BUSINESS AND MARKETING ANALYTICS
Instructional goals
The course aims to prepare students for real-world data analytics applications they will encounter in business environments, by equipping them with both technical and business perspectives on data analytics. They will gain a comprehensive understanding of various analytical methods and their practical applications in marketing and business decision-making. Students will build a "toolkit" of low-code tools for analytics, enhancing their capability to perform data transformations, machine learning (including GenAI applications), and visualization tasks. Additionally, the course emphasizes the importance of effectively communicating data insights to impact business decisions. Through state-of-the-art examples and hands-on exercises, students will develop the skills necessary to derive actionable insights from large consumer datasets and articulate these insights to stakeholders in a persuasive manner.
Intended learning outcomes
- Knowledge and Understanding: This course enhances students' understanding of how to utilize business and marketing analytics tools, processes, and methods to analyze large-scale marketplace data. It will help students grasp the implications of descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics for achieving significant business outcomes.
- Applying Knowledge and Understanding: Students will develop the ability to work both individually and in teams to address business and marketing challenges using analytics. The course involves practical applications of descriptive and predictive analytics on large datasets from various organizations, enabling students to solve real-world business problems.
- Making Judgements: Students will learn to integrate knowledge of business strategy and data analytics, with a particular focus on the ethical implications and biases of AI applications. These skills are crucial for making informed managerial and policy decisions. Students are expected to critically discuss and assess the impact of various analytics metrics on business decision-making processes, ensuring they understand the potential and limitations of these capabilities.
- Communication Skills: Throughout the course, students will gain practical experience in solving business and marketing problems using analytics algorithms and visualization techniques. They will also develop the ability to communicate their findings effectively through reports and group presentations, tailored for both technical and non-technical audiences. This will equip them to become evangelists of data analytics within their organizations, capable of advocating for its use and discussing its potential and limitations with diverse stakeholders.
- Learning Skills: This course will foster the development of students' problem-solving skills. They will enhance their technical, analytical, and creative thinking abilities to analyze market data and derive actionable business insights. Students will learn to formulate solutions that support and enhance the marketing decision-making process.
Course Contents
The content of the course is organized in five sections:
1. Analytics for Business Value: Covers data analytics value frameworks, enablers for business analytics, and creating organizational roadmaps for value creation.
2. Applied Machine Learning: Teaches descriptive and machine learning analytics, supervised and unsupervised learning methods, and advanced analytics topics.
3. Generative AI: Introduces Generative AI, focusing on large language models, their applications, ethical implications, and practical skills in prompt engineering and LLM orchestration.
4. Business Data Communication: Focuses on data visualization techniques, building business dashboards, and developing data storytelling skills for c-suite presentations.
5. Business Analytics Toolkit: This toolkit provides hands-on experience with tools like KNIME, PowerBI, and Flowise, enabling students to be autonomous in designing and prototyping data analytics capabilities.
Reference Books
- Andrea De Mauro: Data Analytics Made Easy: Analyze and present data to make informed decisions without writing any code. Packt, Birmingham, 2021. ISBN: 978-1801074155.
- Andrea De Mauro, Michele Pacifico: The Financial Times Guide to Data Transformation: How to drive substantial business value with data analytics. Pearson UK, 2024. ISBN: 9781292462141.
- Andrea De Mauro: Data Analytics per tutti: Imparare ad analizzare, visualizzare e raccontare i dati. Apogeo, 2022 (in Italian). ISBN: 978-8850335947.
- Roberto Cadili, Francisco Villarroel Ordenes: Meet Your Customers: The Marketing Analytics Collection, KNIME Press, 2023.
Teaching Methods
Lectures, discussion, method labs, and group projects on relevant empirical issues. Students’ participation during lectures is strongly encouraged and may impact the final grade.
Assessment Method
Students attending the course:
50% group projects,
25% quiz,
25% exam.
The course is not recommended for not attending students due to the high team work load.
Thesis assignment criteria
No specific criteria.
Week 1
- Course Introduction
- Data Analytics Value Frameworks: Descriptive, Predictive, Prescriptive Analytics
- Enablers for Business Analytics: Technology Stack, Data Governance, Roles and Skills, Organizational Setup
- KNIME: Get Started Session, UI and Nodes
Week 2
- KNIME: Data Transformation Nodes. Build an Automated Marketing Report
- Descriptive Analytics Foundations: Summary Statistics, Distributions, Outliers, Control Charting
- Foundations of Machine Learning for Business: Model Validation, Accuracy Metrics, Lift Charts, ROC Curves
Week 3
- Supervised Learning: Regression, Forecasting Prices
- KNIME: Loops and Variables
Week 4
- KNIME: Machine Learning Nodes, Hyperparameter Optimization
- Supervised Learning: Classification, Decision Tree and Random Forest Algorithms, Propensity Modeling and Consumer Scoring
- Supervised Learning: Sentiment Analysis of Customer Reviews
Week 5
- Unsupervised Learning: Clustering Algorithms, Customer Segmentation in a CRM
- Unsupervised Learning: Topic Modeling, Identifying Patterns in Customer Voice
- Unsupervised Learning: Market Basket Analysis, Optimizing Retail Assortment
Week 6
- Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Scoring (RFM) and Customer Lifetime Value
- Mid Term Exam
Week 7
- Data Analytics Canvas: Framing Requirements for Business Analytics Applications
- Data Analytics Maturity Modeling: Organizational Roadmap for Value Creation
- Data Visualization: Types of Charts, Do's and Don’ts, Golden Rules of Professional Charts
Week 8
- PowerBI: Get Started, Navigate the UI
- Business Dashboard Creation: Building a Management Cockpit
- Data Storytelling Framework: Communicating with Data Persuasively, Data Presentation Delivery Techniques
Week 9
- GenAI Foundations: How Large Language Models Work, Opportunities, Limitations, and Risks, Ethical Implications
- Prompt Engineering for Business Applications: The 4-part Prompting Framework
- Flowise: Get Started, Navigate the UI
Week 10
- LLM Orchestration: Extending Models with Tools Connecting with APIs
- LLM Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) Techniques for Business Applications
- LLM Multi-agent Applications
Week 11
- Flowise: Advanced Features, Deployment, Extensions, and Q&A
- KNIME: Embed R and Python Code
- KNIME: Advanced Features and Q&A
Week 12
- Advanced Topics: Time Series Analysis
- Advanced Topics: Social Network Analysis
- Advanced Topics: Neural Networks and Deep Learning
- Course Revision