Data is the lifeblood for intelligent

companies today. Organizations are

leveraging data to make smarter, faster
decisions, and drive greater business
outcomes. The benefits from data are
obvious: competitive advantage, reduced
costs, new services, new revenue
streams, and enhanced customer
experience, to name just a few.

Companies are rushing to take advantage

of data and maturing new technologies
that move, mine, and consume
increasingly diverse data from an ever-
larger array of sources. AI, machine
learning, and advanced algorithms
are enabling organizations to unlock
tremendous value from data and drive
outcomes sooner, with greater impact
than anyone ever imagined possible.

Business
Business Analysis
Analysis in
in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 2
 DATA, DATA
EVERYWHERE
2.5 QUINTILLION 40% 90%
bytes of data created each day*

rate at which of all data in the

data is growing world created in the
last 2 years

50 billion
DATA EXPLOSION
by 2020
TO GET BIGGER… connected devices and
sensors expected

82% 89% 79%

BUSINESS IS
GETTING MORE
DATA-DRIVEN
THAN EVER Executives say their Companies Companies that
organizations are believe big data do not embrace
increasingly using will revolutionize big data will lose
data to drive critical business operations their competitive
and automated in the same way the position and
decision making, at an Internet did. may even face
unprecedented scale. extinction.

Source: How Much Data Do We Create Every Day? The Mind-Blowing Stats Everyone Should Read, https://www.forbes.com/sites/ber-
nardmarr/2018/05/21/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/#4eddee6b60ba
Digital Data Storage is Undergoing Mind-Boggling Growth, https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1330462
About 50 billion IoT-connected devices by 2020: Report,
https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/50-billion-iot-connected-devices-by-2020-report-says-4750426/
Accenture Technology Vision 2018, https://www.accenture.com/in-en/insight-data-integrity-veracity
Big Success With Big Data, https://www.accenture.com/t20150523T020852__w__/us-en/_acnmedia/Accenture/Conversion-Assets/Dot-
Com/Documents/Global/PDF/Digital_1/Accenture-Big-Data-POV.PDF

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 3

 DATA IS
TRANSFORMING INDUSTRIES
Companies at the forefront of these data and analytics trends are
using their capabilities to tackle business problems with a whole
new mindset—keeping the customer at the heart of it all. They are
increasingly moving to more data-centric and customer-centric
businesses. Think digital giants Amazon, Google, and Netflix. They
have for long used data for personalization to improve engagement in
experiences and drive growth. It’s no surprise that these companies
have relatively high customer satisfaction scores.

DELIGHTING THE CUSTOMER

Customer satisfaction scores

85
Market average
Amazon

77
Google
Alphabet 82
Netflix
79
Source: The American Customer Satisfaction Index

Just how well Netflix uses data for personalization can be gauged from the
fact that more than 80 percent of the TV shows people watch on Netflix are
discovered through the platform’s recommendation system.1

It’s not just tech companies that are leveraging data. Across
industries, companies are using data to enhance the customer
experience and explore new business models, new revenue
streams, new markets, and new ways to grow.

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 4

 HOW DATA IS
TRANSFORMING
BUSINESSES
HEALTHCARE

TRAVEL AND TOURISM

HIGH TECH

FINANCIAL SERVICES

RESOURCES

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 5

 HEALTHCARE

Personalized medicine–tailored care and treatment based on the health data

of individual patients—is expected to give more effective outcomes. Doctors
can use data science to come up with a regimen that suits the patient’s genetic
constitution instead of treating a patient with a drug that, for instance, works 80
percent of the time.

Data science is seen as a potential solution to fuel drug discovery, which

at present is a painfully long, and costly process with a high degree of
uncertainty—as many as 90 percent of drug candidates fail to make it to the
market.2 Data science is already playing a key role in the drug discovery process.
For instance, Amgen, a biotechnology company, uses advanced analytics to flag
potential failures or dangerous drug interactions and prioritizes the ones with
higher success rates.

TRAVEL AND TOURISM

Companies are using the long trail of data they have including reservations,
enquiries and additional services purchased to create personalized offerings
and boost growth. A case in point—smaller travel companies are leveraging
data to target niche segments of customers (for example, solo travelers on a
budget) instead of competing for all types of customers.

