DATA ANALYTICS FOR EFFICIENCIES
Osotspa is a Thai beverage producer of drinks such as M-150 and Shark Stimulation based in Bangkok. They are the leading energy drink producer in Thailand, and one of the leading producers in the world. Currently, the Osotspa sales team often needs to rely on month-end data provisioning to make decisions on sales executions, which lead to longer lead time to action. The students were asked to provide optimized solutions, improving execution performance through data analytics. Osotspa believed that sales can be better monitored, and cash van routes can be planned daily in accordance with insights obtained from dashboard analytics. The students were to provide tools such that Osotspa's strategist can use the insights to perform sales planning, better-designed sales visit routes, and store segmentation.
The key learning objective from this project was on the application side of data analytics which includes not only creating predictive models but also deploying and visualizing the output from the models. More importantly, this course allowed students to apply cross-disciplinary and project management approaches while learning and applying machine learning techniques to help Thai companies to effectively and efficiently apply data analytics and machine learning to improve their competitiveness and business efficiency. It honed students’ problem-solving skills and prepares them for the complex regional business environment today.
The students had access to sales data provided by Osotspa. In addition, they had access to the Osotspa Analytics Product Owner to answer questions about the operations of Osotspa. The availability of the data and expert before the project helped the students focus on the research and analysis of the data.
The students were split in groups and presented their findings independently as each group. This allowed for a diverse and critical evaluation of the impact assessment model. While Osotspa's sales data was made available to the students, they also used secondary data to support their models.
By the end of the course, students produced various dashboard solutions that had the following:
- Support for analysing sales performances at various levels in the company to perform strategic planning
- Support for up-selling and cross-selling
- Better-designed sales visit routes and store segmentation
- Customer relationship maintenance through social media listening
The insights and recommendations were not only useful for the partner Osotspa to use as input while evaluating their sales processes and operations, but they were also impressively varied and nuanced.
"The demand for data science professionals is projected to grow and our students are expected to be ready to tackle real world data science challenges once they join the industry. The 'Data Analytics in Asia' SMU-X Overseas course offers students an opportunity to work on real-life data analytics problems in the industry which will further enrich their knowledge and equip them to be industry ready." - Dr Keith Fwa Hua Leong, Professor
"I had the pleasure of mentoring SMU undergrads on a data analytic project for Osotspa, a F&B Thai beverage leader, and I must say that the experience was truly rewarding. These learners showed an exceptional level of dedication, skill, and enthusiasm in tackling the project, and their commitment to producing high-quality results was truly impressive. Throughout the project, I was continually impressed by the level of expertise and creativity that the learners demonstrated, and their willingness to learn and take feedback onboard was truly remarkable. Their attention to detail, commitment to data accuracy and their ability to work collaboratively as a team were all instrumental in the success of the project. One thing that really stood out to me about these students was their willingness to listen and take on board my advice. Throughout the project, I provided regular feedback and suggestions for improvement, and I was consistently impressed by how quickly and effectively they were able to implement these changes. They demonstrated a real eagerness to learn from me and to take advantage of my industry expertise. This made my role as a mentor so much more rewarding, as I felt like I was truly able to make a meaningful contribution to their learning and development. Overall, I have no hesitation in recommending these students for any future data analytic projects. They have shown that they have the skills, knowledge, and motivation required to succeed in any project they undertake, and I have no doubt that they will continue to achieve great things in their future endeavors. It was an absolute pleasure to work with them and I wish them all the best for their future careers." - Dr. Graham Ng, Industry Mentor
“As the age-old saying goes, 'Never underestimate your opponent'. I, of course, did exactly that, and completely underestimated the intensity and rigor of the course and the work that had to be done. My teammates and I definitely did not expect the sheer amount of planning, testing, and re-planning and re-testing that took place over several weeks before we could even start thinking about deployment, and we certainly found better appreciation for the importance of establishing workflows by the end. From the beginning of the course, our team did not know what to expect, and we had more questions than answers. We felt lost a lot (and then literally got lost in Bangkok), and we were pulled out of our comfort zone by the novelty of the assignment. The process was a frustrating, sleepless, and arduous one, but also extremely rewarding, special, and educational. I devoted a lot of time, brainpower, and resources into this project, and am extremely proud of the work that came out of it. In summary, I totally recommend this course to other people looking to understand what it is like to work overseas, hone their skills, or to just make new friends and experience something new.”
– Camille Ong, Student of IS455 class