Master of Science in Business Analytics Capstone (Internship) Report

CREATING BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

DASHBOARDS FOR EDUCATION SERVICES
ORGANIZATION
By Rajesh Doma
Master of Science in Business Analytics
Department of Operations, Business Analytics, and Information Systems

Internship Report Submitted in Partial Fulfillment for the

Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Business
Analytics

Internship Period: 11-May-2015 to 07-Aug-2015

Readers:
Professor Jeffrey Shaffer
Professor Michael Magazine
Department of Operations, Business Analytics, and Information System-OBAIS
University of Cincinnati
 Table of Contents

Abstract.................................................................................................................................. 2
Introduction to Education Business......................................................................................... 3
About Company....................................................................................................................... 3
Business Model....................................................................................................................... 3
Projects................................................................................................................................... 4
Project # 1: Riverbed Sales & Pipeline Analysis...................................................................4

Project # 2: VMWare Sales Analysis..................................................................................... 6

Project # 3: Informatica Online Subscriptions Analysis........................................................9
Conclusion............................................................................................................................. 12
Scope of future work............................................................................................................. 12
References............................................................................................................................ 12
Acknowledgments................................................................................................................. 12
Abstract
The Objective of this report is to give details of the work performed as part of
internship at Education Services Group, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Education Services Group (ESG) is small-sized company (< 50) located in Eastern part of
Cincinnati. It partners with technology companies to create best-in-class education and training
businesses. It also provides a full range of professional services, support and tools specific to an
education business, ESG helps clients increase education revenue and lower operational costs.

The Education products such as on demand trainings, in-classes trainings, labs, material etc are
hosted, managed and delivered using Learn Management Systems (LMS). LMS can be in-house
or third party software product. Thus, LMS contains training data of individuals or users who
have purchased the Education products. Sales and marketing of these products is managed by
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) products such as Salesforce.com and Marketo
respectively.

As a Business Intelligence Analyst, I have worked on Data Extraction, Analysis and

Visualization of trainings and sales data extracted from these systems. The prime focus of the
work is to develop descriptive analytics - Reports and Dashboards that will give actionable
insights. Below are some of my key responsibilities:

Understanding Education Industry trends and Customer Requirements.

Develop Extraction Methods and perform Data Analysis

Manage projects assigned by President or other key staff members

Utilizing a selected BI visualization tool (Tableau) to build Sales & Revenue Dashboards
that will add value to clients.

Act as a key technical point of contact around data management and reporting

Creation of Consumption, Monitoring and Usage reporting

Introduction to Education Business
We are living in era, where the technology changes very rapidly. Technological companies
compete with each other to produce finer and better products for customers. Creation of quality
education and trainings of these products has become as vital as other facets like Marketing,
Branding and Sales and Support of these products. It is obvious, companies that buy these
technological products not only look for superior features but also like to have human capital that
is adept and skillful to leverage these features to enhance their productivity and profits. In order
to avoid the perils of being out-thought and out-maneuvered by their competitors. So, Companies
are ever more ready now-a-days to invest on effective and efficient Employees training
initiatives.

These training initiatives or assets needs to be monitored, managed and accessed via a reliable
and consistent systems that can store and consulted for analysis. These Systems are often called
as Learning Management Systems (LMS).According to Bersin & Associates Report on E-
Learning, LMS is estimated to be $2 Billion market having more than 500 LMS providers with
only five of them having market share of 4% or above. This very growth of LMS Applications
speaks about need and increased relevance of Education Industry

About Company
Education Services Group(ESG), is a privately held company founded in 2002 at Cincinnati,
Ohio. ESG is an Educational Consultancy that offers comprehensive solutions focused on
education sales and managed training services essential to software education and training
delivery. ESG partners with Technology Companies such as Informatica, EMC2, VMWare,
Riverbed and many more, providing a full range of managed services, marketing, sales, support
and tools specific to education business, ESG helps clients increase education revenue and lower
operational costs.

Business Model
ESGs partnership with its clients starts off with staffing the required Sales Reps for marketing
and selling their Education products Trainings, Certifications. Sales Reps uses salesforce.com
(SDFC), a cloud-based Sales CRM, to capture the Leads, Opportunities, Contacts and Sales.

All the Organizations or Individuals that has intent or need to purchase given Clients Education
product are considered as Leads. An Opportunity will be created by Sales Rep when a Lead
expresses interest in a specific training. They will also update the Contact of each opportunity.
Contact will be typically Manager that co-ordinates or an Individual that takes part in specific
training. Opportunity is considered 100% or complete only upon complete delivery of training.
Thus opportunity goes through various business stages (10% - 25% -50% -75%-100%) before it
is actually delivered. For Example, When a Customer says he/she is interested in a Training of
$5000 value then it is logged 10% opportunity i.e.., pipeline worth of $500.The day the training
is completed it logged as 100% revenue i.e.., as Sale of $5000.

Projects
Project # 1: Sales & Pipeline Analysis
Objective: To perform Data Analysis and to create insights of sales and pipeline for the Riverbed
Training products

Software/Tools used: Salesforce.com (SDFC), Microsoft Excel, Tableau 9.0

Approach: Sales Data starting is extracted from Salesforce.com database into Excel, Cleaned and
Loaded into Tableau to create Sales & pipeline insights. Data is cooked up for confidential
purpose

Report#1: Sales & Pipeline by Quarter

Above report clear depicts that substantial revenue is lost in March due to Expired Credits;
Training Credits are pre-paid Education vouchers that can be brought by customers, who have
strong intention and need of training in future. These Credits come with expiration date.
Ineffective training planning leads to this loss or expiration of these credits. Based on this report
ESG is considering working more closely and effectively with customers to improve utilization
of training credits there by increasing overall product satisfaction.

