You are a consultant hired to inform a company (a profit or a non-profit) why they should invest in a data analytics function and what they stand to gain. The client company is relatively sure they want such a function because they heard it produces useful predictions of some kind involving customers, suppliers, competitors and more, but they are not sure what it might cost to set up or how to do it, or what they can realistically expect to gain from it.
Pick a company to write about (public or private, profit or non-profit). Analyze the current issues important to that company and that industry. Research the current competitive environment. Research what benefits are already being provided by similar data analytics functions. Estimate the likely costs and obstacles a new data analytics function will face.
Write a 1 or 2 page proposal to your client in which you tell them (1) what a data analytics function is and what they can expect to gain from it, and (2) generally how it should be set up (you will fill-in more details in later papers). For instance, it might be set up in a local data center on new equipment, or maybe it should be set up in the cloud, or maybe some other method. Estimate the likely project timeline (how long will it take) and estimate ballpark costs (you can revise these later).
Depending on your choices, such a data analytics function might be a small low-cost thing, or maybe it might be a higher-cost and more extensive function. In later weeks of this class you will be asked to add-on lots of additional details (in future more essays) to cover the many other topics in detail, such as the cloud, data warehousing, networks, security, and more.
