Best Practices in Business Analytics Symposium

Customer Analytics was the theme of this year’s Best Practices in Business Analytics Symposium, hosted by the Center for Business Analytics, on October 7. It was the fourth annual symposium and Olscamp Hall was full of students, faculty and staff who learned how to use analytics to understand their customers, improve customer satisfaction and ultimately increase revenue.

“The Best Practices in Business Analytics Symposium is an excellent opportunity for students, faculty and industry professionals to network, share experiences and expand their knowledge as some of the leaders in the analytics industry are present at the annual symposium,” Dr. Arthur Yeh, chair, Applied Statistics and Operations Research said.  

After a welcome by BGSU College of Business Dean Ray Braun, the keynote presenter, Russell Demetri Ollie Sr., opened the symposium with a presentation focusing on Customer Analytics at General Motors. Ollie is the director of operational excellence at General Motors Corporation where his team drove customer-based business prioritization and decision-making models across global corporate functions resulting in customer-aligned product, service and process improvement.

The audience also heard from highly successful industry professionals including Gideon van den Broek who is a data scientist at the Analytics Center of Excellence at Owens Corning; Dr. Matthew Green who is the managing director of Accenture’s Analytics Practice division and Gunther Liemann who is vice president of strategy and integration at Owens-Illinois.

Immediately following the symposium students’ teams presented their CASE Competition findings for monetary awards.  The first place team received $1,500, second place received $900 and third place received $500. Congratulations to the winning teams!

• 1st place:  Liwen Tong, Haitao Liu, Xiang Cao and Yang Yu – presenting were Liwen Tong and Haitao Liu  - faculty advisor is Dr. James Albert from Mathematics and Statistics
• 2nd place:  Yehan Ma, Yunlong Fan, Qianyi Zhang and Fan Gao – presenting were Yehan Ma, Qianyi Zhang and Fan Gao  - faculty advisor is Dr. Wei Ning from Mathematics and Statistics
• 3rd place:  Ramadha Gamage, John Haman, Kevin Stoll, Si Shi – presenting were John Haman and Kevin Stoll – faculty advisor is Dr. James Albert from Mathematics and Statistics