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Unit 8: Usages, Benefits and Success of Business Analytics and Data Visualization

13. By means of effective data visualization, business decision makers cannot quickly examine Notes
large amounts of data.
14. The first function of a good chart is to allow decision makers to examine the data and
reduce the time required to extract key information.
15. Status indicators are commonly used visualization to indicate the business condition of a
particular measure or unit of data.

Case Study A Case Study in Business Analytics

Procter & Gamble
P&G’s has 127,000 employees and 300 brands sold in 180 countries. P&G averages about 4
billion transactions daily. P&G CEO Bob McDonald has staked out a strategy to “digitize”
the company’s processes from end to end, and Business Sufficiency, Business Sphere and
Decision Cockpits is enabler of that agenda.
P&G is building analytics expertise at a time when P&G is cutting costs in other areas,
including eliminating 1,600 non-manufacturing jobs. The company’s IT organization itself
has cut $900 million in total spending over the past nine years.
P&G is investing in analytics talent, even as the company cuts in other areas, to speed up
business decision making. CIO Filippo Passerini says he plans to increase fourfold the
number of company staff with expertise in business analytics.
CIO Passerini who leads the Global Business Services (GBS organization) is investing in
analytics expertise (almost like a business competency center or center of excellence)
because the model for using data to run a company is changing.
Business Sphere and Decision Cockpits
P&G has made available to 38,000 users analytical solutions called Business Sphere and
Decision Cockpits. The Business Sphere was developed in partnership with BOI, Cisco,
HP, SAP, Nielsen and TIBCO Spotfire.
The first project, launched in 2010, is the Business Sufficiency program, which gives
executives predictions about P&G market share and other performance stats six to 12
months into the future. At its core is a series of analytic models designed to reveal what’s
happening in the business now, why it’s happening, and what actions P&G can take. The
“what” models focus on data such as shipments, sales, and market share. The “why”
models highlight sales data down to the country, territory, product line, and store levels,
as well as drivers such as advertising and consumer consumption, factoring in region- and
country-specific economic data. The “actions” analysis look at levers P&G can pull, such as
pricing, advertising, and product mix, and provide estimates on what they deliver.

Business Sphere is the further integration of technology, visualization, and information
enables leaders to drill-down into data to get answers in real-time. To answer a set of
questions, the program analyzes and connects as much as 200 terabytes of data (equal to
the amount of information contained in 200,000 copies of Encyclopedia Britannica),
allowing for unprecedented granularity and customization.
The way the data is presented uncovers insights, trends, and opportunities for the business
leaders and prompts them to ask different and very focused business questions. If one
question elicits a follow-up question, it can be addressed with data on-the-spot.
Contd....

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