Category Archives: Features

From DePaul to the World: Alumni See Business From a Global View

By Lori Ferguson

With virtually every business doing some business overseas, international business knowledge, cultural awareness and relationship-building skills are critically important for professionals today. Faculty at the Driehaus College of Business are nurturing these qualities in DePaul graduates in a host of ways—through classroom encounters, study abroad seminars and international business education initiatives that offer students numerous points of entry into the global economy.

“Global business opportunities are so pervasive that every one of our students must receive an international perspective, even thou though they may never plan to do business abroad,” notes Dean Ray Whittington.

Jim Logothetis

Alumni who conduct business abroad, like Driehaus College of Business Advisory Council member Jim Logothetis (BUS ’77), say a global business orientation offers a competitive advantage. “As a student, you need to realize how critical global business is, and it’s hard to do that when you’re immersed in your own culture,” Logothetis says. A partner with Ernst & Young’s Assurance Practice, Logothetis has lived and worked in the U.S. and abroad over his past 36 years with E&Y, serving large international companies both public and private. “The business world is very global now, so it’s imperative that students learn to think globally and expose themselves to other cultures and ways of doing business by interacting with students from other countries and traveling abroad themselves whenever possible,” Logothetis notes.

DePaul’s business college offers students several advan­tages in this regard, he says. Located in the heart of Chicago’s Loop, the school sits at the nexus for business in a world-class city. DePaul also attracts a significant number of international students, thus offering many opportunities for students to learn about other cultures through personal interactions, and it has an outstanding MBA program. “In direction, tone and strategy, DePaul is well positioned to prepare its students for the challenges and opportunities they will encounter in a global economy,” Logothetis says.

Don Scheibenreif

Don Scheibenreif (BUS ’87), vice president and distin­guished analyst at Gartner, Inc., likewise believes that to succeed, students must be willing to keep an open mind and step outside their comfort zone. A seasoned international businessman, Scheibenreif credits DePaul for preparing him solidly in both respects. “My DePaul education taught me to be open-minded, a valuable quality when working overseas, because you have to let go of preconceived notions and learn new ways of interacting. My coursework at DePaul fostered an attitude of curiosity and a thirst for continuous learning that has served me well.”

Building Relationships Abroad

For nearly a decade now, Associate Professor of Marketing Zafar Iqbal has witnessed firsthand the benefits students gain through exposure to other customs and cultures. Together with Executive-in-Residence Luis Larrea, Iqbal leads groups of business students on study abroad seminars to his native India, as well as to Japan. “Obviously, who you are determines what you get out of the experience,” he observes, “but everyone who participates in the seminars has one important realization: business is all about relation­ships. Over the course of two weeks, you watch students’ perspectives change—they’re no longer fearful of ‘the other.’ They’re inundated with new experiences—differences in class, cuisine, culture and temperature—which is mentally exhausting, but also exhilarating.”

Students expand their horizons and hone their ability to break the ice with strangers, Iqbal explains, both of which enhance their self-confidence. They also gain greater empathy for others, having experienced that feeling of utter foreignness themselves. “Everyone returns with an appreciation for the intensity of friendships and a much better understanding of what a multicultural learning environment is really all about.”

Michael Korycki (MBA ’11) was prepared to work and live in India after visiting the country during a study abroad trip.

Study abroad helped prepare Michael Korycki (MBA ’11) for work at an international company after graduation.

Korycki, a participant in a summer 2010 study abroad seminar in India, says his two-week sojourn provided him with more relevant experiences than he could have gathered in two months in-country on his own. Today, Korycki is putting those insights to work as a project manager at Global Cloud Xchange, an international provider of integrated communications solutions for businesses and a business unit of Mumbai-based Reliance Communications.

“Exposure to different cultures and other ways of doing business is so informative, particularly in an emerging economy like India,” he says. “Encountering so many new people, cities and companies in a short amount of time forces you to think harder and look at things more critically. I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. The trip increased my confi­dence during the interview process and enhanced my ability to interact successfully with my Indian colleagues.”

Chris Huberts (BUS ’09) explores India via elephant.

