BI Practices Overview - Amazon
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The document provides information about Amazon's business intelligence practices. It outlines Amazon's company profile, including its headquarters, employees, revenue, products, services, and competitors. It then discusses Amazon's current activities such as product expansions, acquisitions, and partnerships in 2014. The document also notes Amazon's strategic needs to continue growth and highlights specifics of its intelligence practices, including its shift to a service-oriented architecture and tools like Dynamo and Amazon Web Services. Finally, it discusses Amazon's leadership in business intelligence applications and its use of analytics for product recommendations and transformation of e-commerce.
BI Practices Overview - Amazon
- 1. IS 574 Winter 2015 BI Practices
- 2. Agenda ❖ Company Profile ❖ Current Activities ❖ Strategic Needs ❖ Intelligence Specifics ❖ Amazon & BI
- 3. Company Profile ❖ HQ: Seattle, WA ❖ Employees: 154,100 ❖ Fortune 500 Ranking: 35 ❖ Jeff Bezos, CEO ❖ 2014 Revenue: $89MM ❖ Products: 82% of Sales ❖ $60.9MM in Sales ❖ Services: $13.5MM
- 4. Company Profile ❖ 60% of Sales - North America ❖ 2013: $44.5MM ❖ International Markets ❖ Europe ❖ Asia ❖ South America ❖ 2013: $29.9MM ❖ Competitors ❖ Google ❖ eBay ❖ Target ❖ Yahoo!
- 5. Current Activities ❖ During 2014, focused on expansion by increasing both product and service offerings, as well as international expansion ❖ Fire Smartphone, Kindle e-Readers, Zocalo (Cloud Service) ❖ Acquired Rooftop Media (Digital Content) ❖ Acquired .buy domain ($4.6MM) ❖ Gaming Focus (Double Helix Games acquisition) ❖ Partnerships with Viacom, Disney-ABC TV, Fox Entertainment, Sony Entertainment ❖ Added 420,000 sq. ft. of space to Seattle HQ, location will eventually take up four city blocks ❖ 2013 marked a return to profitability after decline in net income during 2011 and 2012 due to thin margins with the Kindle tablet ❖ 2013 Net Income: $274MM
- 6. ❖ Strengths ❖ Allows pursuit of growth plans and maintenance of market position ❖ Increasing numbers of online shoppers using Amazon ❖ High customer loyalty ❖ Weaknesses ❖ Affect operations damaging revenue sources Current Activities Strengths) • Steady)revenue) growth) • Broad)product) assortment) • Customer)Centric) business) Weaknesses) • Regulatory)issues)in) China) Opportunity) • New)&)Extended) license)agreements) • Business)expansion) iniBaBves) • Growth)of)webEbased) stores) Threats) • Increase)in)organized) retail)crime) • Currency)fluctuaBons) • Increase)in) counterfeit)products)
- 7. ❖ Opportunity ❖ Provide significant growth in revenue in the long run ❖ Enable expansion of business and boost revenue growth ❖ Enhance online shops and benefit from increasing estimates of web-based store concepts ❖ Threats ❖ Pose challenge to retail sales and may limit revenues Current Activities Strengths) • Steady)revenue) growth) • Broad)product) assortment) • Customer)Centric) business) Weaknesses) • Regulatory)issues)in) China) Opportunity) • New)&)Extended) license)agreements) • Business)expansion) iniBaBves) • Growth)of)webEbased) stores) Threats) • Increase)in)organized) retail)crime) • Currency)fluctuaBons) • Increase)in) counterfeit)products)
- 8. Strategic Needs ❖ Continue positive net income/growth ❖ Grow e-Reader/Digital Book business ❖ 2013: Goodreads acquisition ❖ Boost Service Sales ❖ Zocalo ❖ Amazon Web Services (AWS) ❖ Amazon Prime ❖ Media & Entertainment Content ❖ Overcome Weaknesses & Threats
