BIAM 560 – Predictive Analytics

LAB WEEK 1

DATA MINING AND R

Dritan Papazisi

Submitted

to Professor: Dr. Michael Mullas

Sunday, May 12, 2019

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Table of Contents

Scenario......................................................................................................................................................... 3
Step 1: Overview of BI successfully implemented within other similar organizations ................................. 3
Part 2 ............................................................................................................................................................. 5
R/RCommander/RStudio .......................................................................................................................... 5
Screen prints of your work, including ....................................................................................................... 6
Other BI Alternatives ................................................................................................................................ 7
Part 3 ............................................................................................................................................................. 8
Chart one is the frequency of customer spending on clothing at EWC .................................................... 8
Chart 2 further evaluates purchase by families purchasing from EWC .................................................... 8
Chart 3 combine information to be more effective .................................................................................. 8
Part 4: Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 9
Literature Sources ......................................................................................................................................... 9
Appendix: 10 Affordable BI Solutions for Startups (financeonline.com) ................................................ 10
1. Sisense – has a free startup program.............................................................................................. 10
2. Looker – by quote (has a startup solution) ..................................................................................... 11
3. Zoho Reports – free ........................................................................................................................ 12
4. QlikView – free ................................................................................................................................ 13
5. Microsoft Power BI – free ............................................................................................................... 14
6. Google Analytics – free ................................................................................................................... 15
7. Statsbot – free ................................................................................................................................. 16
8. Visualr – by quote ........................................................................................................................... 17
9. Tableau – starts at $35 .................................................................................................................... 18
10. Viur – starts at $75 ........................................................................................................................ 19

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Scenario
You have just been hired as a business analyst by the Everything Wearable Company (EWC), a global
clothing retail organization. The CEO is convinced that you are just the person to increase the
organization’s performance by utilizing business intelligence. Your task is to research how BI has been
successfully implemented within other similar organizations.

Step 1: Overview of BI successfully implemented within other similar

organizations
According to IBM’s philosophy, Business intelligence means using your data assets to make better
business decisions. It is about access, analysis, and uncovering new opportunities.” (Almeida et .al. 1999)
So the BI is the system that uses the data within the company’s or public domains to be analyzed and
derive useful information from those data resources per virtually no investment. Since the time computers
started to be used, every company had the historical data stored in massive data storages turned into
data tombs and it was no benefit of keeping them. Since that time the cost of memory to store and
maintain data has been deflated significantly, so nowadays data warehousing and artificial intelligence
used to understand useful patterns and discovery new business opportunities. With the help of data
mining techniques, it has become possible to find interesting associations which support decision makers
in taking crucial measures toward enhancing their business processes. Analyzing the data from sales,
marketing, accounting or stock keeping help the managers had to make their decisions according to
standard reports and figures derived from operational databases. Some success stories are:

1. HelloFresh centralized digital marketing reporting to increase conversions

HelloFresh supplies fresh food and recipes directly to consumer households in ten international
markets. Everything needed for the weekly meals is meticulously organized for each subscriber,
sourced locally and delivered to the doorstep at the desired time. Based on a subscription model
with any-time cancellation, HelloFresh uses subscribers' weekly orders to manage supply chains
and demand in a consistent manner and to enhance the customer experience. Implementation of
a centralized business intelligence solution saved the marketing analytics team 10-20 working
hours per day by automating reporting processes. It also empowered the larger marketing team
to craft regional, individualized digital marketing campaigns.Based on aggregate analyses of
customer behavior, HelloFresh created three buyer personas to guide their efforts. Being able to
see and track real-time data means the team can react to customer behaviors and optimize
marketing campaigns. As a result, they saw increased conversion rates and improved customer
retention. (Helm,
2. Coca-Cola Bottling Company maximized operational efficiency by streamed real time reporting.
Coca-Cola's business intelligence team handles reporting for all sales and delivery operations at

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 the company. With their BI platform, the team automated manual reporting processes, saving
over 260 hours a year—more than six 40-hour work weeks. Report automation and other
enterprise system integrations put customer relationship management (CRM) data back into the
hands of sales teams in the field through mobile dashboards that provide timely, actionable
information and a distinct competitive advantage. A self-service BI implementation fosters more
effective collaborations between IT and business users that maximize the expertise of
participants. Analysts and IT can focus on big-picture strategy and long-term innovations such as
enterprise data governance rather than manual research and reporting tasks.
3. Chipotle a restaurant chain with more than 2,400 locations worldwide, retired their traditional BI
solution for a modern, self-service BI platform. This allowed them to create a centralized view of
operations, so they can track restaurant operational effectiveness at a national scale. Now that
staff have more access to data, the speed of report delivery for strategic projects has tripled from
quarterly to monthly and saved thousands of hours.