Another trend is dynamic pricing, which is increasingly adopted by airlines

and hotels. Based on advanced predictive analytics tools, this allows airlines
to propose unique fare structures for each market and each departure day.
Similarly, hotels can adjust their pricing by decreasing mid-week rates, while
increasing rates on weekends and holidays.

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 6

 HIGH TECH

The data explosion, combined with the move from hardware to platform-based
ecosystems the industry is going through, has led to As-a-Service business
models. Subscription selling (users subscribe for access to access to a product
or service) is one such model. Device-As-a-Service (DaaS) is another model,
which is helping users mitigate the cost of managing a fleet of devices. They
can procure a hardware product (mobile, laptop, desktop, or tablet) along with
services and software that are maintained and managed by a single service
provider on a subscription-based contract. This model does not impact the
capital expenditure as it is managed more as an administrative and operational
expense.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Algorithmic trading has become synonymous with big data. It uses vast historical
data with complex mathematical models to maximize portfolio returns. That apart,
the industry has widely adopted big data analytics to inform better investment
decisions.

Big data and analytics are also playing a key role in improving fraud detection
and strengthening risk management. For instance, Alibaba’s fraud risk
monitoring and management system captures fraud signals directly from
the huge amount of user behavior data and network, analyzes them in real-
time using machine learning, and accurately predicts suspicious users and
transactions.3

RESOURCES

Energy companies are using predictive analytics for improved maintenance.

Companies can now analyze and predict outcomes that can turn out to be very
expensive—such as plant interruptions or maintenance issues. For example,
working with Accenture, oil and gas major Woodside is implementing predictive
analytics for maintenance and process control in production operations across
its liquefied natural gas (LNG) assets.4 This is expected to help the company bring
operational costs down and maintain production.

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 7

 SUCCESS FACTORS
FOR DATA INITIATIVES
While companies realize data’s disruptive power and are investing in
data-driven initiatives, not all data initiatives are successful. To gain
useful insights from the massive amount of data they have access to,
organizations need to focus on:

A clear business goal

Data initiatives must be aligned with
strategic business imperatives.

Solving the right problem

Zero in on the real problems, focus on
the right questions, and ensure they
have the right data to work on.

The right talent

To unlock value from data for the
business, companies need to tap the
right people with the right skill sets to
drive initiatives.

This is where business analysis (BA) comes in. BA

professionals can play a key role in the companies’ journey
to becoming data-driven, insight-powered enterprises. They
can enable the transition by helping organizations define
problems correctly, understand what data will give the best
insights, ensure relevant data is used, and by communicating
the insights from the data to stakeholders.

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 8

 WHY BUSINESS
ANALYSIS
IN DATA SCIENCE
Think of BA professionals as a partner or advisor to data scientists. They help
interpret business goals into a set of questions that can be analyzed through data
along with decision makers. They play an important role in:

Ensuring that data is verifiable, Making sense of data and

comes from the right source, simplifying the confusion
and is relevant for the business and complexity that may
area concerned. result from information
overload.

Aligning the findings to key Extracting meaningful

organization metrics so insights from data, which
that executives understand the business can use to
the impact of decisions. drive greater value.

Providing business context. For

instance, the business implication
of missing data treatment.

To play a meaningful role in data-driven industry transformation, BA professionals

need to transform themselves first.

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 9

 NEW-AGE
BUSINESS ANALYSIS
Traditionally, business analysis has focused on requirements management—
eliciting information from stakeholders, analyzing requirements, and
designing a solution. Today, BA professionals need to work together with the
business and the data science team to extract value from data.

To be able to do so, they need to first move from a data-apathetic approach

to a data-driven one (see figure 1)

Figure 1: From data apathetic to data driven

DATA
DRIVEN
DATA
CRITICAL Your
DATA organization
AWARE You are is thinking
DATA beginning data first.
APATHETIC You are to develop Your systems,
capturing sophisticated processes,
Your business data but data assets and people
decisions are currently but only for are working
rarely, if ever, using it only mission- together
driven by for awareness critical areas. to use data
data. purpose. efficiently and
effectively.

Then, they need to familiarize themselves with data science tools and
technologies, including machine learning, data virtualization, and predictive
analytics. They should know the possibilities offered by technology; be
able to evaluate its utility, applicability, and benefits in specific business
situations; and elicit and communicate requirements in a very creative
manner to implement a solution for a business problem.

