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Assignment 1 The New Frontier: Data Analytics
In this highly competitive business environment, businesses are constantly seeking ways to gain traction and understand what is on the minds of current customers and potential customers in order to increase business efficiency. Many companies have turned to business intelligence (BI) and data analytics.
Use the Internet or Strayer Library to research articles on data analytics. Select one (1) industry or one (1) company that is currently using data analytics. Use the industry / company you have selected as the basis for your written paper.
Write a four to six (4-6) page paper in which you:
- Define data analytics in general and provide a brief overview of the evolution of utilizing data analytics in business.
- Analyze the main advantages and disadvantages of using data analytics within the industry or company that you have chosen.
- Determine the fundamental obstacles or challenges that business management in general must overcome in order to implement data analytics. Next, suggest a strategy that business management could use to overcome the obstacles or challenges in question. Provide a rationale for your response.
- Analyze the overall manner in which data analytics transformed the industry or company you selected with regard to customer responsiveness and satisfaction.
- Speculate on the trend of using data analytics for the chosen industry or company in the next ten (10) years. Next, determine at least one (1) additional type of data that one could collect by using data analytics. Provide a rationale for your response.
- Use at least three (3) quality references. Note: Wikipedia and other Websites do not qualify as academic resources.
Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:
- Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.
- Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.
Explanation & Answer
Attached.
Running Head: THE NEW FRONTIER: DATA ANALYTICS
THE NEW FRONTIER: DATA ANALYTICS
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THE NEW FRONTIER: DATA ANALYTICS
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THE NEW FRONTIER: DATA ANALYTICS
Information is paramount in today’s business environment as companies are striving to
outsmart each other and emerge as the best market leader. With intense competition, companies
are left with no option other than sifting through large volumes of data so as to better understand
the market dynamics and keep track of customer expectations and preferences. In essence, data
analytics has become a necessary tool for competitive advantage in the business world and many
companies have fully adopted it to inform their business decisions as well as marketing and
operational strategies. Once such company is Starbucks Corporation. This paper aims at
exploring the concept of data analytics and how it is utilized in Starbucks to increase business
efficiency.
Meaning and Evolution of Data Analytics
Data analytics can be defined as the examination, assortment and processing of large
amounts of data to discover and identify useful insights, correlations and any hidden trend that
may bring value to the business (Isson & Harriott, 2013).
The concept of data analytics has been in existence for many years. In the 1950s, long
before the idea of big data came into existence, business analytics was a tool used by businesses
to unearth trends and insights. By then, data analytics used to be performed by manual
examination of numbers in a spreadsheet. The early era of data analytics that lasted from 1950s
through 2009 involved the use of internal data sources that mostly small and structured and
during that time, analysists could more time gathering and fixing data rather than actual analysis
of data (Gandomi & Haider, 2015). The information uncovered was mostly kept and utilized for
making future business decisions. With the arrival of big data in the mid-2000s, new type of data
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emerged when the Internet and social media platforms like Facebook and Google started
unearthing and collecting new type of data whose qualitative characteristics differed from the
small data of the past. Big data necessitated the need for new frameworks of processing
information such as cloud-based and Hadoop analytics and data analysts required knowledge and
competencies in information technology and analytics to enable them process the huge volumes
of data and turn it into useful insights that can enable companies generate value for their
businesses (Kambatla, Kollias, Kumar & Grama, 2014).
Businesses now don’t utilize data analytics for future use but organizations are now able
to analyze data and use the new insights for making decisions and addressing issues that need
immediate attention. Data analytics has brought about speed and efficiency when it comes to
information gathering and processing. Currently, a new era data analytics known as the
predictive and prescriptive analytics has emerged and is revolutionizing the way businesses are
using data for competitive advantage and profitability. The new era of data analytics is
characterized by use efficient use of customer-centric services utilize analytics to offer
customized and personalized user experience. Data analytics is now moving away from the
concept if big data to the idea of fast and actionable data (Kambatla, Kollias, Kumar & Grama,
2014).
Advantages and disadvantages of Data Analytics in Starbucks
Starbucks is one corporation that has benefited a lot from data analytics. The main
advantages of data analytics for Starbucks is that it has led to significant cost reduction as the
company is now able to store big data and use it efficiently for doing business. Data analytics has
also increased the speed with which Starbucks analyzes customer information and make
decisions immediately. Another advantage is that data analytics has enabled Starbucks to come
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up with new products and services that can satisfy customer needs. This is so because with data
analytics, Starbucks is now able to gauge the needs of its customers and offer them what they
want which has helped to increase the customer satisfaction rate of the company. With data
analytics, Starbucks is now able to receive notifications promptly ...
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