Instructions for Candidates
In the next few pages there are some example customer scenarios. In order to prepare for the assessment interview – you should pick and study ONE of the scenarios. At the end of the scenario there is a requirements heading which details the deliverables you should produce and be prepared to present your solution and outline its features to interviewers pretending to be representatives of the customer. You will most likely be asked business and technical questions relating to your solution and so should prepare accordingly.
Exercise Choice 1
Background
We have been engaged by a large hospitality and leisure operator with a view to designing and delivering a solution which can help it understand its customers, improve its operational activities and reduce its costs for analytics. The client has operations in North America, across Europe and in East Asia. Its core business activities cover hotels, restaurants and leisure parks, and it also has subsidiary companies running a chain of coffee shops in the UK. In total it has around 1200 outlets and directly employs over 75,000 people. Last year it had over three million customers at its hotels and leisure parks. Its hotels have both business and leisure customers; its restaurants are often attached to hotels but operate under a variety of brand identities.
The company has made numerous acquisitions over the last decade, and although efforts have been made to consolidate IT systems there are still multiple different solutions across its finance, bookings, supply chain management, HR and marketing departments. Senior management at the company have recognised that many operations could be improved by analytics and so have decided to investigate the implementation of a single, global data warehouse and analytics platform. The company has already settled on Microsoft as its main solution vendor and is keen to use cloud platforms whenever possible.
Problem
To improve its marketing operation, the client has determined that it should have a clearer insight in to customer behaviour and the perception of its brands in the market. To this end it wishes to integrate data from its booking, marketing, CRM and customer feedback systems. Some of its outlets, such as restaurants, also have line level data which could be used to determine the effectiveness of its marketing activities such as offers and promotions. If possible, it would like to add data gleaned from Twitter, Instagram and other social platforms.
The client’s existing systems contain many years’ worth of historic data. This could add up to many terabytes, but it is difficult to give an accurate figure since much of the data is siloed in separate systems.
There is a desire to enable members of the business to investigate data without support from IT. These results should always be trustworthy and should not rely on the business having any particular skill in building queries or understanding how the systems which underpin the analytic tools function.
Requirements
You should prepare a brief presentation to show how we can help the client deliver on their vision. The presentation is likely to include:
- A high-level architecture, showing the specific components that would be appropriate and how they are related to one another
- A data flow diagram showing how the requirements of data consolidation are met
- Consideration of non-functional requirements such as security and data governance
- A structured timeline for delivery
- A staffing profile
- Risks, issues and dependencies
