Data Mining: Business Objectives and AIH Financial Aid Project Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of a data mining project for AIH, an organization offering financial aid to students. The report begins by outlining the business objectives of AIH, which include increasing student enrollment, providing financial assistance for educational expenses, and managing financial risks. It then assesses the current situation, detailing available resources such as personnel, data sources, and software tools. The report also identifies the requirements, assumptions, and constraints of the project, including timelines, data quality, and ethical considerations. Furthermore, it discusses potential risks, including business, organizational, data, financial, and technical risks, and suggests mitigation strategies. Finally, the report defines the data mining goals, translating business questions into technical objectives for the project. The report emphasizes the importance of data mining in mitigating financial risks and achieving AIH's overall goals, particularly in an environment where government funding is not utilized.

Running head: DATA MINING
Data Mining
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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1. Business Understanding
1.1 Business Objectives
Task: Determination of Business Objectives
The procedure of searching significant knowledge by analyzing and evaluating huge
amount of data is known as data mining (Braha 2013). These huge amounts of data are recorded
in the databases or several data warehouses. The person or the individual who performs data
mining in several organizations is called a data miner. Data mining is performed with the various
techniques like the statistics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. AIH will be offering
financial help in education for the students. They have hired a data miner for performing data
mining in the organization (Grossman et al., 2013). The data miner or the business analyst may
have various objectives for the business of AIH. The objectives are given below:
i) The first business objective of a data miner is to know and understand completely
about the client objectives from business perspective.
ii) The second objective of the data miner of this case study is to balance all the
constraints of completion and business objectives of the client (Liao, Chu and Hsiao 2012).
iii) The final objective of the data miner is this case study is to discover and unveil the
major factors influencing the outcome.
Activities: Problem Area
AIH will be offering any type of financial help to the students for their education. They
would be developing their programs for financing with all of their existing and remaining

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institutions (Baker and Inventado 2014). Although, it will be providing such huge advantages,
there are certain threats and risks in their program. The major risk in their program is the
collection of the bad debts from this particular scheme of supporting the students financially in
their education. The major initiative of AIH is that they would be paying the expenses of the
education and the students can complete their education without any type of tension (Siemens
and d Baker 2012). They have hired a business analysts or data miner for performing a project of
data mining in their organization. This project would be extremely beneficial for the organization
for achieving the goals and organizational objectives. The main motivations of this particular
project are those individuals and students, who cannot complete their education for the sake of
expenses. AIH is not using the process of data mining in their business yet, however they are
planning to do so. A typical written report or document is expected from the management bodies
for the permission of organizing this type of project in the business. The project is assumed to be
the key technology for this organization (Witten et al., 2013). The members of the organization
are the users of the project. Te major requirement and the expectation of all the users of the
project is to mitigate and reduce the risk of finance in the project with the help of data mining
and to achieve the goals of the business.
Output: Business Objectives
AIH will be offering any type of financial help to the students for their education. They
would be developing their programs for financing with all of their existing and remaining
institutions. The main point of this organization is that AIH would not utilize any government
sponsored program (Romero and Ventura 2013). They would be becoming the major guarantor
of all the funds and would be sourcing all the funds from their existing and remaining financial
institutions. The goals and objectives of AIH are as follows:

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i) Increasing students enrolment in the organization.
ii) Providing help with the fees of education of the students.
iii) Providing help in the expenses for the daily requirements of their students.
iv) Providing help to their students for studying more and working less during the time of
their semesters (Witten et al., 2013).
v) The fifth objective of the organization is that they would be encouraging every low
income earners, holidaymakers, potential groups, professionals, rural residents and the
international students for continuing with their education with worrying about the expenses.
vi) The final objective is to perform any type of financial management within the
organization.
Output: Business Success Criteria
The success criteria for the business for this particular organization are as follows:
i) Financial Management: The financial management is the most important criteria of
any organization (Liu and Motoda 2012). This is important for AIH as they are not taking any
help from the government. They are sponsoring their project with the organizational funds. This
is also considered as their business objectives.
ii) Product Management: The second major criteria for the success in the business of
AIH are the product management. For this particular project, the product is the service (Larose
2014). The service that is provided to the students by AIH is the product and this is to be
managed with utmost seriousness and so that the students would be getting benefitted easily.

