analysis." If you choose to utilize the University Library, use the following steps: Click on University Library. Click on the Research Guides tab. Click on Business. Enter a phrase like "companies that use data analysis" in the Enter Search Terms field. Evaluate data analysis and data analytics in a minimum of 700 words, and include the following: Identify two or more organizations that utilize data analysis and data analytics. Identify one or more examples of information being collected and analyzed by the organizations. Assess the importance of data analysis on the successful operation of the organizations. Describe how effective application of data science has grown revenues, increased profits, or led to other positive outcomes for at least one of the organizations.

Answer 1

Data analysis is used extensively in many companies in today’s world. Let us consider two examples of companies that have widely used data analysis resulting in positive outcomes and increased output.

Amazon, the world renowned online retail giant has massive data on huge number of customers on their characteristics, online browsing patterns, product viewing, Amazon payment patterns and several other aspects. The data is so diverse, in variety, volume and velocity and such types of data are often known as big data. Amazon performs extensive data analysis on such data to put use in their algorithms for their advertising and marketing, and other areas of profitability. It is also used to improve customer relations. Primarily, the customer interface is made smoother using such data as the entire process is faster and simpler using algorithms.

One of the most crucial aspects of data analysis for Amazon is the use of recommendation engines. These engines observe the online pattern of the customers, for example behaviour such as viewing history or buying history. These recommendation engine algorithms learn from the data at hand, and try and predict what products the customer might need in the future. This results in the customer having increased curiosity of the next product shown in recommended products. Also, this allows Amazon to understand which products would be more profitable for which customer.

Such algorithms have resulted in huge increase in the market. This has resulted in the company becoming more profitable and also increasing the total market capitalization by gigantic proportions. Newer marketing strategies are being devised everyday based on the results of newer algorithms. Data analysis for this company has resulted in a smoother and has made a very pertinent contribution towards the successful and efficient operation of the company.

This is one of the primary reasons, why Amazon is increasing it’s investment in data analysis keeping in mind an analytics-oriented approach towards marketing. This is one of the primary reasons, why Amazon is increasing it’s investment in data analysis keeping in mind an analytics-oriented approach towards marketing.

Another company using data analysis is the global healthcare company Merck. It was looking to utilize data collected in it’s internal and core systems keeping in mind the objective of gaining meaningful insights in the fields of manufacturing and inventory control. The initial problem was collecting and reporting the data was taking too much effort from the employees and hence the residual effort in understanding business situation or making business decisions for the company was not being performed efficiently. Data was present but the process to make the whole reporting or collecting reports had to be made smoother needing lot less effort from the employees who could focus more on macro level decisions. This was the primary objective for Merck to use data analytics.

They created MANTIS (Manufacturing and Analytics Intelligence), a data warehousing system made up of several elements such as in memory databases and open source tools. These were used to perform data analysis at a very holistic level, including at various levels. Data can be present in various formats, such as text or video or social media. Thus structured or unstructured data formats with a huge diversity in variety and volume could be tackled by the system which led to immense changes in the way the data was analyzed.

The other aspect that was significantly improved was the reporting part. Often the reports produced are very detailed which makes it difficult for interpretation by the business analysts and is understandable mostly by technical specialists only. MANTIS was crucially designed to make it very easy for business people and higher management officials to see data in visualization software and make business decisions quicker. This resulted in lesser issues while explaining reports to business management.

Technical people could also access advanced models and simulation if they wanted to, using modelling tools. This has led to a substantial decrease in the time and cost of company for the projects undertaken in data analytics. This has led to decrease in the inventory carrying costs almost by half. This was a very crucial step in the direction of data oriented approach to reporting and this has resulted in long-term profits for the company. This is another instance of a company using data analysis and resulting in greater profits.