Student’s Name:                                                        Date Submitted:                                                        Company’s Name:   Brief Description of Your Company’s Industry/Market Place:       The Tool for Data Collection and Analysis:  Please complete the Field Study tool that follows

Student’s Name:                                                        Date Submitted:                                                       

Company’s Name:

Brief Description of Your Company’s Industry/Market Place:

The Tool for Data Collection and Analysis:  Please complete the Field Study tool that follows. 

Part A:  Identify Your Organization’s 5-6 Core Processes and their primary sources of data.   Feel free to add additional rows as need be but avoid going beyond six core processes.  Note: Chances are if you find more than 6 core processes on your list, you are identifying activities within core process.  Also do not feel obliged to fill each box but be sure to think through each element to ensure the completeness of your response.  An example is provided for your consideration and possible reuse. 

Part B:   Identify your Organization’s current Social Data, Decision Support, and Business Analytics Applications:  If your organization does not have any such systems in place today, feel free to speculate as to what types of business/data analysis systems might serve the needs of your organization.  An example is provided for your consideration and possible reuse.

Part C:  Decision Support/Business Analysis Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Model

The purpose of this section is to allow the student to establish some sense of the costs associated with the business analytics functions within your company (if any!).  The instructor is not looking for actual financial figures but rather some sense of the scope of the investing in people, software, equipment, and services.  Examples are provided for your consideration and possible reuse.

Part D:    Assess the value of deployed business analytics information services and technologies within your company.  Here the instructor is not looking for quantitative assessments, such as ROI calculations) but rather a sense of the impact of these practices on the organization.  Where there are no such services in place, indicate this but feel free to speculate on how these services might benefit your organization.  Examples are provided for your consideration and possible reuse.

1. Operational uses?
   1. e.g. allows for the consolidation of financial transactions from across the company in a single place and to a common standard of measure (i.e. same currency).
   2. .
   3. .
   4. .
   5. add more as needed

2. Tactical uses?
   1. e.g. provides management reports by business unit and product line for enterprise-wide assessment of progress against plan.
   2. .
   3. .
   4. .
   5. add more as needed

3. Strategic uses?
   1. e.g.  allows for a global view of company assets and through the forecasting tool a means to establish 5-year pro forma plans governing corporate mergers and acquisition capabilities.
   2. .
   3. .
   4. .
   5. add more as needed

Key Concepts and Terms

• core business process – All organization possess core business processes that allow the enterprise to operate, delivering products and services to its customers.  A typical organization has no more than five or six core process, including: (1) financial management, (2) people management, (3) perhaps supply-chain management, (4) perhaps sales force management, (5) perhaps product design and development, and so forth, depending upon the nature of the business under study.  Note that a not-for-profit, like a university or hospital, may have very different core processes from those of a commercial bank or an automobile manufacturer. 
• core business process activities – Within a given business process, there can be any number of discrete activities.  For example, the activities commonly associated with financial management include: financial planning and reporting, accounts payable, accounts receivable, budgeting, payroll, cash management, investment and asset management, and so forth.  
• business process (BP) owner – those business leaders/managers who are the primary “owners” of the core process activities and therefore those who oversee the use of related enabling IT from an end user standpoint.
• System Steward – those IT managers who are primarily responsible for the ongoing operations, maintenance, and support of each key IT system cited previously.
• valuing IT within the enterprise –  The following set of descriptions/definitions should help you in this regard:
  • operational or transactional value – when information management systems and processes contribute to the effectiveness and efficiency of day-to-day business operations/transacting either by automating and or disintermediating (streamlining) those business processes – reducing costs, speeding up delivery, improving the quality/reliability of outcomes, and/or adding additional value to the customer experience.
  • tactical or managerial value – when information management systems and processes generate detailed and summary information on business processes to inform day-to-day and near-term process controls and management decision making, concerning the timing, volume and flow of goods and services, staffing and operational expenditures, the coordination of business unit activities within the enterprise, and wider supply chain and enterprise operations between the organization and its up- and down-stream partners.

strategic or transformational value – when information systems and processes enable more long-term innovative/transformational thinking, planning and decision making concerning fundamental change within the enterprise in terms of its direction and market positions, its scope of activities and product offerings, its merger and acquisition decisions, and so forth, usually involving the longitudinal analysis of distilled bodies of key internal performance information integrated with information drawn from external sources