Best Practices in Business Analytics Symposium

Insights + Analytics:  Coming Together!

Company representatives and students attended the Business Analytics Symposium at Bowling Green State University where they learned the impact of combining marketing with analytics to create leading-edge business practices.  

Hosted by the College of Business, this event is growing each year and provides valuable information and networking opportunities for participants.

“The purpose of this event is two-fold,” Ray Braun, dean of the College of Business, explained. “We want to expose companies in this area to the opportunities presented through data science and provide networking opportunities for our talented business analytics students.”

Two seasoned leaders of analytics initiatives at IBM presented the keynote address to nearly 300 people and talked about gaining insights from the data that companies already have at their fingertips.

“The goal of analytics is to gain actionable insights,” Brian Van Bibber, business development manager, IBM explained. 

Jeff Schlageter, IBM vice president, Ohio Valley Sales and Distribution, discussed accessing relevant data, moving up the analytics’ maturity scale and having the correct resources. 

In addition to the keynote presenters, three featured presenters provided valuable insight to the audience based on this year’s theme “Analytics and Insights:  Coming Together!”

Chris VanCuyk, an enterprise solutions architect from Champion Solutions Group, presented on the shortcomings and evolution of traditional marketing insights. “Analytics and marketing do not typically work together, and it is exciting to see the two beginning to collaborate,” VanCuyk informed the audience.

“Start thinking about how you want to use the data and how to stay relevant to the consumer,” Tammy Hope, also an enterprise solutions architect from Champion Solutions Group, stated.

Ravi Kandikonda, vice president of Marketing Intelligence and Analytics at Comcast Cable told an engaged audience that we are only at the beginning. “Data growth is predicted to grow three times during the next five years.”

Following the presentations and networking session, teams of students presented their findings on a case study announced in January. Students were given a training data set of approximately 37,000 cases and they used the data set to develop models and submit their findings. They were then provided a test data set of 4,000 cases and asked to provide a prediction of the top 400 prospects.  

The first place team selected at the symposium was composed of graduate students Endale Altaye and Casey Whorton.  The faculty advisor for this team is Dr. Jane Chang of the Applied Statistics and Operations Research Department.