Report#2: Sale Cycle by Modality

Sale Cycle: is defined as the No.Of days it took for an opportunity (training need) to materialize
from its creation date. In other words, it is the time taken by Sales Rep to convert a training need
to a sale or booking.

Modality: is defined as the mode of delivery of the Training. Generally Training delivered in
following three modes

Onsite - This is also known as private mode. In this Mode, the training scheduled delivered to
specific group of users. For Example, a Company X request for training 10 of its Employees
on Specific Technology or Product. It can be a Virtual Class or Onsite Class
Public In this Mode, the training is delivered at designated public Training Centers. It is
open to anyone who enrolls for training.
VILT (Virtual Instructor Led Training delivered Online)

Project # 2: Sales Analysis

Objective: To perform Data Analysis and create insights of Sale Activity and Revenue generated
by each Sales Rep working on VMWare Training products
Software/Tools used: Salesforce.com (SDFC), Microsoft Excel, Tableau 9.0

Approach: Sales Data starting is extracted from Salesforce.com database into Excel, Cleaned and
Loaded into Tableau to create insights of sales activity and booking revenues generated by each
Sale Rep.

Dashboard#1: Sales Activity by Sales Rep

This Dashboard depicts the performance and the booking revenue generated by each Sales rep
working with VMware Client. Based on this Dashboard, a Sales Manager can track the progress
of each individual and can help those Reps, who are not able to Sell up to the Mark.

Storyboard#1: Overview of Sales in 2014 Vs 2015

This Report have dynamic filters that helps the Sales Manager to compare the Sales numbers of
2015 w.r.t 2014 at given point in a calendar year.
Challenges faced:

As the Sales Activity data and the Actual Sales data (Bookings) can only be extracted as separate
Excel sheets. A Custom SQL is used to join the two Excel sheets using Tableaus native Excel
Connection. This Challenge gave me an opportunity to learn Custom SQL Capabilities and its
limitations - the response time decreases as complexity of the query increases, full outer joins
are not supported , so two Excels are joined used Union functionality; Below is the Custom SQL
used:
SELECT
[SalesActivity_2014$].[Sales Date] As ActDate,
[SalesActivity_2014$].[Assigned],
[SalesActivity_2014$].[ActType],
COUNT(*) AS Num,
0 As Amount
FROM [SalesActivity_2014$]
GROUP BY [SalesActivity_2014$].[Sales Date], [SalesActivity_2014$].[Assigned],
[SalesActivity_2014$].[ActType]
HAVING
[SalesActivity_2014$].[ActType] IS NOT NULL
UNION ALL
SELECT
[SalesActivity_2015$].[Sales Date] As ActDate,
[SalesActivity_2015$].[Assigned],
[SalesActivity_2015$].[ActType],
COUNT(*) AS Num,
0 As Amount
FROM [SalesActivity_2015$]
GROUP BY [SalesActivity_2015$].[Sales Date], [SalesActivity_2015$].[Assigned],
[SalesActivity_2015$].[ActType]
HAVING
[SalesActivity_2015$].[ActType] IS NOT NULL
FROM [Opporunities_2015$]
 Below is Snapshot of resultant Database in Tableau

Project # 3 Online Subscriptions Analysis

Objective: To perform a trend analysis of recently launched online self-paced training products
and to create consumption reports of these products

Software/Tools used: Cornerstone Learning Management System, Microsoft Excel, Tableau 9.0

Approach: User Registrations and the Consumption Data starting from Launch of product i.e.,
Feb 2015, is extracted from Cornerstone database into Excel, then it is cleaned and Loaded into
Tableau to perform trend analysis and consumption reports

Storyboard#1:

Company has launched 3 new online self-paced trainings subscriptions in Feb 2015.These
Subscriptions facilitate flexible learning environment to users by providing access to a set of
courses, material and videos and labs. Each subscription is offered as bundle of courses.
Company is interested in trends and training consumption of these subscriptions. Some of the
data in below reports is masked for confidential purposes.
Conclusion
In my 10 weeks of internship, I got an opportunity to

Learn about Education industry and its dynamics.

Able to understand and appreciate the key terms Contacts, Leads, Opportunities etc.
And performance metrics such as Sales Cycle, Sales Activity, Booking Revenues, and
Pipeline etc.
Participated in Product Evaluation Selected Tableau over Qlikkview, incorta as
Companys Data Visualization tool.
Learn more about Tableau Technical capabilities extra connections, Custom SQL,
formulae in Calculated fields, also worked on performance tuning to improve the
Reports response time
Work with three different Clients, understand their product lines and Education
Offerings.
Participate in Onsite Client Business meetings to discuss and understand the
requirements
Learn basics of Salesforce.com CRM that is used by Sales Reps to capture the
Education Products Sales Activity.

Scope of future work

Develop 5 Standard Reports that can be offered to every Client as part Business
partnership.
Build the Information Technology Infrastructure to host and deploy On demand
Reporting Applications
To automate the process of pulling data from Sources such as Salesforce.com and
LMS and to perform a periodical refresh of the Tableau Reports.
References
http://www.educationservicesgroup.com/

https://www.docebo.com/landing/contactform/elearning-market-trends-and-forecast-2014-
2016-docebo-report.pdf

https://www.wikipedia.org/

Acknowledgments
This project would not have been possible without the kind support and help of many individuals and ESG

Company. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all of them. I am highly grateful to my Manager and

President of ESG Company - Brad Pierce, my Readers Prof. Jaffrey Shaffer, Prof. Mike Magazine for their

guidance and constant support in completing the project.