Analytics for Strategic Growth: AI, Smart Data, and Customer Insights

Customer journeys are evolving, and now require an intense digital reliance. How have companies adapted? How can experiences be enhanced to stay ahead of the world today?

As a global brand and marketing strategist, optimizing customer data in the nearly post-pandemic world, where everyone has become digitally dependent, is essential. The Customer Analytics for Growth using AI, Machine Learning and Big Data is a course I found to be instrumental in optimizing scarce business resources by focusing on customer value, from an unbiased analytical point of view. The course is both understandable and challenging, all centered on customer value optimization. The course brings in the relevant real world by featuring industry experts that explain their hands on approach. This combination of content and relevancy makes this course instantly useable.

Raghu Iyengar keeps the engagement level high and the learning almost accidental. His ability to set up complex concepts is unique, interesting, and paced perfectly. For Executives looking to advance their organizations customer focus in this real, technology-centered world, this is the right course.

From the ongoing networking with other attendees, I find it much easier to draw upon expertise that I use to build out in house own experience optimization programs. And, I look forward to the next program at Wharton."

Julia P. Brand and Marketing Leader

We are living in a world where data is the new oil and there is opportunity for all functions within a company to use data for decision making. I signed up for Customer Analytics for Growth to demystify the artificial intelligence and machine learning use models and understand their linkages and impact on the customer life cycle. The course shed light on the critical importance of being clear on what problem you are solving, when to use AI and when not to, and how to structure an organization to be data driven and avoid the landmines one will have to traverse to influence the culture. It is indeed a huge transformation which needs to be driven within the company and hence touches all aspects from strategy, structure to culture to make it happen. I would strongly recommend this course to anyone who is interested in learning about how to use data in their organization to make decisions and role of AI to help.

Professor Raghu Iyengar was the highlight of the course. His energy and enthusiasm were contagious which made me feel we could have kept on going even though the class was delivered entirely live online. Professor Iyengar simplified the learning process to practical insights we can take back and was very respectful and patient with all the questions. Top notch faculty like Professor Iyengar make a huge difference in what we learn. This is one of the reasons I have signed up for Wharton’s General Management Program and am looking forward to continuing to learn from other top Wharton faculty.”

Khurshed T. Wadiwalla Director Xeon Server Validation, Intel Corp.

I signed up for the Wharton Customer Analytics for Growth program to gain a better understanding of the strengths and limitations of machine learning and AI with the goal of using these tools to deliver more actionable insights to convenience retail and supplier members. Additionally, the program provided helpful background on various analytic methods for delivering future research deliverables. Speakers from outside Wharton provided great perspective on real-world applications and effectively demonstrated how starting small with ML and AI can lead to bigger advancements. The regression review by Professor Iyengar helped spring some new ideas for analysis that I can perform on existing datasets. Also, Neil Hoyne’s perspective from Google was very valuable, as he showed how starting small can lead to big gains down the road.

For a virtual setting, it was very interactive and easy to communicate with other program attendees. Everyone was forthcoming and open about their perspectives, which positively contributed to the course material. I will use the knowledge gained from this course to incorporate additional forms of analysis on existing datasets and broaden the horizon for the types of analysis we can do in the future to develop new research and provide better consulting to our members. I would absolutely recommend this course to anyone who sits at the crossroads of data, IT, marketing, and analytics who is looking to understand how they can connect the dots between various internal functions more effectively to deliver growth for their business.”

Patrick Loftus Survey Research and Data Visualization Manager, National Association of Convenience Stores

I have always worked in insights and analytics functions and I signed up for the Customer Analytics for Growth program to take a step back and deepen my knowledge as well as broaden my understanding of the applications beyond my day-to-day (media and creative). I was particularly excited to exchange with academics and my fellow students on the topic as well as share my practitioner's view. What struck me most was not how dissimilar the participants profiles may have seemed at first but rather how similar our questions and challenges were.

A highlight for me was how timely the course was. At a time when most organizations have been challenged by the pandemic to embrace the analytics, data and digital transformation, we were given the right frameworks, mindsets and tools to 'get to work'.