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 10

 What are the competencies required
from a BA professional today?
Understands the big picture
and the context within
which insights are needed

Communicates Is a business domain

findings of the expert and is up to
analysis, which may date with trends and
be technical, to all evolving business
stakeholders models

The new-
age BA
professional

Is skilled at Draws insights from

storytelling and data and can intuitively
builds narrative understand the story
inclusive of data behind the numbers

Is adept at visualization

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 11

 DATA SCIENCE
TECHNIQUES
BA PROFESSIONALS CAN USE
Let us look at some frameworks a BA professional can use while
working with data.

OSEMN: Solving problems like a data scientist

BA professionals can benefit from a proven methodology called OSEMN,5 which
data scientists use to solve data problems. This “awesome” technique—OSEMN
rhymes with awesome—requires a BA professional to go through the following
steps when working on a data problem (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: OSEMN way of working with data

SCRUB MODELS
OBTAIN EXPLORE INTERPRET

Clean the data Build models

to working
Collect usable format Visualize, Predict and
data cluster interpret

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 12

 OBTAINING DATA:
Identifying the right set of data for a specific business problem is
extremely critical. If you are trying to determine customer churn that
will feed into your organization’s campaign development, what kind of
data would be required?

SCRUBBING DATA:
The data collected needs to be cleaned so that it provides an accurate
picture of the business problem. What will you do if the data is not
complete or sufficient? Taking forward the customer churn problem,
what would be the approach if you do not have demographic data on
some customers?

EXPLORING DATA:
This phase is about understanding the patterns in the data—the
story behind the data. Several types of visualizations and statistical
testing are used here. You need to understand the decision variables
that will make the most impact on the prediction. For the customer
churn problem, you need to understand the characteristics of a loyal
customer.

MODELLING DATA:
Models are general rules in a statistical sense. Several algorithms
are used to accomplish different business goals. Business analysis
professionals need to be able to understand the basics of different
models and see which model provides the best result. For the churn
example, you need to see which model is the best—regression or
probabilistic.

INTERPRETING DATA:
The most crucial step in the OSEMN life cycle is communicating
the findings from the data to stakeholders. How effective are the
predictions? What does the result mean from a business standpoint?
For the churn example, say the prediction is 10 percent of the
customers are going to switch, then what is the profile of the
customers who will switch? What are the root causes for switching? The
ability to translate the outcome of models into actionable items is what
business expects from the solution.

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 13

 Figure 3 summarizes the various activities a BA professional would be involved in
while following the OSEMN framework. Understanding the organization’s goals and
translating it to a data science problem through various analysis techniques and
ensuring that the right problem is being addressed is crucial. Also, providing the
necessary business context to discover the right data for insights needed by the
decision makers, and communicating the trends and patterns uncovered through
the algorithms in the form of a visual story that is easily understood by a broad set of
stakeholders are critical elements.

Figure 3: Activities a BA professional conducts while applying OSEMN in a data science context.

• Plan stakeholder engagement

• Plan elicitation
• Elicitation and collaboration
01 • Elicitation/workshops
• Confirm elicitation results
• Communicate with stakeholders

• Selecting appropriate chart/ object

• Proper and complete documentation
• Reporting at various levels with appropriate metrics
02 • Result validation
• Identify key results
• Create a story
• Communicate with stakeholders

• Identify relevant data

• Identify data sources
• Evaluate paid and unpaid data sets
03 • Finalize data sets
• Define data storage requirements
• Feature engineering
• Communicate with stakeholders

• Identify and store all project artifacts

• Document process using Markdown
04 • Facilitate detailed process documentation
• Change management

• Select suitable statistical techniques (statistical

05 modelling or regression)
• Build, test, fix

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 14

 UNDERSTANDING
CORE CONCEPTS
THROUGH DATA
Business analysis plays a big part in the discovery of analytical problems that can
be answered through data science engagements. Frameworks such as OSEMN
help BA professionals bring such engagements to closure, fruitfully. At a more
strategic level, a BA professional needs to translate business objectives into a
chain of evidence-based decisions that organizations will be most interested in. To
contribute effectively to this task, a BA professional must apply six core concepts
explained through the Business Analysis Core Concept Model™ (BACCM™)6 and
understand their interrelationship through data and evidence.

