Blog 1 | Week 1 | Introduction to Business Intelligence
In the McKinsey Global Institute white paper, it
emphasizes that the “physical and digital worlds are converging.” Almost everyone
in the world uses social applications, and organizations are creatively finding
new ways of engaging their stakeholders within these apps. Even the simplest
idea of datafying ‘likes’ on a product will help a company determine what to sell
next year—better, what their customers are likely to buy next year. Co-creating
with consumers is profitable—it streamlines development and increases brand
reputation. The McKinsey report goes on
with other IT-enabled trends that provide compelling arguments that the economy,
workplace and society are changing as they adapt to technology.
This is essentially the paradigm shift in action. The datafication
helps companies to improve and innovate because the have access to rich and highly
dynamic content from full populations. Earlier this week Bank of America announced
a new program for zero down, zero closing cost mortgages for first-time homebuyers
in Black and Hispanic communities nationwide. This decision derived from a
population report by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) that the “housing
supply has disproportionally impacted Black households more than any other race/ethnic
group” (Wile, 2022).
The Business Report on Big Data Gets Personal also has several
case studies on new consumer products that work with real-time data. They include anticipatory systems, like the iPhone presenting the best
route to your destination as you start a car and Life Loggers, which keep track of
daily activities like running and visiting restaurants. The report also touches
on the disadvantages of relying on numbers to make decisions—that we forget the
human element of it, e.g., the case of Vietnam War and the use of body
counts as a progress measure.
In the article, The Rise of Big Data, the authors Cukier
and Mayer-Schoenberger elaborated more on the human aspect of decision making
from processing data. There are some things that are just unpredictable. Machines
should not do all the work because they cannot understand context—intuition and
common sense still have roles to play.
In conclusion, common themes in the reading assignments relate to studying human behaviors based on their digital footprints, and identifying trends or patterns in entire populations. The field of data science ties business with analytical skills to capitalize on this raw, unstructured data. With Business Intelligence, and with iterative approaches in the BI Life Cycle, organizations can extract valuable information, like NAR did that Bank of America used, to give them an edge over competitors. Big data is changing the way we live and think.
>^..^<
Resources:
Wile, R. (2022, Aug. 31). Bank of America Announces Zero
Down Payment, Zero Closing Cost Mortgages for First-time Homebuyers in Black
and Hispanic Communities Nationwide. NBC News. Available at:
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/bank-america-zero-down-payment-mortgage-first-time-buyers-details-rcna45662
Youngson, N. Big Data Sign Stock Image. Available at: https://www.picpedia.org/highway-signs/b/big-data.html
Good explanation of Week 1 topics. Human behaviours analysis is a difficult task using big data and BI tools. Analyzing human behaviours specially for social media is becoming very challenging for a lot of social media companies. It has a vast variety of formats such as digital signature , tweets, likes/dislikes, human emotions and share views.
ReplyDeleteData scientists of social media also requires reading human behaviour to understand and process bigdata patterns better.
I hope , Integration of Big data and AI, might help data scientists to identify human habits and behaviours. It can play an important role in influencing human decision -making.
Your recap of topic one was very insightful. Datafication is essentially the future for all these major companies. I read an article regarding the Bank of America program and its crazy to think that all that was derived just from datafication. Overall, your blog was provided several great topics and the sources were interesting.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your summary of week1 lecture and going through the concept of Datafication, I feel we are so fortunate we live in this era where we can leverage from cutting edge data technologies, with data interpretation and analytics we can help underprivileged communities and folks who need help. Thanks for sharing that.
ReplyDeleteHi Kat, awesome job summarizing week 1's topics! I really appreciated that you covered how Bank of America is utilizing data to make decisions that will help us progress socially and economically. It is disappointing to see how large corporations are exploiting the housing market to hold real estate as assets. Purchasing a home as an individual or family has become increasingly difficult as corporations place bids tens-of-thousands of dollars over the asking price while waiving any contingencies or inspections. I think BofA is making a step in the right direction and this is a case of a large corporation attempting to leverage data to create a more just system.
ReplyDelete