As a data storyteller myself, bridging the business and data science teams' questions and needs, my main action item is to keep translating and confronting perspectives to ensure that we are asking the right questions and building the tools and infrastructures accordingly. Storytelling is at the heart of everything and is even more critical when solving big business challenges and undertaking major organization changes. I am very excited about applying all learnings and helping people further understand the power of analytics to drive business growth.

I recommend this course to anyone who wants to learn more about data science for executives. This course was the perfect mix between theory and practice on a topic which is more important than ever for Marketing organizations.”

Ariane Le Port Global Creative Effectiveness Lead, Google

I lead global social listening and measurement at McDonald’s, which includes strategic planning, ongoing tool and capability enablement, measurement of social programs, and deep customer insights work, identifying trends and using customer feedback to improve our business.

I loved the Customer Analytics program. It was energizing and a nice balance between very quantitatively rigorous and qualitatively engaging. The materials were industry agnostic, and you didn’t have to be an expert on machine learning or modeling to understand the concepts.

Among my most valuable takeaways was the concept of moving from thinking about product-line profitability to looking at customer profitability. We talked about segmenting our customer data based on CLV instead of products, which is a better way to run your business. Another key takeaway was the discussion about how companies need to align to a core set of KPIs across the organization. I live in the world of social where we have so many metrics — likes, shares, retweets, favorites, comments — so narrowing those down to metrics that link with core KPIs will be helpful.

I especially enjoyed the guest speaker Zach Anderson from Electronic Arts. He emphasized that when it comes to customer analytics and results, change to the business doesn’t come overnight. It’s a multi-year journey, and you need to focus your energies on your most important customers in order to realize returns over time.

The faculty was great. Eric Bradlow is larger-than-life. Raghu Iyengar is extremely engaging. I appreciated that the faculty encouraged dialogue among the participants so we would learn from each other and continue our relationships after the program. I also loved the red-carpet treatment we received: we were well taken care of as participants.”

Jola Oliver Director, Global Media Intelligence, McDonald’s Corp.

In my role, part of my focus is on environmental and social governance, or ESG, as a criteria for investing. I work with what’s referred to as alternative data in order to identify opportunities and manage risk. I thought Customer Analytics was a fantastic program. It far exceeded my expectations, and I had high expectations going in. It feels like when you’ve finished the program, you almost have a semester’s worth of material that you walked away with in five days.

I was able to start using practical information in evaluating investments right away. Even during the program, in having conversations with colleagues, I was able to pick up some ideas and use them almost in real time.

One of the important things Customer Analytics reinforced for me was to resist the temptation of the next “shiny object” in analytics and machine learning, since there’s so much hype. Simplicity is key, and often it comes down to just finding the right approach to the right problem. At the same time, there’s always new concepts to learn in this space, and different tools you can add to your toolbox to use when you need to.

I especially enjoyed the interdisciplinary nature of the program. Every faculty member and speaker had a different topic or perspective on analytics. One talked about sports analytics, one came from the world of video games, another from Google, and others from traditional technology and marketing. It was a really nice mix and I thought that was a strength of the program. I also appreciated the diversity of industries among the participants. You’d be hard pressed to find two people with similar backgrounds: participants came from biotech, media, finance, technology, and several others.

I highly recommend the program, and would attend another Wharton Executive Education course without hesitation.”

Michael Ferrari Managing Partner, Atlas Research Innovations

At Merck, I serve as a data scientist responsible for improving decision-making and business results in our Company’s Global Human Health (GHH) division through innovative uses of data and analytics. I enrolled in Customer Analytics because I want to stay abreast of new developments in customer analytics given the amount of data that are now available, not just in the pharmaceutical industry but every industry. I wanted to learn about industry agnostic novel analytical methodologies that can be leveraged to derive actionable insights from big data. In addition to the course content, Wharton’s reputation was a big factor in my choosing the program.

I loved the program. The faculty was very knowledgeable. Professor Raghu Iyengar and I have remained in touch on LinkedIn. I also really enjoyed the guest speakers, and the opportunity to interact with peers from other industries. I realized that they were facing similar challenges to mine in the pharmaceutical sector, and that the potential solutions are not necessarily unique to pharmaceuticals.

