Business Analytics (BA) is an evolving phenomenon that showcases the increasing importance of using huge volumes of data to generate value for businesses. Advances in BA have offered great opportunities for organisations to improve, innovate, and develop existing or new processes, products, and services. BA is the process of transforming data into actionable insight by using statistical and mathematical analysis, descriptive, prescriptive, and predictive models, machine learning, information systems and network science methods, among others, along with a variety of data, expert knowledge, and fact-based management to support better and faster decision-making.
BA and Business Intelligence (BI) generate capabilities for companies to compete in the market effectively and has become one of the main functional areas in most companies. BA tools are used in diverse ways, for example, to identify consumer behaviour patterns and market trends, to derive valuable insights on the performance of stocks, to find information on the attrition rate of employees, to analyse and solve healthcare problems, to offer insight into inventory management and supply chain management, to analyse data from social networks, and to infer traffic behaviour and develop traffic management policy, among others.
BA and BI have become one of the most popular research areas in academic circles, as well as in the industry, driven by the increasing demand in the business world. This book aims to become a stimulus for innovative business solutions covering a wide range of aspects of business analytics, such as management science, information technology, descriptive, prescriptive, and predictive models, machine learning, network science, mathematical and statistical techniques. The book will encompass a valuable collection of chapters exploring and discussing computational frameworks, practices, and applications of BA that can assist industries and relevant stakeholders in decision-making and problem-solving exercises, with a view to driving competitive advantage.
About the Author: Prof. V. Charles, PhD, PDRF, FRSS, FPPBA, is an experienced researcher in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Management Science. He has more than two decades of teaching, research, and consultancy experience in various countries, in the fields of applied quantitative analytics (big data), having been a full professor and director of research for more than a decade. He did his postdoc at the National University of Singapore and he holds Executive Certificates from the MIT Sloan School of Management (USA), Harvard Business School (USA), IE Business School (Spain), and the Royal Statistical Society (UK). He is an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner and an AWS Academy Accredited Educator, as well as an AdvanceHE Certified External Examiner. Additionally, he is a Deputy Director for the SMP pathway, White Rose Social Sciences Doctoral Training Partnership, UK.
He has published over 130 research outputs and has 1351 citations, with h-index 18 and i10-index 32. He actively publishes in reputed peer-reviewed journals, such as the European Journal of Operational Research, Omega: The Management Science Journal, The Journal of Operational Research Society, Annals of Operations Research, and Expert Systems with Applications, among others; he is also a member/Associate Editor of the editorial boards of various reputed journals. He is a recipient of many international academic honours and awards. He won the 2016 Cum Laude Award from the Peruvian Marketing Society for his intellectual contribution to the area of marketing; the 2013 award in the category of The Most Innovative Study from the Premio PODER to Peru's Think Tank of the Year; the 2013 award in Summer Grants (competition) from the Emerging Markets Institute (EMI) of Johnson Cornell University, USA (along with Nagesh Gavirneni); also, the best research paper award (2006) in Finance from the Centre for Financial Excellence, KLS' IMER, Belgaum, India. Additionally, in 2012 he received the Best Paper Award from the ESIC Market Best Papers Awards CLADEA 2012. For three consecutive years, 2010-2012, he was the recipient of the Highly Commended Award of the Emerald/CLADEA Latin American Management Research Fund Award and for seven consecutive years, 2010-2016, he was the recipient of CENTRUM's annual research contribution award. He has developed the 4^3 Architecture for Service Innovation. He has published books with Springer-Verlag, Pearson Education, Cengage, and Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK.
His areas of focus are Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning, [Big] Data Science; Performance Measurement and Management; Competitiveness; Social Progress; Doing Business; Innovation; and Design Thinking. He has industry exposure (Research and Consultancy) in Advertising (Branding), Agriculture & Agribusiness (Dry Apples), Transportation (Land - Public Transportation/ Marine - Logistics), Computer (Laptop Configuration), Consumer Products (Aerosols), Banking (Public/Private/Commercial), Education (Business Schools), Electronics (Assembled PCBs), Energy (Windmill), and Manufacturing (Oil Rigs/ Tyres and Axles).
Dr Pratibha Garg is working as Assistant Professor & area chair operations, Amity school of business, faculty of management studies, Amity University Noida. She completed her PhD in 2012 in management science. She has rich teaching experience of 18 years in the field of operations management.
She has authored 5 text books in the operation management field with most current, comprehensive and state-of-art analysis to fulfil the need of Engineering & Management students. She has contributed to 32 research papers in different referred national and international journals. Three scholars are doing PhD under her guidance and one submitted her thesis. She has attended and conducted many FDP/MDP. She also presented papers in national and international conferences.
Her research interests are lean manufacturing, operations management, total quality management, supply chain management, project management, stress management, meditation and yoga, spirituality, employee engagement, sustainability.
Dr Neha Gupta is currently working as Assistant Professor in the Amity School of Business, Amity University Uttar Pradesh, Noida (India). She started her career by working with SSLD Varshney Group of Institutions, Shree Guru Gobind Singh Tricentenary University, with more than of 4 years of rich experience in academics and research.
Dr. Gupta has published more than 25 research papers in journals of national and international repute including publishers like Taylor & Francis and Springer. She is also a member in the Editorial Board of International Journal of Mathematics and Systems Science, International Journal of Data Mining, Modelling & Management-Inderscience, and Editorial Review Board of OPSEARCH, Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, and International Journal of Management Science and Engineering Management.
She is a Gold Medalist and a life member of Operational Research Society of India. Her two books are accepted in Springer Nature and CRC Press, Taylor & Francis.
She has presented papers at various National & International conferences and has won best research paper award. His research interest includes Optimization, Decision-Making, Transportation, Operations Management, Supply Chain Management, Mathematical Programming, and Data analysis using R, SPSS, LINGO, MATLAB etc.
Dr Mohini Agarwal is currently working as Assistant Professor at Amity School of Business, Amity University Uttar Pradesh. Prior joining Amity University, she has worked as Assistant Professor at Galgotias University in School of Business. She did her Ph.D. from Department of Operational Research, University of Delhi, Delhi (INDIA). She obtained her B.Sc. (H) Mathematics and M.Sc. in Operational Research degree from University of Delhi, Delhi (INDIA).
She has recently authored a book entitled "Market Assessment with OR Applications". She has been actively involved in participating in conferences and FDPs. She has around 20 research papers published in journal and conferences of national and international repute. Her Research areas include Marketing Management and Software Reliability. She is a life time member of SREQOM. Her research interests are marketing management, operations research, decision sciences, software reliability modeling, sustainability, optimization.
