Business Analytics With Management Science Models and Methods - Hardcover

Improve Decision-Making by Applying Practical Management Science Techniques to Business Analytics

“...an invaluable reference in analytics and management science.”
—Alireza Lari, Professor of Practice of Management, School of Business, Wake Forest University

This guide introduces business analytics by example, showing how to build real models for solving important problems, gain valuable insights from your models, and translate analysis into actionable recommendations.

Writing for working managers and practitioners, Dr. Arben Asllani explains each key technique intuitively, in the context of proven management principles. Throughout, he focuses on practical problems, drawing on 20+ years of experience teaching analytics and helping clients succeed with it.

You’ll discover exactly what business and marketing analytics can do, through examples from top companies such as Zara, Chevron, and HP. Then, you’ll master core techniques through a set of hands-on projects, ranging from minimizing shipping costs to optimizing marketing channel mix.

Step by step, Asllani demonstrates approaches based on linear, nonlinear, goal, and integer programming; simulation; and more. Throughout, he presents practical guidance on using Excel’s powerful Solver toolset, plus easy-to-use Excel templates. If you want to gain value from Big Data decision models, this is your most indispensable resource.

Master every step of building and using decision models for business and marketing:
· Clarify the problems you’re modeling
· Formulate high-quality models
· Manage model tradeoffs and avoid common pitfalls
· Acquire and prepare your data
· Overcome the volume, velocity, and variety challenges of using Big Data
· Analyze model solutions and understand their implications
· Translate analysis into usable recommendations for decision-making
· Master decision modeling and analytics through real success stories and intuitive explanations
· Build Big Data decision models more easily, using proven Excel templates, algorithms, and tips
· Explore modeling with linear, nonlinear, goal, and integer programming
· Expand optimization modeling with two full chapters on marketing analytics

Arben Asllani is Marvin E. White Professor of Business Analytics at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He has an M.A. and Ph. D. from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and a B.S. degree from the University of Tirana, Albania. Dr. Asllani has been a member of the Decision Sciences Institute since 1997 and has joined several other traditional and online academic and practitioner-oriented conferences and organizations. He has won several faculty teaching and research awards and is a member of Alpha Honor Society at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Dr. Asllani is Associate Editor of the American Journal of Business Research and serves on the editorial board of Service Business. Dr. Asllani has published more than 36 articles in journals including Omega, Transfusion, European Journal of Operational Research, Knowledge Management, Computers & Industrial Engineering, Total Quality Management and Business Excellence, and Service Business: An International Journal. He has also published and presented over 30 research papers at academic conferences.

Dr. Asllani has a broad expertise in business analytics, especially in optimization techniques and computer-based simulations. He has served as a consultant and trainer to a variety of business and government agencies. Dr. Asllani has also taught extensively in management science, business analytics, and information systems courses, and has played an important role in developing business analytics programs in the United States and abroad.