The Value of Data Analytics: A Critical Review and Business Case

Scenario:

You have been invited by the senior board of directors to submit a detailed business case for investing into specialist data analytics software to support business operations at your company. The company and senior management are optimistic, however given a lack of experience in Business Intelligence and Data Analytics, they are unsure of its true value. Therefore, your aim is to demonstrate how data analytics can help the organisation become more agile and derive value in various areas of the business, whilst also considering challenges associated with its implementation.

The assessment consists of two parts:  

Part A (1,250 words) (Part A is worth 30% of the module marks)

• Provide a literature review addressing the present and future role of data analytics for businesses.

In part A you are required to draw upon the relevant topics from this module and through wider reading present a critical literature review which discusses the current and future trends, challenges and opportunities of data analytics for businesses. You are expected to focus on a particular sector in your assignment.  

Part B (1,750 words) (Part B is worth 60% of the module marks)

• Through the skills gained during the SAS lab sessions, address specific business scenarios and provide actionable insights from the data in a clear and concise manner through
• generating relevant business scenarios (10%)
• analysing data in SAS which addresses your business scenarios (20%)
• recommending decisions based on your analysis (30%)

In part B, you are expected to analyse data and show evidence of your data querying and reporting abilities by performing any of the following tasks relevant to your chosen scenarios:

• Importing Data Files
• Introduction to Tasks and Wizards
• Creating a Frequency Report Generating HTML, PDF, and RTF Output
• Creating a Listing Report
• Filtering Data in a Task
• Creating a Graph
• Filtering and Sorting Data
• Creating New Columns with an Expression
• Grouping and Summarizing Data in a Query
• Joining Tables
• Generating Summary Statistics
• Creating a Summary Report with the Summary Tables Task
• Prompting in Projects
• Creating and Using Prompts in Tasks
• Creating and Using Prompts in Queries
• Combining Results
• Updating and Organizing Projects

You are expected to incorporate your analysis in the main body of your report and in the appendices section, where relevant. You MUST place emphasis on your ability to evaluate and interpret your analysis, whilst providing insights into how the analysed data promotes decisions and recommendations. The business scenarios CANNOT be identical to those performed during the lab sessions. Although diverse data-sets will be provided to choose from, you are responsible for providing contextual details where relevant, including a company name of your choice.

Finally remember, this report is being submitted to the CEO and senior management of your company, therefore it should be structured accordingly, as a professional business report