- 9. Intelligence Specifics ❖ Recently, Amazon’s BI strategy shifted from monolithic to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) ❖ At that time, Amazon observed typical middleware solutions lacked scalability, were cost prohibitive, and did not meet business and technical requirements ❖ Additional requirements included: ❖ Optimal performance on Linux ❖ Handle complex data transformations ❖ Scalable ❖ Rapid deployment capabilities with third-party business/use case support ❖ Deployable within services-based retail platform ❖ Amazon’s agile approach using Liaison Contivo resulted in delivery of the SOA project within 3 - 6 months ❖ Contributor to Amazon’s ability to quickly develop and deploy transformations ❖ 1000 third-party electronic procurement, extended fulfillment, & transportation partners
- 10. Intelligence Specifics ❖ Reliability & Scalability most important ❖ Discovered limitations with application state management ❖ Infrastructure failure considerations ❖ To meet needs, Amazon developed Simple Storage Services (S3) & Dynamo ❖ Dynamo ❖ Manages the state of services that have very high reliability requirements and need tight control over the tradeoffs between availability, consistency, cost-effectiveness & performance ❖ Decentralized system w/minimal need for manual administration
- 11. Intelligence Specifics ❖ Amazon Web Services ❖ High ratings for reliability, cost, implementation ❖ Provides both integration & analysis ❖ Machine Data/Operational Technology ❖ S3 (Redshift, Elastic MapReduce) ❖ Multiple Verticals/Complexity
- 12. Amazon & BI ❖ System processes though a database of products & creates intelligence recommendations based on browsing & purchase behaviors ❖ Collaborative filtering engine for suggestive selling ❖ Supported by unique/customized BI ❖ No standardization available on open market ❖ Costly, time consuming to develop, maintain, support
- 13. Amazon & BI ❖ Leadership in BI applications ❖ Market transformation through highly scalable e- Commerce platforms & product recommendation systems ❖ Leader in development of web analytics & cloud computing ❖ AWS, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
- 14. References Beyer, M. & Edjlali, R. (2015). Magic quadrant for data warehouse and data management solutions for analytics. Gartner, G00263133. Retrieved from http:// www.gartner.com/search/research/simple?typeaheadTermType=&typeaheadTermId=&searchType=2&keywords=G00263133&qid=b1aaebfa28f4ff2c2bd0f9becfcb56e9 Chen, H., Chiang, R.H.L., Storey, V. (2012). Business intelligence and analytics: From big data to big impact. MIS Quarterly Vol. 36(4), 1165-1188. Retrieved from Google Scholar http://hmchen.shidler.hawaii.edu/Chen_big_data_MISQ_2012.pdf DeCandia, G., Hastorun, D., Jampani, M., Kakulapati, G., Lakshman, A., …Vogels, W. (2007). Dynamo: Amazon’s highly available key-value store. Proceedings from SOSP ’07: Symposium on Operating Systems Principles. Stevenson, WA: ACM. Hoover’s company records - in-depth records (2015). Amazon.com, Inc. Retrieved from LexisNexis Academic http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezproxy.depaul.edu/ hottopics/lnacademic/?shr=t&sfi=AC00NBGenSrch&csi=220620 Piccoli, G., & Ives, B. (2005). Review: IT-dependent strategic initiatives and sustained competitive advantage: A review and synthesis of literature. MIS Quarterly Vol. 29(4), 747-776. Retrieved from Retrieved from http://ezproxy.depaul.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/218135060?accountid=10477 Progressive Digital Media (2013). Amazon.Inc.: Retail - Company Profile, SWOT & Financial Report. Retrieved from ABI/INFORM Complete http:// ezproxy.depaul.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.depaul.edu/docview/1552702914?accountid=10477 Roka, P. (2011). Biz voice: Companies must have info. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution. Retrieved from http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezproxy.depaul.edu/hottopics/ lnacademic/ Stratford, B. (2012). Amazon.com deploys data integration solution to minimize risk and complexity in its service-oriented architecture. Retrieved from http://tdwi.org/ Articles/2012/05/01/CASE-STUDY-Amazon-com-Deploys-DI-Solution-to-Minimize-Risk-and-Complexity-in-Its-SOA.aspx?Page=1
- 15. Q&A