Christopher Huberts (BUS ’09) is similarly enthusiastic. A manager of product management for Amazon.com in India, Huberts majored in marketing at DePaul and was a member of the first international business seminar Iqbal led to India in 2008. “Despite reading every book on the recommended reading list, I was still blown away with what I experienced.”

Huberts returned from the trip determined to work in India one day, and six years later, his dream was realized. He’s now wrapping up his overseas assignment and says he’s had a life experience that he’ll never forget. “As a businessperson, working so closely to an epicenter of technology has given me instant ‘street cred’ with the software engineers at my company and made initial conversations with hiring managers much easier. Studying abroad can offer perspective and insights that go way beyond the classroom.”

An Eye-Opening Experience for International Students

International students who come to DePaul also derive great value from the cross-cultural experience, whether they choose to remain in the States after graduating or return to their home country. Chelsea Cai (MS ’13), an assistant manager with JLL (formerly Jones Lang LaSalle) in Tianjin, China, says that her two years at DePaul exposed her to American culture, improved her interpersonal skills and generally “opened my eyes to the world.”

Chelsea Cai (MS ’13) traveled from China to Chicago to study at DePaul.

International students who come to DePaul also derive great value from the cross-cultural experience, whether they choose to remain in the States after graduating or return to their home country. Chelsea Cai (MS ’13), an assistant manager with JLL (formerly Jones Lang LaSalle) in Tianjin, China, says that her two years at DePaul exposed her to American culture, improved her interpersonal skills and generally “opened my eyes to the world.”

Cai identifies three aspects of her educational experience as particularly important: DePaul’s premium location in Chicago’s financial district, the extensive career preparation offered by Kellstadt Graduate School of Business’s Career Management Center and the multitude of alumni resources and networking opportunities available at DePaul. It was through alumni resources that Cai found an internship at Barrington Research Associates and later a position at Chicago-based Cambridge Realty Capital.

“These training opportunities and interactions with different levels of people enhanced my professionalism and increased my ability to communicate effectively,” Cai says. Back in China, the benefits continue to accrue. “My international experience helped me to grow faster than my peers and has given me the confidence to grasp any opportunity I feel like trying,” Cai explains.

Likewise, Joey Jiang (MS ’13), a fund accounting analyst at J.P. Morgan in Chicago, was initially drawn to DePaul because of its location in the heart of the city. She quickly discovered that the school offered many additional benefits, particularly to international students. “DePaul is very open to students with different backgrounds, so you can always find a fit,” she notes.

Joey Jiang (MS ’13) credits DePaul’s career services with helping her land a position in Chicago after graduation.

Jiang also found DePaul’s professional resources, including career and alumni mentoring services, very beneficial. As a student, she secured an accounting internship with Careforde, a Chicago-based health care supplier, through the Kellstadt Career Management Center. “The internship was very helpful. It gave me a better understanding of my strengths and weaknesses and provided wonderful talking points for interviews after I graduated.” Jiang also credits her time at DePaul with helping her to develop self-understanding, self-discipline, maturity and confidence. “I learned the importance of teamwork and communication at DePaul, two skills that I know will serve me well throughout my life.”

A Wider Vision of Business

Another aspect of DePaul’s global education strategy involves collaborations with international partners, including the Bahrain Institute for Banking (BIBF), an educational institution with which DePaul has enjoyed a thriving relationship since 2001. Through this partnership, DePaul business faculty travel to BIBF’s facilities in Manama to teach students enrolled in DePaul’s MBA, MS in Human Resources Management or MS in Finance degree programs in Bahrain.

While Sabah AlMoayyed (MBA ’05) studied at DePaul’s MBA program in Bahrain, her son studied at DePaul in Chicago.

Among the program’s graduates is Sabah AlMoayyed (MBA ’05), founder of Intellect Resources Management W.L.L., a management consultancy firm in Bahrain that specializes in leadership and entrepreneurial training for middle to executive management, with a focus on women. AlMoayyed started her business in 2013, following a successful career in banking and finance, and is a vocal advocate of cross-cultural education, having experienced the benefits throughout her career.