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The above mentioned success criteria of the business are mainly assessed by the top level
of management of a particular organization.
1.2 Assess Situation
Activities: Inventory of Resources
The resources for any project are the mixture of the software, data, computing resources
and personnel (Larose 2014). The details of these resources are given below in a tabular form:
Personnel Details Several Data Several Computing
Resources
Different Software
1. Management
bodies
1. Access to Live
Warehoused
1. Processor 1. Several Data
Mining tools like
MATLAB, , Rattle,
StatSoft Statistica
2. Data Miner 2. Fixed Extracts 2. Monitor 2. Operating system
3. Technical Team 3. Operational Data 3. Keyboard 3. MS SQL Server
4. Employees 4. Mouse 4. Antivirus
Activities: Sources of Data and Knowledge
A data miner performs the process of data mining. He analyzes or evaluates huge
amounts of data. The data that is analyzed is usually collected from several sources. For the case
study of AIH, the data that are absolutely relating to the project must be collected from all the
written documentations (Romero and Ventura 2013). Moreover, there are certain risks and issues

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in this project, relating to the finance. The several sources of knowledge for this particular
project must be the experts of finance as they have the ability to guide in any financial risk.
There are few tools and techniques that help in the process of data mining. Almost all of
them are available plenty in the market. The business analysts or data miner of this particular
project can opt for data mining tools like StatSoft Statistica, MATLAB and Rattle (Shmueli and
Lichtendahl Jr 2017). MATLAB would be the best data mining tool for this project. It is nothing
but a programming language that allows all types of functions like manipulations of matrix,
implementation of algorithm and plotting of data.
Activities: Requirements, Assumptions and Constraints
There are few important requirements for this particular project for the schedule of
completion. They are as follows:
i) Any sort of delay will not be tolerated.
ii) The project must be completed within the given five months of time.
The basic requirements for the quality of the results of the project are as follows:
i) There will not be any degradation in the quality of the project (Siemens and d Baker
2012).
ii) As they are dealing with education sector, the career of the students should be their
first priority.
The basic requirements for security are as follows:
i) Security of the students should be the first priority.

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ii) The requirement is the security of the organizational employees.
The basic requirements for the issues of legal are as follows:
i) Strict laws and regulations must be present in the project (Freitas 2013).
ii) Violation of laws and regulations should be penalized.
It is assumed that every individual associated with the project will follow the mentioned
requirements.
There are several assumptions of any project. They define the guidelines for the probable
outcome of the project (Shmueli and Lichtendahl Jr 2017). The assumptions for the case study
of AIH are as follows:
a) Representation of Data: The results of a particular project comes out to be perfect if
the data is represented well.
ii) Utilization of Data: The utilization of data is the second assumption of this project. It
must be used properly.
c) Output as Planned: The output of the project must be as per planning is done.
It is assumed that the output of the project will be extremely beneficial for AIH
(Bhardwaj and Pal 2012). In spite of all there, there are certain limitations and constraints within
this project. They are as follows:
i) Lack in the Resources: As it is dealing with the career of the students, no limitation in
the resources is tolerable. Any type of limitations in the resources, can stop the data completely.

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ii) Issues in Ethics: Ethical issue is another major limitation for this project. Education
sector must be ethical at every aspect.
ii) Issues in Legal Sector: The final limitation for this particular project is the issue in
legal sector (Witten et al., 2013). Any type of violation in the laws and regulations will be
considered as illegal.
The various sorts of risks in an organization include organizational, business, data and
technical risks.
Business Risks: Competition between two organizations is the source of this risk. It
occurs when both of them are producing similar services. It can be reduced with the help of
strategies.
Organizational Risks: Lacking in the amount of skilled workers is the main risk. The
second type is with the department that do not provide funding (Bhardwaj and Pal 2012). It takes
place when there is less amount of skilled employees. It can be eliminated by hiring employees
who have experience.
Data Risks: It includes all types of the sources of the data in details (Freitas 2013). It
takes place when the data is retrieved and can be reduced by having security approaches in the
organization.
Financial Risks: This includes the major lacking in the funding of the project and the
department will give more funds after observing the initial result (Liu and Motoda 2012). It takes
place when the management does not approve more funds required for the project and can be
reduced by taking help from the experts in finance.

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Technical Risks: It includes all the types of issues and problems in the technical assets. It
can be reduced by the help of the technical team of the organization.
1.3 Data Mining Goals
Task: Determination of Data Mining Goals
The data mining goals state about the objectives of a particular project in terms of
technology (Witten et al., 2013). The possible output of this project allows al the objectives that
are needed to be achieved.
Activities: Translation of Business Questions to Data Mining Goals
The department of finance team of the organization can be sub divided into the guidelines
that are undertaken from the collected data and from the experts in finance.
Various problems of the process of data mining are segmented in three distinct parts (Liu
and Motoda 2012). They are as follows:
i) Mining Methodology and User Interaction
ii) Issues in Performance
iii) Issues in Diverse Data Types

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