Behind Every Good Decision: How Anyone Can Use Business Analytics to Turn Data Into Profitable Insight

List the hottest buzzwords in business today and analytics is bound to come out near the top. But to most people, analytics implies complex tools and technical experts manipulating massive amounts and varieties of information (i.e., Big Data). But complex Big Data analytics isn't the only game in town. And many people don't realize that a business doesn't need data scientists and complex tools to derive useful information and valuable benefits from any amount of raw data (e.g., names, behaviors, zip codes, demographics, sales statistics, etc.). Now Piyanka Jain and Puneet Sharma have defeated the myth that analytics is rocket science--and that only Big Data matters. In Behind Every Good Decision, they demonstrate how you can leverage the data you've got to generate valuable insights and drive countless smart business decisions. Best of all, the techniques for solving 80 percent of all business problems can be solved by any professional using only a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet!--and the authors show you how. Among the fascinating things you'll learn and apply from this engaging, easy-to-understand book are: * How to use a unique, remarkably effective, streamlined method called BADIR for short, that works in any industry and will help you move from data to decisions in just five steps * How this tool can help you improve customer experiences, optimize your work flow, predict the rate of customer churn, and determine which among several business propositions should be the focus of your attention * The four most commonly used analytics methodologies * Tools you can use for storing, reporting, and analyzing data * The kinds of people who should be chosen for an analytics team With this book, you'll see that business analytics is a simple problem-solving tool. Done right, your analytics effort can make for happier customers, better products, agile business practices, more productive employees, bigger revenues, and fatter profits--not to mention delighted bosses. And with the help of Behind Every Good Decision, you'll be able to launch that effort right from your own laptop. It's time to see how

About the Author :
Piyanka Jain is President and CEO of Aryng--a management consulting company focused on Analytics for business impact. As a highly regarded industry thought leader in analytics, she has been a keynote speaker at business and analytics conferences including American Marketing Association, Predictive Analytics World, GigaOm, Google Analytics User Conference. She speaks about data-driven decision-making to gain competitive advantage. She has two Masters degrees with a thesis involving applied mathematics and statistics. A hiker, runner, and yogi, she lives in Sunnyvale, California, with her husband, Parth, and her daughter, Jia. Puneet Sharma is VP of Analytics, Growth Hacking, and User Research at Move, Inc. He received his MBA from the University of Maryland and has held marketing, product, and analytics leadership roles in Fortune 500 companies, such as PayPal, Capital One, and HSBC, where he has led consumer-based retail businesses to capture lucrative and previously unclaimed opportunities. He lives in Sunnyvale, California, with his wife and two sons. Karen Saltus has narrated television and radio commercials, audiobooks, textbooks, multimedia, film, and voice prompts for interactive telephone applications. She began her career thirty years ago at a radio station in Portland, Maine. She later became a creative director for a station in Massachussetts. In 1994 she became a full-time freelance voice-over talent.