AlMoayyed studied abroad first as an undergraduate and then as a participant in several advanced management programs at The Wharton School and the University of Virginia. In addition to spending nearly 10 years as general manager and board member of Eskan Bank, Bahrain’s largest public-sector mortgage and property development bank, she also worked at Citibank in Bahrain and Dubai and spent seven months with Morgan Stanley in New York.

“My DePaul experience at BIBF refreshed my connection with experienced faculty who delivered a broader, more up-to-date view of the best practices in management, finance, human resources and capital markets,” explains AlMoayyed.

Bringing business expertise into her country and sending the younger generation abroad to gain exposure to business practices in other parts of the world are important, she continues. In fact, AlMoayyed’s son was an undergraduate at DePaul in Chicago at the same time she was completing her MBA in Bahrain. At one point they even studied with the same professor.

Like many other DePaul graduates, AlMoayyed found that multicultural learning experiences enhanced not only her technical skills, but also soft skills like presentation, critical-thinking, and decision-making techniques that every person in business must master to succeed.

Although already in a CEO role and a board member when she began her MBA, AlMoayyed says that the experience helped her immeasurably. “It re-emphasized to me the fact that there is no end to continuous learning, introduced me to the latest management practices and brought me up-to-date with technology, research and rationalizing output,” she says. “Cross-cultural exchange helps to widen our vision, allows us to study best practices on a macro level and adopt what’s best for us within our own business culture.”

Diane Kuhlmann, McGladrey MST program instructor.

When Tom Blaze (MST ’08) decided to earn his Master of Science in Taxation, he benefited from a partnership between McGladrey and DePaul. “McGladrey had a program where DePaul instructors would actually come to our seminar room, which made it very, very convenient. It was almost like it would be foolish not to do it,” says Blaze, a partner in McGladrey’s State and Local Tax group, who earned his degree in 2008.

The partnership program began in 2005, and at first, DePaul faculty would go to McGladrey’s main office and teach classes that were broadcast online through the company’s technology. Two years ago, DePaul took over the technology, and now classes are taught and broadcast from DePaul’s Loop Campus. Students can either come to class on campus or log on remotely to view the lectures. While most of the students are located in Chicagoland and the Midwest, the program also draws McGladrey employees based as far away as California, New York and Washington, D.C.

The partnership between McGladrey and DePaul came about in part because an advanced degree is a necessity in the tax field. “The MST brings the knowledge you need in order to function as a tax professional. It takes a lot longer to get this knowledge if you’re just getting it doing client work. You’ve got to have both—you need that real-world experience as well as this knowledge,” says DePaul Instructor Diane Kuhlmann.

Kuhlmann offers an interesting perspective on the program. “For 10 years, I was the director of training for tax professionals at McGladrey. I was involved with the MST program when working there, and now I’m at DePaul working on the other side,” she explains. “What we’ve worked really hard to do is to make sure this online program is equivalent to DePaul’s regular program. Students who are attending the McGladrey program are not getting an ‘MST light.’”

Blaze also has seen the program from both sides, first as a student and now as an instructor. “While I was in the MST program, I developed a lot of respect for the DePaul instructors. They all had practical experience, and they brought examples of what they were doing in their day-to-day jobs,” says Blaze, who now teaches ACCT 570: State and Local Tax at DePaul.

After 10 years, the program is still evolving. The format used to be synchronous, meaning it was designed so all students were watching together at the same time, no matter where they were located. Now, Kuhlmann says, DePaul is moving to an asynchronous platform with prerecorded lectures. The class also includes a weekly webcast. Students can choose to attend the webcast and interact with the instructor in real time or access the recording whenever is convenient for them. “As time goes on and as technology and platforms change, we’re continuing to upgrade the program.”

Continue reading with CEO Initiative Brings the Classroom to the Workplace.

The Medline DePaul MBA cohort takes classes at the company’s Mundelein, Ill., headquarters through a partnership forged by DePaul’s CEO Initiative.

