In a joint effort between IBM volunteers and members of the Operational Research & Management Science (ORMS) Group at the triple-accredited Warwick Business School (WBS), we have embarked on the development of an entirely new module “Analytics in Practice” on the technology needed for big data analytics.

“Analytics in Practice” will become a core module for the M.Sc. in Business Analytics & Consulting program at WBS and will complement the methodological training that WBS is currently offering in that it will impart knowledge on business intelligence and on the IBM software tools that are specifically tailored to big data applications such as BigSheets (front end for Apache Hadoop), Cognos or SPSS Modeler.

Links between IBM and WBS have traditionally been tight; in fact, Warwick was the first European IBM partner university, established at the time by Ian Nussey and IBM Fellow Tony Temple, who is still a Board member of WBS. E.g., a distance-learning MBA program was devised exclusively for IBM staff which has 100 students per annum. WBS is keen to collaborate with industry in both research and teaching; we aim for about 10% of each M.Sc. program to be taught by practitioners.

“Analytics in Practice” will aim to familiarize students with practical aspects of big data analytics such as the types of data, their structure and the data lifecycle. Data sources, extraction, cleansing and manipulation as well as dashboarding and visualization are further business intelligence topics that will be covered. Students will be exposed to real-world analytical applications via case studies in IBM’s focus areas like smarter cities and improving business performance, and they will learn about technical challenges.

The module’s content is central knowledge required for job roles like Data Scientists, Business Analysts and Visual Analysts, and we expect that the use of Big Data software tools such as Cognos, SPSS and Big Insights on realistic data sets will increase the students’ real-world awareness and further improve their employability.

As well as focusing on current IBM software offerings, the course will look to analyze emerging trends in the field and look specifically at the new generation of knowledge and learning systems that are being built from a foundation of unstructured data, predictive technology and analytical capability such as IBM Watson. Students as well as understanding the underlying components of such a system will be challenged to think about new fields where such systems can be deployed and to explore the business, ethical and process challenges that such systems introduce.

Businesses store massive amounts of unstructured data in the form of electronic text, e.g. social media content, emails, service notes, customer reviews, etc. According to SAS, a leader provider of business analytics software and services and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market, such data can make up to 90 percent of all business data. How to take advantage of this Big Data?

Text analytics provides an answer by using sophisticated linguistic rules and statistical methods to evaluate text, discover topics and patterns within entire document collections, locate sentiment of electronic text in real time from websites, emails etc to spot trends and customer priorities, and much more. Using text analytics, you can interpret customers' opinions, improve products, optimize services, streamline processes and make proactive, fact-based decisions.

Members of the Operational Research & Management Science group at WBS have teamed up with SAS to provide an entire module dedicated text analytics on the MSc in Business Analytics & Consulting programme. The module will be jointly taught and covers predictive modelling techniques using SAS software, model assessment and implementation, report writing, the SAS Text Miner tool and applications. Hands-on exercises and case studies will ensure a learning experience that is both academically challenging and practically relevant.

Moreover, WBS also provides access to extensive, extra-curricular e-learning materials on SAS programming and SQL querying that students can study at their own leisure, and supports students in obtaining official SAS Programmer certifications which, if successfully achieved, will greatly enhance employability prospects. SAS skills have never been in greater demand in the UK and are heavily used in the Financial, Retail and Government sectors. To see for yourself, go to any major UK job website and search for “SAS” (e.g. monster.co.uk, jobsite.co.uk).

On Friday November 30th, 2:15pm-5pm, British Airways will hold an interactive session at WBS for our MSc MSOR and MSc BAC students focussing on the application of Revenue Management strategies and Game Theory to an activity where the aim is to manage the sale of seats on a flight to gain maximum total revenues.

The students will go into teams and compete to make the most money. No previous Revenue Management background is needed. More details will be made available shortly prior to the event.

 Abstract: Avis Budget EMEA Ltd is a leading car rental company in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Over the last few years the company invested considerable resources in the bespoke design and development of a Revenue Management (RM) Forecasting and Optimisation system to allow Avis to maximise the revenue generated by its fleet of vehicles. The main decisions from the RM system are two levers which control both the supply and demand. One of these is to limit the availability of a certain products so that fleet is saved for more profitable customers. The other is to shuttle cars between rental stations, typically moving cars from areas of low demand to areas of high demand.

Speaker Biography: Dong Li is an operational research analyst at Avis Budget EMEA Ltd, which he joined in 2010. His main responsibility is to leverage operational research techniques in the car rental industry and in particular the revenue management problems.

He obtained his PhD in Management Science from Lancaster University in 2011, and was awarded the Kingsman Prize 2011 for the high quality of his research and publications. He has also spent three years working at Intel Corporation on problems concerned with the planning and scheduling of semi-conductor production.

Date & Location: 22 February, 12:00-13:00, Boardroom WBS Social Studies building