Center for Business Analytics & Applied AI

Turning data into competitive advantage and talent into AI-ready leaders.

The importance of data & analytics

The Center for Business Analytics and Applied AI brings together industry leaders, organizations, students and faculty to solve real-world challenges with AI. Through corporate-sponsored projects, students work alongside industry partners to tackle complex business problems, applying advanced analytics and AI to deliver solutions with measurable results. These collaborations generate fresh insights for organizations while developing the next generation of AI-enabled leaders.

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About student research projects

The College of Business prides itself in providing exceptional learning opportunities for our students. We train and educate students to be the best they can be upon entry into the workforce. We don’t do this alone. We value working with industry partners to help make students' education come to life.

How a research project works

Your case scenario

Projects focus on a case scenario provided by you, guided by your business challenge. You offer background information and data, training information and the challenge.

Expert faculty oversight

These projects solve challenges, further the goals of your organization, and become part of the learning experience at the College of Business. Faculty assemble student teams, which consist of five to ten graduate-level students, who on average have six years of industry experience and are in the MBA or master's programs.

Graduate student teams

The student teams work with faculty and company representatives to develop complex, team-oriented solutions — an excellent training ground for working in industry and developing expertise. By embedding corporate challenges into the classroom, we mirror the experiences graduates face in their careers.

Internal alignment & teamwork

Our student research projects originate from many different areas within a company including accounting, analytics, applied AI, customer discovery, market research, supply chain and logistics management or talent management. Both students and our partners benefit from these projects. Students further develop project management, teamwork and communication skills. Our partner organization accesses student creativity and expertise with faculty oversight while assessing potential intern or workforce candidates.

Center project partners

Marketing Analytics

Burgerville

MBA students partnered with Burgerville, a popular Pacific Northwest restaurant chain, to transform its ordering process into a business opportunity with the aim to increase sales, guest frequency, customer satisfaction.

PGE

 In an ongoing project with PGE, we are providing an enhanced understanding of the customer experience with this major Pacific Northwest utility by conducting textual analysis across social media data and survey data. We're comparing results from the text analysis to identify ways to improve methods used to conduct the survey, and we're constantly mining and incorporating data into the survey creation.

Students are also working with PGE to analyze the effects of microclimates and weather patterns on power usage and develop a predictive model to forecast the location and time of weather-related outages.

CDK Global

Our students worked to augment the customer retention strategies of this integrated information technological and digital marketing company by identifying customers who may be prone to leave for a competitor. We identified customers more likely to discontinue three months in advance of their departure, giving CDK Global enough time to devise and implement strategies focused on customer retention.

Starbucks

College of Business students worked with Starbucks, the nation's largest coffee provider, on two projects. In the first, students analyzed the customers’ use of the Starbucks app to determine their intentions to buy products based on the initial steps they took upon opening the app. Using predictive analytics, students could identify the products customers sought in order to create unique cross-promotional offerings and thereby increase purchases within the app.

In the second project, students developed solutions to keep existing employees and react to unavoidable employee absences and departures.

Cairn

Cairn is a Bend, Oregon-based company that provides a subscription "package service" — a recurring delivery of new and trending outdoor and recreation products and gear. For Cairn, we analyzed data and helped identify the best outdoor packages for customers and monitored their satisfaction level post-purchase. The outdoor recreation business in Oregon is booming: It supports over 224,000 full and part-time jobs in the state and generated over $9 billion in wages and compensation.

Supply Chain/Operations Analytics

Daimler: MBA students worked with Daimler Trucks North America, the leading heavy-duty truck manufacturer in North America. The students analyzed Daimler's manufacturing data and developed recommendations to optimize efficiency and remove bottlenecks as it expands product lines.

OSU MBA students also worked with Daimler Trucks North America by examining data to discern failures in concurrent parts production in order to create predictive models and avoid post production failures and high warranty claims.

PGE: PGE, a Fortune 1000 public utility based in Portland, tasked College of Business students with proposing optimal locations for mobile electronic car charging stations based on when and where usage was high. The goal, through analyzing large data sets and synthesizing key data constructs, was to mitigate excessive peaks in electrical usage that diminished power for other customers.

Healthcare analytics

Samaritan Healthcare

For Samaritan, a regional leader in healthcare with 250,000 clients, we took on a project to reduce ER costs and hospitalizations. We analyzed patient and medical resource data related to higher levels of ER usage, and identified opportunities and protocols for enhanced patient care that preempts repeat hospitalizations and minimizes costs related to ER visits. Based on these circumstances, we also could propose solutions to conserve resources and save millions of dollars in costs.

HR/Human Analytics

CDK Global

Similar to our work with CDK Global for customer retention, we created a classification model to identify valuable employees with a higher risk of leaving the company months before they moved on. This gave the company and the human resource department time to create stronger retention programs and reduce recruitment costs.