A new university initiative is giving employees at large Chicago corporations another way to attend DePaul. Thanks to DePaul’s Corporate and Employer Outreach (CEO), instead of hopping on a bus or train and commuting to campus, employees can head to a classroom or conference room at their workplaces to earn degrees.

“The flexibility of being able to walk down the hall and start a graduate degree right after a busy workday is a real benefit to the employee,” says Suzanne Depeder, DePaul’s associate vice president for Graduate Admission in Enrollment Management and Marketing. “Employers benefit as well because talent development is a key driver of organizational growth and success.

They are able to offer their employees an onsite degree program and tuition reimbursement as part of a strategy for improving their talent and keeping them from moving to competitors.”

The CEO Initiative partners with area corporations to identify and customize degree and certificate programs that help employers develop their workforces. The partnership involves DePaul offering scholarships to employees, who then either take courses through an onsite program or attend any of the 150 undergraduate or graduate degree programs offered on campus. DePaul lets employees know about potential degrees through onsite information sessions, as well as lunch and learn seminars featuring professors.

For companies that choose onsite programs, it’s a significant benefit that employees don’t have to commute to campus. One such company is Medline, a major manufacturer and distributor of healthcare supplies that is headquartered in Mundelein, Ill., near the Wisconsin border. The company launched an MBA cohort in 2014.

“The CEO Initiative helps DePaul reach a broader prospective student base, in that we can connect with students who might not have considered us simply based on location,” Depeder explains. “The Medline cohort is a great example of how this initiative has allowed us to expand our geographic reach.”

Associate Professor of Management William Marty Martin says he appreciates what the programs offer to all parties. “The benefits to students and alumni are invaluable, from securing employment to moving up the ladder. For DePaul, we get exposure and placements for our students,” says Martin, who has spoken at onsite lunch and learns about DePaul’s Health Sector Management MBA concentration and other degrees.

In its first year, the CEO Initiative recruited two onsite cohorts, bringing in 70 students. Depeder expects the program to grow because of its utility to students and corporations alike. “Employers are looking at things they can offer to their employees as benefits, so the fact that we are able to offer a flexible delivery model is attractive. Plus, it’s a good retention strategy for their employees,” Depeder says. “It’s much easier to figure out how to give people professional development and benefits to keep them than to recruit all over again.”

Marriott Scholars Elanna Smith and Sofija Veta participate in a teamwork exercise with Marriott Sous Chef Craig Moisand, as Visiting Associate Professor Nicholas Thomas watches.

This year, the School of Hospitality Leadership is expanding its undergraduate professional development opportunities with a unique partnership. A $200,000 gift from the J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation led to the launch of the Marriott Hospitality Scholars Program, which provides 10 freshmen and 10 juniors each a $10,000 J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation Hospitality Scholarship, paid over a two-year period.

The scholars program benefits students in different ways. For freshmen, the program’s activities are designed to spark an interest in choosing a hospitality major or minor. For juniors, the scholarship provides support for students completing a hospitality degree. In addition, each underclassman is paired with an older student in a mentee-mentor relationship. “The juniors are sitting on a wealth of information that the freshmen can tap into to help them progress through their academic careers at DePaul,” says Visiting Associate Professor Nicholas Thomas.

Nothing similar existed at DePaul, so Thomas and instructor Brian Barker created a format that mirrors a management-training program. Students complete workshops based on key areas of hospitality, such as effective communication, managing conflict, culture and diversity, before touring local Chicago Marriott properties and seeing how hotel leaders are applying the concepts.

The program “is designed to give an opportunity to get an education and to transition into hospitality to people who might not have been afforded that opportunity before,” Thomas explains. When weighing student applications, the selection committee considered whether potential scholars had faced hardship and whether they were first-generation college students.

Elanna Smith, a junior majoring in communication studies and minoring in hospitality leadership, enjoys being a Marriott Scholar for the added benefits the scholarship provides.

“Besides financial support, I was fully equipped with the proper materials for a professional career. Plus, I have 19 other scholars who share the same interests,” says Smith, who secured a summer internship through the program to work for a Marriott brand. She says her interest in hospitality grew from watching her mother run a cleaning company. “Sometimes I would go to work with her, and it was a great feeling to see someone satisfied and happy with our service,” Smith says.

