Exercise 10: Analytics in organizations
In this exercise, you will analyze how analytics contributes to strategic objectives in organizations.
This is a small-group task. We will facilitate the group formation at the beginning of the session.
Your task is to identify where analytics enters concrete business processes, which decisions it supports, what data and systems are needed, and how the organization learns from outcomes.
You will develop an Analytics-Enabled Strategy Map for one selected company.
Step 1: Select your case
Select one company from the following list:
| Case | Industry |
|---|---|
| Netflix | Streaming / entertainment |
| Meta | Social media / digital platforms |
| X / Twitter | Social media / digital platforms |
| Siemens | Manufacturing / industrial technology |
Step 2: Familiarize yourself with the company
Start by building a basic understanding of the company:
- What is the company’s business model?
- Who are its main customers or users?
- What are its main products, services, or platforms?
- What strategic objective seems especially important for the company?
- What could be plausible key performance indicators for this objective?
Do not assume that official strategic metrics are publicly available.
If necessary, infer plausible KPIs and justify your reasoning.
Step 3: Conduct complementary web research
Use public materials such as annual reports, investor presentations, engineering blogs, research blogs, transparency reports, product documentation, regulatory documents, high-quality journalism, or academic case studies.
Use at least three credible sources. These can be company sources, external sources, or a combination of both.
Useful starting points include:
- Overview of engineering blogs: Top 20 Tech Blogs Every Developer Should Follow
- Company annual reports or investor relations pages
- Company engineering, research, safety, transparency, or product blogs
- High-quality journalism or academic case studies on the selected company
For each source, ask:
- What strategic objective does this source reveal?
- Which business processes are described?
- Which analytics applications are described or implied?
- Which decisions are supported by analytics?
- Which data sources or systems are mentioned?
- Are there signs of experimentation, feedback, monitoring, governance, or regulation?
Step 4: Build an Analytics-Enabled Strategy Map
Fill out this table for your selected case.
Focus on specific analytics-enabled decisions, not broad statements such as “the company uses AI.”
The goal is to understand how analytics connects strategic objectives to concrete processes, decisions, data, actions, and outcomes.
Some information may not be publicly available. In such cases, make a careful, evidence-based inference and clearly indicate where you are interpreting rather than reporting.
Before you wrap up, please complete the Session 10 survey here: ?meta:surveys.session_10.url. Thank you 🙏