In addition to the technical aspects of the training, I was particularly interested in discovering how to better engage the non-technical individuals in my organization and to communicate insights from analytics in an actionable way. I also wanted to explore how to optimally organize and run an analytical team. The program really focused on all these topics, so that was very helpful to me.

I started applying concepts from the course to my job almost immediately. Two concepts that I found very useful are customer lifetime value and re-defining big data as more columns — unique information — at the unit of experiment as opposed to more rows — units of experiments. I would definitely recommend the course.”

Andrew Rugaiganisa Associate Director, Global Innovation Analytics, Merck & Co.

I’m a director of operations for analytics in the U.S. Air Force, which is a relatively new position. We are looking at how we will use big data in order to create new syllabi for our student pilots. We will also use analytics to judge readiness of our operational pilots. I enrolled in the Wharton program because I did not have a strong background in analytics and needed some further academic training. Although I have a number of data analysts and scientists working with me, I did not understand the big picture or have ideas about where we could go with the information we have.

Wharton’s Customer Analytics program was fantastic. Applying what I learned at Wharton is now part of my everyday job. For instance, I’m using the concept of customer lifetime value to create what we are calling pilot lifetime value. We’re also building decision trees based on a student pilot’s ability to perform specific tasks in the jet, in order to transition to personalized training. Moreover, being able to communicate clearly about analytics—to explain it to my leadership and co-workers the same way it was explained to me in the course—is very useful in gaining cultural buy-in.

The faculty was excellent and I also really enjoyed the guest speakers from Google and Electronic Arts (EA). Many of the participants already had a lot of knowledge about solving customer analytics problems for their organizations, and I picked up useful information from them. I’ve already recommended the program, and Wharton, to others. One of my co-workers will be attending a Wharton Executive Education leadership course this spring.”

Matthew Ross Major, Chief Data Officer, 4th Training Squadron, U.S. Air Force

At the Gates Foundation, we seek to end the problems that contribute most to inequality in health and productivity. That means focusing on getting to zero – zero malaria, zero HIV, zero difference between the health of a poor kid and every other kid. To accomplish this, we need to leverage more and more granular information about populations and individuals. I lead an analytics team that brings data expertise and advanced modeling in order to drive more precision in our organization’s decision-making, while also making investments in the field so our partners can more easily do this kind of work as well.

I enrolled in Customer Analytics because I’ve always thought we could learn a lot from the for-profit marketing and e-commerce world that is generating profit by using customer data to drive precision in products and marketing. I wanted to have contact with people outside of the ‘usual suspects’ at the events we go to, who typically work at non-profit and government entities. At Wharton I met people from industries ranging from pharma to restaurants to content distribution, and it was really rewarding and enriching to see how they shaped their business problems and applied the tools we were learning. Although our challenges are different — theirs is business competition and ours is achieving our mission — we were all trying to change our organizations and ecosystems in much the same way.

The faculty was exceptional. I was absolutely floored by the quality of their instruction, their ability to drive engagement, their command of the subject matter, and their ability to tie together the many different perspectives in the room. They made the course both academically eye-opening and fascinating, as well as practical and actionable.

Professor Eric Bradlow’s initial session was transformative for me. He talked about how to view problems and the data associated with them in a way that pivots from a product-oriented view to a customer-oriented view. It made sense for a foundation like ours — which is organized around disease verticals and the products that cure them — to figure out how to incorporate this perspective.

This course is a great introduction to, and framing of, data analytics that you can take back to your organization to work more effectively with data and data scientists. It helps you learn to ask good questions that are answerable with data, and to cut through the clutter and hype around analytics techniques. I highly recommend it.”

Ben Pierson Deputy Director, Enterprise Data, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

I'm responsible for the data our sales organization uses to manage business KPIs and our primary applications of CRM and Microsoft Power BI. I enrolled in Customer Analytics because our organization is looking to invest in understanding how we can better leverage our data sets to drive business insights. Traditionally we’ve mostly been reactive, but in growing as a business, you realize you need a more strategic methodology around how you’re pulling data and presenting it to solve problems. We also want to get more into predictive analytics.