Despite strong ties with the Marriott brand, the program does not require that students go to work for the company after graduation. Rather, the program is designed to give students a clearer idea of hospitality management as a whole, which can be difficult to understand without firsthand experience.

“That’s why when we go to the properties, I really want students to interact with leaders who are actually working to get a real understanding of what their careers are going to be like when they go into hospitality,” Thomas says. “We sometimes have a difficult time doing that in the classroom, so anything we can do now while the students are in school to give them a realistic impression makes the transition post-graduation that much easier.”

One unique aspect of the partnership is how it expands the ways that industry representatives normally interact with students. “What I’ve been really happy with is Marriott’s passion to participate in this. It’s really great to see,” Thomas says. “So often, the relationship that we see with industry is really guest speaking and maybe coming in for an event. The interaction and the networking that these students have with the industry is remarkable. That’s priceless for the students, and I think this is really going to ignite their desire to go into hospitality. I’ve already gotten emails from students saying how much this means to them. I think they appreciate that Marriott and DePaul have taken an interest in their success.”

Continue reading with Top Tax Firm Partners with DePaul.

By Jennifer Leopoldt

Presenting business solutions to industry leaders as class projects. Connecting with executives for real-life lessons in the field. Learning without leaving the office. The Driehaus College of Business’s deep ties to the business community allow DePaul students to benefit in all of these ways and more, whether through undergraduate opportunities or graduate level linkages. Connections with corporations and firms help students develop marketable skills and prepare them for in-demand careers. For alumni, these connections help build career-advancing networks, as well as DePaul affinity and pride. Read more about some of the initiatives that connect DePaul to industry and showcase how a real-world, career-focused business education benefits everyone involved.

• Sales Leadership Program Pairs Academia and Business
• Marriott Shows Hospitality to DePaul Students
• Top Tax Firm McGladrey Partners with DePaul
• CEO Initiative Brings the Classroom to the Workplace

In 2004, 3M was the first corporation to approach DePaul about developing a sales leadership education program. “Today, we have 64 business partners—companies that provide funding and internships, guide curriculum design, lecture in classes, coach students, provide technologies and data for projects, and offer outstanding career opportunities,” says Dan Strunk, executive in residence and managing director of the Center for Sales Leadership. “This collaborative effort between business and academia is preparing the next generation of talent. Everyone wins—the students, the businesses and the university.”

The center partners with Fortune 500 companies, including PepsiCo, Chase, MillerCoors and Wrigley, to shape its curriculum and stay relevant in an ever-changing job market. Students in the Sales Leadership Program can earn a minor or concentration by choosing between two tracks: sales in any industry or category management in the consumer products industry, which looks at grouping products to optimize relevance and sales.

Alexis Gordon (BUS ’14), Tyler Hensala (BUS ’13), Claire Hanold (BUS ’13) and Simone Caron-Vera (BUS ’15) connected to careers at PepsiCo through DePaul’s corporate partnerships.

The program’s case-study structure lets students merge theory with practice and provides immediate interaction with company representatives. Leah Sbigoli (BUS ’11) remembers working with Walgreens and Roundy’s in a space management class to create a business plan for optimizing energy drink sales. “In the end, we got to present to the actual category managers at the company and show them our recommendations. I felt like I was seeing the immediate benefits of my education,” says Sbigoli, who now is a space management analyst for partner company Walgreens.

Ren Stoecklin (BUS ’13) agrees. “You knew that you were being given real-life data and that at the end of the quarter, you’d be presenting to industry experts. It really forced you to not just consider it a school assignment, but to consider it a job interview every time you were presenting a final,” says Stoecklin, who worked as a category analyst in partner company Red Bull’s graduate program, an 18-month rotational program for leadership training.

