Course: Business Data Mining & Decision Models

Faculty: Prof. V. Nagadevara, nagadev@iimb.ernet.in

Text: Data Mining Techniques-for Marketing, Sales and CRM, 2nd Ed., by Michael J.
A. Berry and Gordon S. Linoff, John Wiley & Sons.

Supplementary text: Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques by Jiawei Han, Micheline
Kamber and Jian Pei, Elsevier

Additional readings in the form of published research articles will be provided

Term: Term IV (2017-19); Pre-requisites: Core courses.

No. of sessions: 17 sessions of 90 minutes each.

Overview of Course

Data driven decision making in business has grown enormously in the last few years, and
today this sector is a multi-billion dollar industry. This course covers the principles of
business data processing for decision making. The main objective is adopting analytics to
improve business performance. Business Analytics uses statistical, operations research
and management tools to drive business performance. Many companies offer similar kind
of products and services to customers based on similar design and technology and find it
difficult to differentiate their product/service from their competitors. However, companies
such as Amazon, Google, HP, Netflix, Proctor and Gamble and Capital One use analytics
as competitive strategy. Business Analytics helps companies to find the most profitable
customer and allows them to justify their marketing effort, especially when the
competition is very high. There is significant evidence from the corporate world that the
ability to make better decisions improves with analytical skills.

The specific focus of the course shall be:

1. The course shall provide the students with a data based view of decision
making and strategization.
2. The students shall be equipped with the basic business analytics tool kit;
3. The course covers concepts and fundamentals of Data Mining for better
marketing campaigns and customer management.

Student assignments are oriented toward hands on training in

o Defining the business problem
o Gather right data
o Prepare and process data
o Discovery of trends and extraction of useful information from data.
o Making predictions
o Reporting results
 Course Outline

Objective: The course aims primarily at developing the student's conceptual

understanding and technical data processing skills involved in business analytics. The

structure of the course is linked to the various stages of data processing. The conceptual

aspects of this segment of the course involve the meaning and use of business data and

specifically, its use in building analytical models especially those relevant to very large

databases. Practical applications will primarily be based on IBM's suite of BI software,

IBM-SPSS-PASW Modeler. These will involve specific exercises in data analysis, model

building and strategy creation based on the analysis. The perspective issues such CRM,

quality, predictions, market segmentation etc. is integrated into the sessions and cases.

Pedagogy: The pedagogy of the course is a mix of lectures, readings, hands-on

training exercises for student teams, and a term paper.

Workload & Evaluation: The students are evaluated on individual and joint work

throughout the course. The workload and breakdown of grading are as follows:

1. Assignments: There will be an assignment each to be done by student teams of four

to five members. This will involve both secondary & primary data and Business

Analytics lab work. The team will be responsible for a written report and will make a

presentation to the class for discussion. There will be peer evaluation of the content

and style of the team presentation effort. 40 percent for the assignments of which 10

percent is for presentation.

2. Term Paper: An individual term paper is due. The students will choose a specific

topic in consultation with the faculty from topics dealt with in the course; and. the

paper will be evaluated based on guidelines provided in advance. 40 percent.

 3. Final Exam: At the end of the term there will be a final take-home comprehensive

individual exam on the topics and exercises. 20 percent.

The list of sessions is given in the table below. Each session will deal with the topic as
well as a case on a real life application

Session Topic Application

1 Introduction to Data Mining
2&3 Market Segmentation and Customer
Cluster Analysis
segmentation
4 Classification Trees Ensuring Software Quality
5 Improving performance of Call Center
Discriminant Analysis
employees/Cocoon Quality
6 Inter-temporal purchase decision –
Associations/Market Basket Analysis
electrical appliances
7 Neural Networks Predicting election results
8 Logistic Regression Predicting Employee Attrition
9 & 10 Hand-on (lab on the software package)
11 Presentation of Projects (preliminary) and
Help on Projects
12 Data Preparation and Data Cleaning and Fraud detection in customs
advanced topics in DM Models
13 & 14 Knowledge extraction from Call center
Text Mining
logs
15 Web Mining Mapping visitors behavior
16&17 Project Presentations