Week 9
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Business Intelligence: Leveraging InformationInformation Is Power
You’re nearing the completion of your consulting work with RPZ Marketing. Jaclyn Rialto, one of the company’s top sales representatives, wants to find marketing prospects similar to an existing account, Suzanne’s Organic Cupcakes.
You’ve put her in touch with Shannon Haywood, RPZ’s newly hired marketing analytics manager. To learn more about what marketing analytics can do, you accept Jaclyn’s invitation to sit in on their meeting.
During the meeting, Shannon refers to herself as a data mining expert. You and Jaclyn look at each other, each with the same question in mind: What exactly is data mining, and how can it help?This week, you’ll learn the answer to that question and others about the uses of business intelligence.
In barely more than a generation, information technology has gone from being considered a desirable but expensive source of business efficiency to becoming the indispensable backbone of most organizations. It has become nearly impossible for a business to sustain growth without an increasing sophistication in the use of information technology and the data it provides, from tracking sales information to providing the information that drives development and change.
Information provides power to anticipate, track, and detect opportunities as well as risks. As a result, one of the largest concerns regarding information technology is the organization’s ability to maintain privacy and protect ownership of information. The issues involved are wide-ranging, including, for example, the personal privacy of financial, medical, and personnel records; risks involved in legal compliance; and businesses’ proprietary information about products and customers. As a result, understanding the management of business risks surrounding information technology have become critically important to companies.
TO DO LIST
What You Need To Know: Read about the use of technology and information in business and the concept of big data. Prepare for this week’s discussion by finding an article from The Wall Street Journal related to the business use of digital intelligence, and watch the final RPZ scenario video.
Interactive Learning Module: Check your understanding of how to choose a good problem statement.
Discussion: Participate in the weekly discussion activity in Yellowdig.
Prepare: Get a head start on the Solving a Business Problem assignment due next week.
Daily Bonus: Monday
Log in every day, Monday through Friday, for a new question.
Each question is worth 1 point of extra credit, and gives you a chance to practice material and learn more about the course.
GO TO DAILY BONUS QUESTION
Discussion OverviewFor this week’s discussion, you will choose among four options: respond to the scenario video presented in the What You Need to Know activity, analyze a video or an article from The Wall Street Journal, share your experiences with data analytics, or share which readings this week are most relevant to you.
What You Need to KnowLeveraging Technology and Information
The following articles provide a good overview of current issues around the use of technology and information in business.
Furr, N., & Shipilov, A. (2019). Digital doesn’t have to be disruptive. Harvard Business Review, 97(4), 94–103.
This article shows that business and technology need to have synergy. Technology needs to support the business and add more opportunities to contact clients readily. Note: The article is available full-text in the Capella University Library. Search for it by clicking the linked title and following the instructions in the library guide.
Treharne, T. (2017). Building a business technology toolbox: Developments in technology are shifting the business landscape quickly, and forever. How prepared are you? Acuity, 4(3), 31–33.
With all the current social media technology such as Slack, Instagram, and Twitter, plus the rapid proliferation of mobile tools and apps, how can businesses manage their IT initiatives? This research suggests creating a toolbox that is focused on your client.
Moore, M. (2017). Who will be replaced by a robot? Ottawa Business Journal, 20(14), AFF314–AFF315.
To replace or complement your employees is the task of leveraging technology. Read this report to see examples of businesses that have made this difficult decision.
What Is Big Data?
You often hear the term big data, a concept describing how the evolution of technology has given us access to loads of information. With big data comes new models for businesses to capture innovations and direct change. Read the following article to better understand its role.
Sorescu, A. (2017). Data-driven business model innovation. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 34(5), 691–696.
Find an Article in The Wall Street Journal
This week’s discussion requires you to find an article from The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) to discuss. If you have not yet done so, follow the directions provided in The Wall Street Journal Campus page to create your WSJ account. Then search for a WSJ article related to the business use of digital intelligence that you find interesting. Topics you might consider include data breaches, leveraging big data, data regulations, and data mining.
RPZ Scenario
In this final RPZ scenario, watch and listen as the company’s newly hired marketing analytics manager tells one of RPZ’s top sales representative how business intelligence can be used to identify new marketing prospects. Do your readings this week give you some additional ideas about leveraging information to help RPZ meet its goals?
RPZ’s Business Intelligence.
Write Your Discussion Post
Instructions
For this week’s discussion, choose one of the following for your post:
Discuss the conversation between Jaclyn and Shannon from this week’s RPZ scenario video, RPZ’s Business Intelligence. Why will data mining or analytics will be beneficial in this situation?
Search for an article from The Wall Street Journal or a video related to digital intelligence and discuss why the article or video is related to this week’s topics.
Share your personal or work experiences with using data analytics.
Share which of the readings this week offered information you can immediately use at school, home, or work.
Response Guidelines
As you respond to your classmates, share your ideas, experiences, and anecdotal feedback regarding their posts. How have your personal experiences resonated with their ideas? What can you add to their ideas, building upon the connections you have made to the material so far? Don’t forget you can love or like their posts as well.
Do the following when writing your post:
Prepare: For Upcoming AssignmentGet Started
Next week, your final assignment, Solving a Business Problem, will be due. Read the assignment description and use some of your time this week to get started on it. At a minimum, this week, you should define your topic and problem and begin conducting research.
Define Your Topic and Problem
Defining a clear, well-focused topic and problem lays the foundation for research and writing. Capella offers excellent resources for learning how to do this well.
On the Library Research and Information Literacy Skills page, select Improve Your Topic and complete the following:
Watch the multimedia piece, Choosing a Good Search Topic.
Take the time to work through the following areas:
Understand Your Assignment.
Select a Search Topic.
Focus Your Search Topic.
Review the information on mind mapping.
Is My Topic Too Narrow or Too Broad?
Interactive Learning Module: Choosing a Problem Statement
In this week’s Prepare: For Upcoming Assignment activity, you reviewed resources for learning how to define a clear, well-focused topic and problem. Complete this interactive activity to assess your ability to identify the qualities of a good problem statement. As you work through the interactive, compare the problem statement you plan to use for your Week 10 assignment with the examples presented.
LAUNCH INTERACTIVE MODULE
