Business Analytics

This book provides a guide to businesses on how to use analytics to help drive from ideas to execution. Analytics used in this way provides “full lifecycle support” for business and helps during all stages of management decision-making and execution.

The framework presented in the book enables the effective interplay of business, analytics, and information technology (business intelligence) both to leverage analytics for competitive advantage and to embed the use of business analytics into the business culture. It lays out an approach for analytics, describes the processes used, and provides guidance on how to scale analytics and how to develop analytics teams. It provides tools to improve analytics in a broad range of business situations, regardless of the level of maturity and the degree of executive sponsorship provided.

As a guide for practitioners and managers, the book will benefit people who work in analytics teams, the managers and leaders who manage, use and sponsor analytics, and those who work with and support business analytics teams.

From the book reviews:

“In Business Analytics: A Practitioner’s Guide, Rahul Saxena and Anand Srinivasan show an intimate understanding of this challenge. They provide background material on decision making in organizations, outline challenges that these organization face, and then point out methods for overcoming the challenges. … With so many organizations trying to build analytical capabilities, this book is an excellent resource for those early in their journey. It will help them understand more clearly what is ahead and the pitfalls to avoid.” (Jack Levis, Interfaces, Vol. 44 (6), November-December, 2014)

Rahul Saxena is the Director for Smart Global Delivery Transformation & Operations at Cisco Advanced Services. He is an MBA from the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University. Rahul has worked on operations management, process improvement, and analytics in India, USA, and Latin America. Prior to assuming his current position at Cisco Systems, Inc., Rahul held various positions at IBM, McAfee and the Indian Railways. He has extensive speaking experience, most recently as a panel speaker at the INFORMS Annual Conference in San Diego 2009, and has co-authored an IBM Redbook on Business Architecture.

Anand Srinivasan is the founder and CEO of Dsquare Solutions, a boutique analytics services and consulting firm. He holds a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and an MS (Industrial Engineering) from Purdue University. Prior to assuming his current position Anand held various positions at Sabre Airline Solutions, Mu Sigma Business Solutions and Dell, all of them focused on building state of the art business analytics and optimization solutions.