The BACCM™ is a common Figure 4: Looking at core concepts through the lens of data7
conceptual framework
introduced for BA
professionals. BA professionals
are expected to have a
holistic view of the six pillars
CHANGES
or concepts of the model—
change, need, solution,
stakeholder, value, and SO
context—and understand the
S

LU
ED

TIO
relationship between them
NE

NS

while working on a business

problem (see Figure 4). With
the advent of data science,
BA professionals have to view
TS

almost everything with a “data”

ST DER
HO

EX
AK S

NT

angle. They need to have a

L
E

CO

paradigm shift in the way

they approach requirements
management. They will need VALUE
to understand technologies,
such as machine learning, deep
learning and natural language
processing, and how they can
be applied to solve specific
problems.

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 15

 Let us explore the relationship between data and the core concepts through an
example. Take the business analysis of how a brick and mortar store can compete
with e-commerce companies. Applying the BACCM™ framework, we can look at the
core concepts with a data mindset as follows:

CHANGE – Attracting customers who prefer shopping online is the objective. To

gain insights into how to do that, point of sale data needs to be correlated with online
customer data to first understand the attributes of a typical online shopper.

NEED – The need is to gain market share from existing e-commerce competitors.
BA professionals can use data to understand the unmet needs and behaviour of
customers. For example, some customers may choose to browse online but buy
products offline such as consumer appliances, apparels, furniture, jewellery, etc.

SOLUTION – Partnering with existing e-commerce sites could be a solution. BA

professionals may choose prompts for store pick-up options as a solution. Similarly,
multiple solutions can be compared based on simulations of how customers and
competitors will react.

STAKEHOLDERS – Requirements of stakeholders from across functions (IT, HR and

Operations) of the brick and mortar company, e-commerce partners, and customers
need to be considered. Through data-driven analysis, requirements can be validated
better versus individual stakeholder needs.

VALUE – Sales and revenue growth or better customer experience could be the
objective. Through data-driven predictive analysis, a BA professional would be able
to forecast in a more scientific method and measure some of the intangibles like
customer experience better.

CONTEXT – Understanding the impact of the omni-channel digital infrastructure

and the entry of new market players is key. The BA professional will be in a position
to understand the impact of different market conditions better through data-driven
decisions to formulate recommendations.

As seen in the example above, multiple data science projects

will be initiated when a BA professional evaluates the strategic
decision-making process and analyzes business objectives of
such a brick and mortar retailer. The BACCM™ framework, fueled
by data-driven analysis, will help a BA professional to translate
business objectives better into relevant data science problems,
and frameworks such as OSEMN can be used to gain insights to
solve such business problems.

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 16

 THE ROAD
AHEAD
Organizations today have a huge amount
of data they can mine to enhance customer
experience, to create business value, and
to grow profitably. As pointed out earlier,
not all organizations are able to realize the
true potential from their data initiatives.
One reason is that they rely heavily on
data scientists who may be proficient at
data preparation, cleaning, and modelling,
but lack the domain knowledge and
business context. BA professionals can
bridge that gap between the business and
IT teams. To do this, they need to have a
deep understanding of data and working
knowledge of data science tools and
technology. Combined with their industry
and functional expertise, this will enable
them to understand the business context,
identify the use case of data, and help
organizations in their data-driven journey.
Companies already have the data they need
to tackle business problems. The key is in
unlocking the value of data, and business
analysis can be crucial in that.

