Case Study - Applebee’s, Travelocity and Others: Data Mining for Business Decisions.
Case Study - Applebee’s, Travelocity and others: Data Mining for Business Decisions.
Q1. What is the business benefits of taking the time and effort required to create and operate data warehouses such as those described in the case? Do you see any disadvantages? Is there any reason why all companies shouldn’t use data warehousing technology?
Ans: The business benefits of taking the time and effort required to create and operate data warehouses is to gather information in a rapid time so the business user can make decisions faster. Prior to having data warehouses, large companies had several independent decision support environments that will gather data, clean it up and integrate it from several sources. Each environment will go through the same process and each needed to attain similar data as the other decision support environment in the company. (1) Having data warehouses allows companies to gain insight on subjects they were not concentrating on. For example, Applebee’s was using data warehouses to examine “back of the house performance”, but then got a vision to use the data to analyze the “front of the house performance” to improve customer experiences. Travelocity.com uses data warehouses to mine important data so they can tailor to their customers. It also allows Travelocity to gain valuable information about early warning signs of an issue so they can address it more rapidly. There can also be some disadvantage for a company to decide to add and operate a data warehouse system. For example, VistaPrint senior manager Dan Malone says it is hard to track the exact return of investment. To implement a data warehouse for data mining will also initially take up a lot of time and high cost. During implementation there could be important data that can go unnoticed because the system is still not fully functional. A reason why all companies should not use data warehousing technology is because of its high cost. Small and medium
Q1. What is the business benefits of taking the time and effort required to create and operate data warehouses such as those described in the case? Do you see any disadvantages? Is there any reason why all companies shouldn’t use data warehousing technology?
Ans: The business benefits of taking the time and effort required to create and operate data warehouses is to gather information in a rapid time so the business user can make decisions faster. Prior to having data warehouses, large companies had several independent decision support environments that will gather data, clean it up and integrate it from several sources. Each environment will go through the same process and each needed to attain similar data as the other decision support environment in the company. (1) Having data warehouses allows companies to gain insight on subjects they were not concentrating on. For example, Applebee’s was using data warehouses to examine “back of the house performance”, but then got a vision to use the data to analyze the “front of the house performance” to improve customer experiences. Travelocity.com uses data warehouses to mine important data so they can tailor to their customers. It also allows Travelocity to gain valuable information about early warning signs of an issue so they can address it more rapidly. There can also be some disadvantage for a company to decide to add and operate a data warehouse system. For example, VistaPrint senior manager Dan Malone says it is hard to track the exact return of investment. To implement a data warehouse for data mining will also initially take up a lot of time and high cost. During implementation there could be important data that can go unnoticed because the system is still not fully functional. A reason why all companies should not use data warehousing technology is because of its high cost. Small and medium