During week 5, we reviewed theory related to IT strategy and payoffs from IT investments. We used the Whirlpool case study as a two part exercise that would let us a form of sentiment analytics to identify the firm’s business strategy and the focus in financial performance metrics that could best capture the expected payoffs from the firm’s IT investment. The results, especially those related to the firm’s days of inventory, were quite interesting and thought provoking.
Topics and Readings for Week 6
Theory: While we have been using data analytics from the beginning of the term, Chapter 4 provides a formal introduction to the topic, as well as historical presentation of what is perceived one of the most celebrated success stories of competing with data analytics, i.e., Harrah’s entertainment (the firm is now known as Caesars Entertainment Corporation).
Our discussion on data analytics serves as the transition to the introduction to database theory (Chapter 5). Obviously, you need data to perform data analytics. The focus in Chapter 4 will be to understand the basic behind the theory on how to organize and extract data needed for performing data analytics.
Reading: Scan through Read chapter 4 and 5.
Seminar: Hypercompetition is a term that has been introduced since the late nineties to reflect an increasing level of competition and to account for the growing percentage of firms reporting losses. Use exercise 4.7.1 to generate percentage of firms reporting losses in the wireless market. Compare the US versus Canadian side of the market. You may want to generate proxies for rivalry among existing competitors between the two countries.
Analyzing the Whirlpool case, we explored considered one performance metric that could capture the expected payoffs from their ERP investment. If you were to repeat this exercise with Harrah’s which variable would you select and why (exercise 4.7.4)? Feel free to consider/suggest a new variable, i.e., a variable not listed in the Appendix.
Assignments for Week 6
The sixth online quiz will be a based on chapters 4 and 5, and material from the seminar. The quiz will be available on Friday at 12:30 pm.
If you have not done this yet, please provide your data to the auditor as soon as possible (the deadline is June 5th).
