Business Analytics Assignment: Information Policy and Outsourcing

This Business Analytics assignment explores several key aspects of the field. It begins by contrasting centralized and decentralized organizational structures, arguing for the efficiency of a centralized approach in business decision-making due to its focus, conflict reduction, and control. The assignment then highlights the importance of collaboration in business analytics, emphasizing its role in problem-solving, job satisfaction, and skill recognition. The significance of organizational culture is also addressed, stressing its impact on employee motivation, brand image, and efficient task delivery. The assignment further examines how establishing an information policy affects BA, emphasizing the need to balance data protection with the benefits of information sharing. Outsourcing BA is discussed as a strategic choice for focusing on core activities, cost savings, and risk management. The importance of measuring BA contributions is highlighted, emphasizing its role in providing clear data-driven insights. Finally, the assignment concludes by exploring how data quality, encompassing completeness, consistency, accuracy, validity, and timeliness, significantly impacts the effectiveness of BA.

Running head: BUSINESS ANALYTICS
Business analytics (BA)
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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1. The literature in management information systems consistently suggests that a
decentralized approach to resource allocation is the most efficient. Why then do
you think the literature in BA suggests that the opposite—a centralized
organization—is the best structure?
Centralized organization is the best structure because of few of the advantages it provides
to the BA. Regarding business decision making centralized organizations has been found to
be exceptionally efficient. Thus, faster actions are taken for the problems. It also helps in
keeping focused on one vision or purpose of the organization. Organizations are encountered
with lesser conflicts when it is a centralized organization. Lastly, centralized leaders can
maintain more control over the operations of the organization and enhances the culture
because they take all the major decisions (Capitanescu, Bilibin & Ramos, 2014). However,
Decentralization has certain disadvantages in the organization, which are that it enhances the
problems in coordination among the different units as well as the expenses of the
administration because high paid leaders are appointed under decentralized organizations.
Decentralization organizations have absence of uniformity. Moreover, as this process
involves various departments and employees’ establishment thus, cost of operations
increases, it is completely inappropriate for small organizations and lastly, each department
will work with a self-interested perspective where the wider interests of all the other
departments are neglected thus, effecting the entire organization (Kota, Gibbins & Jennings,
2012).
2. Why is collaboration important to BA?
When two or more people are working together by sharing ideas and are planning to
achieve a common goal together then it is called collaboration. Collaboration is an important
factor in any business analytics it can supply solutions, give employees with a strong sense of
determination and fortify the employees that they all in the same team (Lim, Chen & Chen,

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2013). However, there are also some more benefits of collaboration in BA, which are as
follows-
 Job satisfaction and staff retention- when the teams that are working together find
an answer and solves any issue the employees feel satisfied. However, getting
credit and acknowledgment for their success will not only satisfy them but will
also make them feel that they are an essential part so they will be more keen in
keeping up with their job.
 Problems are solved quicker- problems will arise in daily basis in any business
environment, but collaboration can help to reach the solution faster because when
a team will work on it definitely one will see the if anything has been missed and
can figure out the solution faster.
 Recognize the skills and expertise of the employees- working in a team with each
other will help the team mates know each other well and discover each other’s
strengths and weaknesses closely.
3. Why is organization culture important to BA?
The organization’s overall lifestyles that include the different elements that make it stand
distinct from the internal and external associates are known as the organizational culture.
However, organizational culture is important to BA because a healthy culture in any
organization will inspire and motivate their employees and make them loyal towards the
organization (Barton & Court, 2012). Moreover, beneficial competition in the organization is
enhanced; it further helps in building the brand image of the company, being accustomed
with the organization’s culture will help the employees treated equally and give their best.
The organizational culture helps in maintaining a better relationship among the employees
and exacts the best work from each one of them. However, organization cultures come out
with certain guidelines, which help the employees to become clearer with their tasks, and