In the retail sector where EWC reside, retail analytics industry is constantly evolving, meaning there is a
consistent swathe of data that’s being collected every single day – from emerging trends and sales, to
changes in the global market and everything in between. Gathering, measuring, and reporting on this
data is a huge task for retailers, so by implementing a solid Business Intelligence (BI) system, companies
can effectively store and analyze this data to make sure they’re evolving just as quickly as the retail
industry. The goal is to provide increased visibility into day-to-day operations widt data summarized in
real time in dashboards, chart, table etc like below

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Financesonline.com recommends the following BI solutions for startup Companies. As a startup, which is
the case of EWC, the vital capability needed is accessing information and tracking activities and key
metrics. In this situation there are 3 key features of BI software for startups

i. Data visualization. Dashboards give a quick and easy view of metrics all in one place with a data-
driven approach.
ii. The right minimum of KPIs chosen.
iii. Ability to run ad-hoc queries. Data need to be available for employees so they no longer have to
rely on the IT department.
Application choice should be driven from these three important factors:

i. Affordability. With zero or less capital for expensive BI tools, an affordable system is crucial.
ii. Ease of use.
iii. Customizability.

Part 2
R/RCommander/RStudio
R-Software consists of a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. It compiles and
runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS.
R is available as Free Software under the terms of the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public
License in source code form. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms and similar
systems (including FreeBSD and Linux), Windows and MacOS. This makes it very attractive platform to
be used as start tool for in the process of developing the BI program.
R provides a wide variety of statistical (linear and nonlinear modelling, classical statistical tests, time-
series analysis, classification, clustering, …) and graphical techniques, and is highly extensible.
In its extent R in made up of several component. For what the end user is concerned, they are:

i. R, which is like the engine of a car. Without an engine, your car won't run. Without it the other
components are useless.
ii. R-Studio consists the part where own commands and rutines are scripted. It is like a fancy car to
hold the powerful statistical engine of R. As long as one can drive a car even if it doesn't look
nice, provided it has an engine, the same way one can run statistical analyses using R, without
having R-Studio. However, the R-Studio organizes R windows in a way that is aesthetically
pleasing and that improves your workflow.
iii. R-Commander is the component suited mostly for statistical analysis. R-Commander allows to
access many common data analysis tasks through menus, rather than having to remember
commands, and thus provides a little bit of a statistical roadmap on data analysis journey.
iv. R-Rattle, (acronym for R Analytical Tools To Learn Easier), is the component more suited for
data mining. There are tools which make possible to prepare the data for future analysis.

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Screen prints of your work, including
1. the R environment,

2. R-Studio, and

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 an open CSV or Excel file of your choice are the three requirements needed for discussion with the
CEO.

Other BI Alternatives
EWC has several BI alternatives to consider for fulfillments of its BI needs. Each of them comes with its
own limitations and price tag. In appendix there are given 10 most affordable BI alternatives for start up BI
initiatives. My recommendation is to not focus start up in MS excel since that is not robust solution. It will
be very much time consuming for users and is not friendly to allow the data to be shared in real time from
all users.

Additionally, please look at the three chart results from R, and discuss the value of these results and what
they might mean for increased use of BI and better performance at EWC.

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Part 3
Chart 1: The frequency distribution of customer
spending on clothing at EWC.
Information like this is important to be able to determine the
average/median/mode spending per consumer. This is important to
determine the budget of marketing campaign, discounts and/or the
efficiency of sale, expected cash flow,…etc.

Chart 2: Further evaluates purchase by families

purchasing from EWC.

This chart clearly indicates that frequency of cloth shopping per child
is expected to progressively go down as the number of children per
family increases. As kids grow up, it appears that the younger
siblings seem to use the clothing which the elder one used.
For the company that means that based on the demographics of the
household the marketing campaign in certain areas will yield
differently. However, it needs to be emphasized that EWC has
strong market share in families with two children or less.

Chart 3: Combine information to be more effective.

Since we know that frequency of families with 3+ children is much
lower than the one with one or 2, and the frequency of shopping for
kid’s clothing is significantly lower for families with 4 kids, then
analysis can be simplified and still be meaningful when we combine
the 3 and 4+ children bin in one.

Conclusion remains the same and the main message more concise
and meaningful: the company already have a strong market for
families with 2 children or less, but not in the one with 3 or more.

