Heuristics in Analytics: A Practical Perspective of What Influences Our Analytical World

Chapter 5

Knowledge Applications That Solve Business Problems

This chapter describes a series of real-world case studies revealing how knowledge is translated into intelligence. In corporate environments, this translation occurs by deploying the insight derived from analytical models—both supervised and unsupervised—in business actions. These actions can materialize in different ways, as marketing or sales campaigns, as product- and service-package definitions, as operational systems deployments, as alerts, or in any combination of some or all of these methods. The case studies discussed herein were developed and deployed in a production environment in a telecommunications company, and the actual results are cited. Even though these applications occurred in a particular industry, they are reflective of activities that are applicable to any competitive business such as retail stores, utilities, or financial institutions.

The important takeaway is to consider the potential gains, how to translate ideas into practical business action, and how the described outcomes resonate in your industry. These case studies were selected since they parallel issues that most competitive businesses are face.

CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR SEGMENTATION

One of the most important analytical models in marketing is customer behavior segmentation. Segmentation is the foundation to better understanding what individual consumption patterns are, how product acquisition differs, how customers pay, how they communicate, ...