Chapter 5 Case 2

1. Chapter 5 Case 2 By Jessica Mendoza & John Ester Applebee’s, Travelocity, and Vista Print

2. Applebee's • Randall Parman • Data base architect for Applebee’s international • “Data are like gold” • Started with data warehouse to analyze back of house performance • Front of house • Menu optimization quadrant

3. Travelocity • Dealt with a lot of unstructured data in forms of emails, call center notes, and customer comments • Text analytics software • Cost efficient • Travelocity will use text analytics software from Attensity to automatically identify facts, opinions, requests, trends, and trouble spots from the unstructured data. • Travelocity links analysis with unstructured data to identify trends

4. Vista Print • An online retailer based in Lexington, Massachusetts. • Provides graphic design services and custom printed products • Set out to find a web analytics package that could increase conversion rates and customer relations • Two camps • Up front aggregation • Not up front aggregation • Visual site application • New program from visual sciences inc

5. Case Study Questions Q- What are the business benefits of taking the time and effort required to cerate 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.

6. Answer Question 1 • -Benefits • If not, missed opportunities and knowledge • Precursor to figure out if people are satisfied with your product without losing them as a faithful customer • Able to analyze how employees are doing • -Disadvantages • Time • Effort • Costly • Not many • -Security risk • All info stored in one place

7. Question 2 2. Q- Applebee's noted some of the unexpected insights obtained from analyzing data about “back of house” performance. Using your knowledge of how a restaurant works, what other interesting questions would you suggest to the company? Provide several specific examples.

8. Answer Question 2 • How long does it take to cook popular items • Amount of time spent on average with preparing each dish • How long does it take to get the food from the distributors? • What are the most common distractions for the “back-of-house” employees?

9. Question 3 3. Data mining and warehousing technologies use data about past events to inform better decision making in the future. Do you believe this stifles innovative thinking, causing companies to become too constrained by the data they are already collecting to think about unexplored opportunities? Compare and contrast both viewpoints in your answer.

10. Answer Question 3 • By using data from past events a company does not get stuck in the past but can use the information as a tool to understanding good and bad choices they have made. With this they are able to repeat the good choices and find way to change the bad ones. • A company can get stuck in the past events of the company and not focus on upcoming events. Only using data acquired from the past can stifle new creative ideas. Just because old ideas worked in the past does not mean they will work in the future. Things are always changing and being updated, therefore you need to continue to think of new creative ideas to solve the problems.

11. Current Update According to Teradata.com, Applebee’s continues to run the same data analyzing system as mentioned in the case As of 2011 Travelocity continues to use the Text Analytic Software from Attensity According to the visual science’s site, Vistaprint continues to use the visual site application.