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Part 4: Summary
Based on the segmented information that was provided by non-classical BI tools, the Everything
Wearable Company (EWC) has some great data to see the demographics of the spending trends of their
customers. My recommendation would be to have CEO, embrace the idea of BI implementation start up.
As exposed extensively in Appendix there are a lot of startup BI tools which may be implemented with
nothing or very minimal capital expenditure. On the other side the implementation would be able to
effectively store and analyze their day-to-day operations and help generate revenues via:
 Uncover overlooked or hidden opportunities
 Identify trends and patterns for inefficiencies
 Determine problem and success areas
 Use data for decision-making
 Pinpoint areas to cut costs
 Help drive profit and ROI

Gathering, measuring, and reporting on this data is a huge task for retailers, but it’s a necessary one. The
business analyst would then be able to provide the organization an in-depth look at the trends and
provide a predictive outlook for the CEO to make some imperative business decisions driven by data.
This data driven approach would allow the company to have a more sustainable growth over the next 10
years and raise above competition. Since the company already have a strong market for families with 2
children or less, but not in the one with 3 or more, I would suggest creating some marketing strategies to
appeal to these families. That could be done through bundle pricing and/or a percentage off for the more
items purchased. Implementation of business intelligence tools would allow the company to keep a pulse
on the increase/decrease of sales and allow for a quicker analysis if certain marketing strategies are not
effective. Implementing BI tools is necessary for EWC.

Literature Sources
1. Almeida, M.S., Ishikawa, M., Reinschmidt, J., Roeber, Y. (1999): Getting Started with Data
Warehouse and Business Intelligence, IBM, 1999, ISBN-10: 0738413747.
2. Financesonline.com: 10 Affordable BI Solutions For Startup Companies
https://financesonline.com/10-affordable-bi-solutions-for-startup-companies/
3. Helm, B., (2017): The World's Most Ruthless Food Startup: The Inside Story of How HelloFresh
Clawed Its Way to the Top, Inc.com, May 2017
4. Marr, B., (2017): The Amazing Ways Coca Cola Uses Artificial Intelligence and Big Data to Drive
Success, Forbes, September 2018.
5. Tabelau.com : Chipotle creates unified view of operations across 2,400 restaurants, saving
10,000 hours per month,https://www.tableau.com/solutions/customer/chipotle-creates-unified-
view-operations-across-2400-restaurants-saving-10000

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Appendix: 10 Affordable BI Solutions for Startups (financeonline.com)
1. Sisense – has a free startup program

Sisense is one of the leading business intelligence software solutions. This robust software unveils business insights from
complex data from any source and size instantly. To support startups, it has a free program exclusively for qualified early-stage
startups. In partnership with major tech conferences, incubators, and VC firms, Sisense provides startups with embedded BI and
analytics with no coding required. It suits startups that need to embed BI to deliver significant insights to customers through
self-service business analytics. To see its features in action at no cost you can easily sign up for a Sisense free demo here.

USER SATISFACTION 99%

OUR SCORE 9.7

Sisense won our Best BI Software of 2018 Award

Sisense Startup comes in the Sisense Acceleration Kit which includes 5 administrators or designers, 100 viewers, 500mil rows of
data, support, monthly webinars, business mentoring, and up to $20,000 worth in cloud services. Qualified startups, which are
seed-funded, pre-series A startups with affiliation to any one of Sisense’s strategic partners, can use the program for 12
months. To join, you can apply via the application form found in Sisense’s website.

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2. Looker – by quote (has a startup solution)

Looker is a BI platform that uses SQL to harness data analytics and get real value from data. It enables the use of familiar
business terms when asking sophisticated questions. Looker has a Startup Analytics designed for early-stage startups. This
ensures insights aren’t lost from apps and tools that don’t talk to each other. You can check its features at no cost, too, when
you sign up for a Looker free demo here.

USER SATISFACTION 95%

OUR SCORE 9.6

Looker won our Expert's Choice Award for 2017

The data analytics platform simplifies getting and querying data into and out of a single database or warehouse. This allows
Looker to perform its SQL-based queries that even non-technical employees can do without the help of your IT specialist. Built
for startups, it also ensures you own your data from any source and empowers your team using deep startup analytic insights.
Since the pricing information of Looker is only available upon request, getting in touch with the vendor is required.

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3. Zoho Reports – free

Zoho Reports is a BI software that enables you to connect to any data source. Zoho is a popular SaaS application with a suite of
products to help users run their business. As one of its modules, Zoho Reports is a platform is a scalable platform with features
such as white labeling, collaboration, and visual analysis, among others. If you want to try also the advanced features beyond
the free version you can sign up for a Zoho Reports free trial here.