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time limits in which they have to deliver their job. Thus, understanding the organizational
culture is important to work efficiently in a healthy environment (Büschgens, Bausch &
Balkin, 2013).
4. How does establishing an information policy affect BA?
Businesses founders have certain lawful obligations to protect their data and secure the
privacy of the information of the customers’. However, it affects the business analytics by
keeping the information of the business confidential only within the company. Moreover, it
helps in displaying the type of image that the organization wants to be reflected in the market.
Information policies further helps the BA to circumvent violating any laws or disclosing any
violations done in the past, which can uncover the organization to costly legal
accountabilities. Lastly, in any BA the balance is very important where it can stabilize the
dangers as well as benefits of emancipating the information. The essential concerns of any
business would be liability, their negative image in the market and disappearance of
confidential information but the organization should never restrict too much the type as well
as amount of information it is eager to circulate (Bates, 2014).
5. Under what circumstances is outsourcing BA good for the development of BA in
an organization?
Outsourcing BA is essential for the enhancement of BA in any organization because of
the circumstances when the following points arises -
 Concentrates on the core activities of the business- when the company needs to
focus mainly on their important activities without any loss in the back office then
outsourcing is a good option for development of BA

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 To save the cost and efficiency- when the back office services gets difficult in
nature but the organization’s size is blocking to perform them at a reasonable and
steady cost
 Decrease the overheads- those functions that can be easily moved are outsourced
to reduce the overheads
 Controlling the operations- the expensive operations that are overflowing the costs
are considered by outsourcing
 Managing the risks- it decreases the risk factors that are brought by the low-
quality level of operation in the organization thus, maintaining a continuity
 Developing the internal employees- when the organization is in the need to get
those skilled employees that it lacks (Sharma, Mithas & Kankanhalli, 2014).
6. Why do we have to measure BA contributions to an organization?
In any organization to measure the contributions of the BA is very important, as the
business founders as well as the leaders need to have a clear apprehension of the data for
them that display a valid conclusion from the information that has been analyzed. However,
BA is further measures because it can inspect a huge amount of data from various sources,
then it enhances the collaboration and cooperation in a business by supplying acute
information to the employees so that they can share the documents, reports and observe the
key performance indicators. Apart from these, it is also measures so that it can help the
managers so that they can locate the hidden patterns or information if any in the wider
datasets. It works as an authorized tool for the organization allowing the employees to work
more systematically (Schläfke, Silvi & Möller, 2012).
7. How does data quality affect BA?
The ways in which the data quality helps BA are completeness, consistency, accuracy,
validity and timeliness. The first one is the factor of data completeness, which is that there is

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any gap existing in the data, or not. The gap is existing when the data that is collected is not
actually, what has been expected. In another factor, that BA is affected by the data quality is
in the data consistency where whether the kind of data ranges with the anticipated versions of
the data, which must be coming in. Followed by data accuracy, which is whether the data that
has been collected is correct or it is representing accurately that it should. Then comes the
factor of data validity, which is a bit difficult because it can be a huge problem in the result if
the validity does not measure, what it has intended to estimate. Lastly, the data timeliness that
is the anomaly of when the data should be accepted in order for the information to be
efficiently used (Kwon, Lee & Shin, 2014).

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References
Barton, D., & Court, D. (2012). Making advanced analytics work for you. Harvard business
review, 90(10), 78-83.
Bates, J. (2014). The strategic importance of information policy for the contemporary
neoliberal state: The case of Open Government Data in the United
Kingdom. Government Information Quarterly, 31(3), 388-395.
Büschgens, T., Bausch, A., & Balkin, D. B. (2013). Organizational culture and innovation: A
meta‐analytic review. Journal of product innovation management, 30(4), 763-781.
Capitanescu, F., Bilibin, I., & Ramos, E. R. (2014). A comprehensive centralized approach
for voltage constraints management in active distribution grid. IEEE Transactions on
Power Systems, 29(2), 933-942.
Kota, R., Gibbins, N., & Jennings, N. R. (2012). Decentralized approaches for self-adaptation
in agent organizations. ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems
(TAAS), 7(1), 1.
Kwon, O., Lee, N., & Shin, B. (2014). Data quality management, data usage experience and
acquisition intention of big data analytics. International Journal of Information
Management, 34(3), 387-394.
Lim, E. P., Chen, H., & Chen, G. (2013). Business intelligence and analytics: Research
directions. ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems (TMIS), 3(4),
17.

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Schläfke, M., Silvi, R., & Möller, K. (2012). A framework for business analytics in
performance management. International Journal of Productivity and Performance
Management, 62(1), 110-122.
Sharma, R., Mithas, S., & Kankanhalli, A. (2014). Transforming decision-making processes:
a research agenda for understanding the impact of business analytics on
organisations. European Journal of Information Systems, 23(4), 433-441.