The program was great. The academic director, Raghu Iyengar, was awesome, and all the faculty and speakers were very informative, interesting, and engaging. The staff that helped coordinate the program and answer questions was very nice and accommodating. The week went really fast; the days were long, but they didn’t seem long.

The very first presentation, on the first day, hit the nail on the head for me. It was about segmenting your business and customers, and running customer lifetime value data to understand who’s contributing the most to your company and why. And just a couple of weeks prior, my colleagues and I had been talking about the need to figure that out. So it really resonated with me and was immediately applicable to what we were working on. I took a ton of useful insights from the program that I have applied and continue to apply.

My background is in sales and I was concerned there would be a lot of participants with statistical or mathematical backgrounds, but there were plenty of business leaders there as well. I discovered that many other companies have the same issues as we do, which was interesting and helpful to know. I would absolutely recommend the program to anyone looking to take it who is in a similar role to mine."

Todd Ingenito Director, Corporate Sales Operations, SHI International Corp.

I am CBC’s strategy manager for Guatemala and Jamaica, and that basically involves three pillars: consumer pricing; customer pricing, including the trade terms we give our customers; and demand planning. We’re playing a quick game of catch-up with technology because we are based in Central America, and with Customer Analytics for Growth we recognized a great opportunity to see what they’re doing in the U.S. and around the world in advanced customer analytics.

I enjoyed the program very much. The high academic standards of the professors, guest speakers, and classmates really challenges you to a new way of thinking. It was very holistic in that it had a pricing module and an analytics module. I particularly liked the pricing module and also the speakers from Google and EA Sports. The program offered insights into what the future holds — such as blockchain management — as well as many quick wins, or low-hanging fruit, that we were able to apply to the business very fast. From the program, we discovered a new way to understand consumers better and to segment our customer base. We’re now directing our discounts more specifically to certain customers in a way that will add value to our business and not just give the same thing to everyone.

Moreover, when I returned from the course, I had exposure with my CEO, my executive president, the general director, and the VP of marketing to present my insights. It’s not easy to get time in their agenda, yet a 30-minute meeting turned into almost two hours because the discussion was so enriching. I think it also contributed to the next step in my career, my recent promotion from revenue management to strategy manager.

I would totally recommend the program. On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a 10. I have a very strong interest in continuing my professional leadership development at Wharton.”

Alfredo Castaneda Strategy Manager, Central America Bottling Corporation, Guatemala

At Cubic, we have a philosophy of ‘winning the customer.’ As part of this philosophy, it’s important that we understand our customers and their needs, both today and in the future. We believe that one way we can achieve this level of customer commitment is through the use of customer analytics.

To help further develop my knowledge in analytics, I enrolled in Customer Analytics for Growth. The program is fantastic. I enjoyed every minute of it. I can’t speak highly enough of the team at Wharton; they have created a program that is well structured and relevant to any business.

During the five-day program, we worked through a wide range of analytics, including pricing analytics, customer value, and much more. I was worried I was going to spend days looking at mathematical formulas, but that wasn’t the case. The program offered great variety, and any time we did spend working through formulas was in groups and focused on understanding how our calculations related to real-life business challenges.

The guest speakers from a wide range of industries were insightful and informative. They shared with us their experiences of implementing customer analytics, answered our questions, and presented the positive results their businesses have seen.

The program has opened my eyes to new possibilities for analytics. Since returning from the program, I’ve presented two ideas to the leadership team at Cubic on how we can use customer analytics. The business has welcomed the ideas, and we’re now partnering with the Wharton Customer Analytics initiative on two projects.

I highly recommend Customer Analytics for Growth to anyone who wants to use data to create a stronger and healthier relationship with their customers.”

Zoe Yates Director of International Marketing and Customer Analytics, Cubic Mission Solutions, United Kingdom

Customer Analytics for Growth was fantastic. It covered best practices for thinking about data, machine learning, and analytics. I'm not a marketer by background but I am quite data driven, and the course was very helpful in providing an understanding of how the role of analytics is changing in decision making. It also explored how managers should be shaping their organizations to use these techniques.