It’s a robust solution that’s accessible for startups as its offerings start with a free plan for 2 users, unlimited reports and
dashboards, and 0.1mil rows. Meanwhile, if you want to unlock more features, its premium plans are also affordable starting
from the basic one at $25 per month. This includes over 100 data connectors and Zoho Apps connectors to easily sync data.

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4. QlikView – free

QlikView, a BI data discovery product, helps you create dashboards and guided analytics applications. It’s available for free for
its personal edition. This means your startup gets unlimited access at no cost. There’s also an enterprise edition with licenses
based on server, document, user or application with pricing information available upon request.

Its guided analysis paths are customizable and tightly governed so you can easily create business-driven data discoveries. Your
team can uncover insights and make meaningful decisions in attractive analytic experiences. Technical knowledge isn’t required
as it’s easy to use for creating and deploying analytics apps. Depending on your startup’s suitable deployment model, you can
choose from using it in the cloud or purchasing its license or combining both options.

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5. Microsoft Power BI – free

Microsoft Power BI is a common alternative for startups that want to upgrade from their Excel and Google Sheets. It’s a desktop
tool that can be downloaded for free. In addition, it also has a Pro edition that’s suitable for teams to share and collaborate
starting at $9.99 per user per month.

It has a good array of data connectors and it’s efficient for building dashboards and data preparation. Visual tools enable you to
clean and prepare data. You can also analyze and create reports with custom visualizations. Meanwhile, the premium option for
startups provides dashboards with 360-degree, real-time view of your business and automatically updated data.

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6. Google Analytics – free

Google Analytics is an essential resource used by startups to get started in measuring analytics goals, especially for startup
marketing. Furthermore, this web analytics service is available for free which means you can easily utilize its features without
spending anything. The tool provides you with the most basic and relevant metrics you should focus on such as your traffic
sources, content consumption, and content engagement. It effectively summarizes data into high-level dashboards and it works
with a couple of funnel visualization techniques. Even if you’re using other BI tools, Google Analytics is still a requirement which
is why many programs connect with this data source.

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7. Statsbot – free

Statsbot is a BI tool that streamlines data tracking. With a data-centric approach, it gives your team a single language of data
communication, proactive analytics with automated triggers, and access for everyone in the team. It also has ad-hoc insights
that even non-tech people can ask questions in a natural way. Additionally, it has smart notifications and advanced data
sharing.

Startups can use Statsbot starting from its Free plan for 5 users with 50 scheduled report messages per month, an unlimited
number of profiles for Salesforce, Stripe, Mixpanel, and Google Analytics, and dashboard and insights. The free plan is
generously featured with necessary features for startups to get started with utilizing business intelligence.

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8. Visualr – by quote

Visualr is a business intelligence service that specializes in the visualization of data. It’s a data visualization tool that transforms
complex data sets into charts and dashboards in real time. As its specialty, decoding and understanding data is streamlined and
flow of information is continuous. You can easily implement the system with no programming language skills needed using its
drag-and-drop feature. Additionally, Visualr also offers economical pricing for its server and desktop versions which is available
by quote. The license is perpetual, and the software is upgraded from time-to-time which is a cost-effective solution to get a
good value for your investment.

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9. Tableau – starts at $35

Another reliable BI platform is Tableau. With low pricing for its plans, it’s used by startups for business intelligence. It’s available
for online, server, and desktop which leaves you plenty of choices on how to deploy the system. Starting from $35 per month,
you can get your hands-on advanced analytics for exploring and analyzing data. It includes dashboards, visualizations, and
stories. You can also connect to your files in Excel and Google Sheets which is convenient if you’re previously or currently using
them for your reports.

It’s a reliable alternative for startups when they realize Excel-based products aren’t scalable, especially when it comes to
crunching data. Using Tableau, you can interact with intuitive data visualizations which eliminate the chaos of digging insights
from multi-spreadsheet reports.

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10. Viur – starts at $75

Viur brings analytics to modern data-driven organizations with a product for startups. The vendor, which is a startup, aptly
offers startups a tool to monitor their most crucial metrics, site stats, campaign performance, and goals. Exploration of data
visually is made easy as it connects to your database through writing SQL or drag-and-drop capabilities. This simple yet reliable
tool offers the necessary tools you need for data analysis and business insights.

Viur’s pricing for startups starts at $75 per month for 15 dashboards, unlimited data sources, 3 users, and 3 alerts. The plan also
consists of dashboard filters, public dashboards, support, email reports and analyst support.

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