Ivan Salgo, MD, MS, is senior director of Global Cardiology at Philips in Boston and a member of the MIT Sloan EMBA class of 2012.

Analytics can turn cryptic data into insightful, effective decision-making. In general, it involves two broad approaches: clustering existing data to “see useful patterns” and applying machine learning on past data to “predict the future”. While “Big Data” has been the cornerstone of many sophisticated business models at firms such as Google and FedEx, the “New World” is generating data faster than managers can process it and presenting new opportunities and new challenges for decision-makers.

Following are two cases of using analytics to drive business decision-making. One uses a simple histogram analysis...

Nitin Jain is an IT solution and strategy executive within the Federal Healthcare Practice for IBM Global Business Services in Washington, D.C. and a member of the MIT Sloan EMBA class of 2014.
 

Cost pressure in the U.S. public sector, as well as in many other industries, is a disruptive force that is encoraging companies (sellers) to build differentiated capabilities. Additionally, the pressures of sequestration budget cuts and an ongoing effort to address the federal budget deficit are causing government agencies (buyers) to do more with less. As a result, at IBM (a seller) we’re focusing on ways to maintain our competitive edge in light of this challenging and uncertain landscape.

A big part of my job involves making pricing and bidding decisions. How do we decide...

Shankaran (Shanks) Srinivasan is an international program manager at 4D Security Solutions, Inc., a firm that provides integrated security solutions worldwide for critical infrastructure.  Shanks is a member of the MIT Sloan EMBA class of 2013.

Whether you are in a startup or a large company, you don’t want to have to say NO to a potential client. Every dollar helps to build your business so you figure out ways to staff projects as needed. You ask questions like:

- How much revenue will this produce?
- What strategic benefits will be realized?
- What resources will be needed?

However, not all projects are created equal and saying YES to everything has pitfalls. It leads to projects that consume resources and do not deliver the intended results. It leads to a culture...

Irshad Ahmed, is president and CEO of Pure Energy Corp. in Paramus, N.J. and a member of the MIT EMBA class of 2012.

There are major changes happening in the biofuel industry. Public policy is aggressively attempting to shift our dependence away from nonrenewable energy sources. Our country’s goal is to produce and consume 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022 in order to decrease our usage of gasoline and diesel fuels. In other words, about 25% of our transportation liquid fuels need to come from renewable energy resources in the next 10 years.

While this is a huge and daunting challenge, it’s a great one to have and I’ve been applying my knowledge from MIT Sloan’s EMBA program to help my company lead the way in this area.

A New Business Model

I’m...

Amjad Hussain is CEO of Silk Route, a global e-Commerce and supply chain solutions provider in Detroit, Mich., and a member of the MIT EMBA class of 2012.

When I started MIT Sloan’s EMBA program, I expected that my classes would include some business analytics, which is also my line of business. However, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that my core classes and electives exposed me to advanced topics in business analytics and systems dynamics. I found myself gaining new knowledge and refining my business.

Here are a few things every company can do when planning business analytics:

Get it all together

Many companies have massive amounts of data for the different aspects of their business, but it sits in silos separated by different systems. Getting it all together...

Jeff Thomas is vice president of instrument development at IDEXX Laboratories in Westbrook, Maine and a member of the MIT EMBA class of 2012.

It’s not unusual to see the price of new products go down over time. Look at the price of the first e-readers compared to the options available today. New products are refined over time to improve performance and enable production at higher volumes, which eventually leads to a lower price. When the topic of “learning curves” (the effects of learning) came up in our Microeconomics class, it was in the context of manufacturing environments.  Prof. Stokes discussed how cost savings arise from repetition of ongoing production. As companies learn through practice in manufacturing, they are able to lower their costs.

Here are...

Mo Hussain is the founder of Accel Mobile in Boston, Mass, and a member of the MIT EMBA class of 2013.

I’m the founder of a mobile technology company and a few years ago, I found myself negotiating a potential multi-million dollar contract with the head of a telecom conglomerate overseas. The conglomerate was hesitant to sign the deal due to my company’s small size, but I finally found some leverage. I had reviewed their quarterly reports and the one line that I could understand involved the number of users, which was increasing but at a rate that was lower and lower each quarter. Pointing this out, I made the case for how my technology would provide an innovative solution, avoiding the trend towards a growth plateau, and they signed the deal. At that moment, I realized...

Megan Cramer, Ph.D., is the science and technology director for the US Navy's Program Executive Office (PEO) Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) in Washington, D.C. and a member of the MIT EMBA class of 2012.

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A significant part of my job for the U.S. Navy involves looking at both near- and far-term technologies and determining how to transition these technologies to our acquisition programs that will reach the Fleet. This technology analysis can be incredibly challenging given that in a particular week I might be looking at varying technologies such as that involving steel, software, sonars, radios, networks, autonomy, or unmanned vehicles. It is important to have a coherent framework to consider these very different technologies and to create a technology roadmap..

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