The course was not overly technical so it should not deter anyone who is uncomfortable with quant. The number of industry-based guest lecturers was very helpful in providing a real-world view of the challenges.

I think that every business is becoming a data-driven business and becoming data-centric these days. And a huge part of what we're doing at my company carsales.com is to think about — as a technology company — what data do we need to be able to improve the customer experience, and to maximize our ability to wrap all of our services around the customer? So the course was really useful.”

Stephen Wong Chief Strategy Officer, carsales.com

I do independent consulting and I’m currently working with an international communications and marketing agency. I decided to enroll in the Customer Analytics for Growth program because I have worked for 14 years in the consulting industry and wanted to better understand what my clients wanted and needed.

The Wharton program helped me integrate most of my past work experience into one coherent set of skills and gave me a foundation to expand my capabilities. My appreciation for what customers might be looking for has been shifted quite a bit, and I really gained great insights into what it means to work with customers.

One major insight that I got from Customer Analytics for Growth was that even though human beings can be infinitely complex, their behavioral patterns are actually not that complex when it comes down to the moment of deciding whether to buy something or not. There are a lot of great tools that can help you understand customers’ underlying propensities and past behaviors.

Another takeaway was that because there’s so much freedom and reach in what you can do in the online digital space, ethics matter. It’s important not just for people in my role but for users, site operators, and ad agencies. I also gained a better understanding of the larger customer analytics community — marketers, consumers, corporate managers, scientists, and developers — and the part each one plays in this field.

The faculty was excellent and the program was well designed. I felt that they delivered the program at their best. I also had a great time getting to know the other participants during the classes and at lunch and dinner. We ended up building a collective view, a coherent understanding, of a given subject. That kind of thing never happens in a regular work environment, so I really liked that aspect of being in the program. I strongly recommend the course. I would give it a 10 on a scale of 10.

As a Wharton alum taking this class, I almost forgot what it would be like to be back at Wharton. It was a reminder of the quality and style of the faculty, and I realized I missed that environment very much: an environment where you get to access the intellect and rigor of those researchers. I also enjoyed being around the staff members and of course the students who come to take the courses.

So it was great to be surrounded by the kind of place where you can appreciate what academia has achieved over many years, where you can access resources to really understand what’s happening around you, in your own way and on your own terms. I really want that kind of message to be sent out there: for people to understand what it’s like to be back in school once in a while.”

Takashi Yoshizaki Founder, Takashi Yoshizaki Consulting, New York City

Everything that was covered in Wharton’s Customer Analytics for Growth program — from understanding baseline decisions about data to different types of analytics — is relevant for my company. When I came back and presented some of what we learned, my boss said the program already paid for itself several times over.

I’ve been through many training programs, but this program was by far the best. The interactions with the professors, all of whom I got to know, and the rest of the class made for a lot of opportunities to learn more, make connections, and network. My company will be sending more people next year."

Crystal Bray, PhD Product Management, Uber Freight

Wharton really goes in depth, not only in the theory but also in tools and strategy. It’s the right combination of the theoretical and the tactical, and you start implementing what you are learning in real time.

Many times programs like this take you from A to H. You learn some of what you need but not everything. Customer Analytics for Growth goes from A to Z. The professors are fantastic and cover every aspect of the subject. There is no other way to learn this much about customer analytics without going back to school."

Kati Stratos Director, Analytics, Comcast

When you go to a program 3,700 miles away, you must be very sure that it’s going to be a great program in a great business school, and you go with many questions in your mind. Some of my questions were broad, including why we need to change from a product-centric model to a customer-centric one, and why customer lifetime value is a key if you want to be successful in your business. I also came to the program wanting to know more about specific metrics topics such as regression and deviation.

Customer Analytics for Growth answered all of my questions, and the program has been key for my future in this new world. It was worth every one of the 3,700 miles of travel to study at a great business school with the best teachers and highly engaged classmates."

Salvador Muñoz Patiño Sales Manager for Spain — Portugal, Teradata Iberia