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 17

 INTRODUCING
OUR DATA
SCIENCE SERIES
Accenture, in collaboration with International Institute of Business Analysis™
(IIBA®), is soon launching a Data Science Series. Through this series, we look at
how data science can be leveraged to address complex business problems and
how it is shaping the future of organizations across industries. We take a fresh
new look into the roles, tasks, and techniques of BA professionals in this evolving
business landscape. Most importantly, we look at how BA professionals can be the
catalyst for this change sweeping industries.
The first article sets the tone by focusing on how with the advent of data science,
several unexplored avenues could be experimented with to fuel drug discovery,
prevent hospital readmission rates, and drive better patient outcomes.
The second paper looks at how companies in the travel and tourism industry can
make the most of data. We examine how they can achieve sharper targeting,
reduce customer acquisition costs, and increase customer lifetime value. The
article shows how OSEMN can be leveraged to develop advanced service delivery.
In the subsequent article, we look at how the shift from hardware to the cloud-
based platform economy has given rise to new business models such as Device-
as-a-Service in high tech. This change will require BA professionals to take on
more of a consulting role as data handling capacity—not just maintaining the data
but analyzing it for the impact on the business—becomes key in business analysis.
Then we will examine BA professionals in the financial world as data will be the
key driver for banks to incentivize their target customers. We will also delve into
how real-time intelligence on of customers enables targeted selling of financial
products.
Finally, we discuss how the energy industry is transforming from a regulatory-
driven marketplace to a data-driven one. The paper provides insights into how BA
professionals are bridging the gap between humans and machines, and how data
science is being leveraged for customer service applications, call center support
and digital marketing platforms.
Stay tuned!

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 18

 SUGGESTED READING FOR BA PROFESSIONALS
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic
Thinking by Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett,
Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die by Eric S. Siegel
Storytelling With Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals by Cole
Nussbaumer Knaflic

RECOMMENDED
For intermediate practitioner: Online courses on data science (for example, on Udemy)
For expert practitioner: The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference,
and Prediction by Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani and Jerome Friedman. Kaggle.com
for practice on real data sets.
The intermediate and expert knowledge is purely intended for BA professionals who want
to build end-to-end competencies with data. IIBA intends to launch certifications around
data and handbooks especially curated for BA professionals.

REFERENCES
1. Infographic: How Netflix uses big data to drive success, https://dataconomy.com/2018/03/infograph-
ic-how-netflix-uses-big-data-to-drive-success/

2. Preclinical Drug Development, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49750463_Preclinical_

Drug_Development

3. Big data based fraud risk management at Alibaba, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/

S2405918815000021

4. Predictive oil and gas analytics at Woodside, https://www.accenture.com/in-en/insight-perspec-

tives-energy-woodside-predicts-the-future

5. A Taxonomy of Data Science, http://www.dataists.com/2010/09/a-taxonomy-of-data-science/

6. https://www.iiba.org/ba-connect/2012/october/creating-the-business-analysis-core-concept-model.
aspx

7. 2.1 section from A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK Guide®) V3

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 19

 AUTHORS

SHANTHA MAHESWARI SHASHANK MISHRA

Managing Director – Cross OG Industry Practice Associate Manager, Cross OG Industry Practice
Inclusion and Diversity Lead Advanced Technology Centers in India, Accenture
Advanced Technology Centers in India, Accenture

ANANTA MAHAPATRA ASHISH MEHTA, CBAP

Program Manager, India Managing Director – India, APAC,
Program Development and Delivery and Global Thought Leader
International Institute of Business Analysis™ (IIBA®) International Institute of Business Analysis™ (IIBA®)

ABOUT ACCENTURE
Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services
and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched
experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions—
underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network—Accenture works at the intersection of business
and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their
stakeholders. With 459,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives
innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com.

Disclaimer: This white paper has been published for information and illustrative purposes only and is not
intended to serve as advice of any nature whatsoever. The information contained and the references made in
this white paper is in good faith and neither Accenture or IIBA nor any of its directors, agents or employees
give any warranty of accuracy (whether expressed or implied), nor accepts any liability as a result of reliance
upon the content including (but not limited) information, advice, statement or opinion contained in this white
paper. This white paper also contains certain information available in the public domain, created and maintained
by private and public organizations. Accenture and IIBA do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance,
timelines or completeness of such information. Accenture does not warrant or solicit any kind of act or omission
based on this white paper. The white paper is the property of Accenture, IIBA and their affiliates and Accenture
and IIBA jointly be the holder of the copyright or any intellectual property over the white paper. No part of this
white paper may be reproduced in any manner without the written permission of Accenture and IIBA. Opinions
expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 20

 COMING UP

Business Analysis in the Data Science Age—Driving Industry Transformation 21

 Accenture India
corporate social media

IIBA social media

Copyright © 2018 Accenture

All rights reserved.
Accenture, the Accenture logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture and/or its affiliates in the United States and
other countries.