Another program graduate, Claire Hanold (BUS ’13), was impressed by how welcoming the corporate partners were. “They never once treated us like we were college students; they treated us like their business partners and wanted to help each of us individually in any way they could,” says Hanold, who is now a category analyst for partner company PepsiCo’s Foodservice Division. “As an alumna looking back, I owe my success to this program. The professors provided me with the tools and resources to be successful and helped me make connections with our incredible business partners along the way.”

The center’s corporate partnerships also help students see how schoolwork can prepare them for life—and employment—after graduation.

“A lot of time in the classroom concepts and theories can get lost on students if they can’t find a way to apply them to real-life situations,” Sbigoli notes. “By DePaul having connections to companies through the Sales Leadership Program, students can apply [lessons] taught in the classroom directly to their work with these companies. This helps students form connections early on with these companies and develops their skills over time. Students graduate from the program already knowing what to expect from the position they want, and in return companies have a reputable candidate pool to choose from.”

Continue reading with Marriott Shows Hospitality to DePaul Students.

Four Ways Businesses and Individuals Are Becoming Masters of Information

Ninety percent of the data that exists in the world today has been created since 2010.

The consulting firm IDC predicts that by 2020 this digital universe will expand by a factor of 300, from 130 to 40,000 exabytes.

How much is that? One exabyte has 18 zeros behind it.

In people terms, that’s more than 5,200 gigabytes of data for every man, woman and child on Earth by 2020.

Consumers are the main source of this growth, creating more than two-thirds of the data in cyberspace through videos watched, photos shared, social media messages sent and purchases made online. Add to this a mountain of machine-generated data from smartphones, tablets and networked computers, plus supermarket scanners and other sensors, and what has come to be known as big data certainly lives up to its name.

Big data is usually viewed in terms of aggregate numbers, such as millions of cell phone calls culled by the National Security Agency or billions of pages created on the Internet. But for people who really want to understand how this phenomenon can affect their business, professional and personal lives, it’s useful to reduce the term to its essence: fragments of our lives ensconced in digital code.

“The businesses that will thrive in this space will realize that value and convenience to the consumer—to individuals—is at the center of this big data evolution,” says Sheila Colclasure, global public policy and privacy officer at Acxiom, an international digital data brokerage. “The consumer is the primary constituency. The technology and data are the means to enable businesses to meet the needs of the consumer.

“Our job in the business world is to deliver value and positive brand experiences to the consumer,” Colclasure continues. “In relation to the technology and data used to do that, we’ve got to help consumers get an understanding of how it works and provide relevant choices and controls.”

So, just how do we find value in this data-driven world as businesspeople and consumers without drowning in numbers? We asked alumni, industry and academic experts to provide their perspectives on the top four trends in big data.

Trend One: Data Security Is Everyone’s Job

Hackers have gained access to more than 534 million personal records, including Social Security and financial account information, since 2005, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. In 2014 alone, more than 273 breaches have been reported, involving 22 million personal records.

If you think big-box retailers and credit card companies are the only ones who need to worry about this problem, think again. Anyone who collects consumer data—from corporations to mom-and-pop operations—must develop strategies for securing and using customer data properly.

Consumers want data about themselves protected, which means keeping it secured from unauthorized or unintended access. Consumers also want data to be used to create value, benefits and conveniences,” says Colclasure.

Sheila Colclasure, Acxiom

Not all data are the same, however, and it is important to develop security practices that correspond to the type and sensitivity of the data. Good starting points include establishing formal policies and practices for securing sensitive data in transit, such as encryption policies, and implementing security industry standards advocated by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council when collecting and/or processing credit card payments.
Businesses also must ensure security compliance for service providers and other third parties with access to internal systems. In December 2013, Target discovered that credit card data from 110 million of its customers had been stolen electronically. Media reports suggest the cybercriminals may have introduced their data-stealing malware into Target’s network through software used by one of Target’s vendors.

“Companies should continually monitor their environment, as threats can originate from internal as well as external sources,” says Eileen T. Carlson (MBA ’85), director of information governance at Baxter Healthcare. “They need to think seriously about what services they outsource and what partners and vendors they engage. Regardless of how the breach occurs, the company is ultimately responsible, and it is their brand that is impacted.”

Trend Two: The Age of the Quantified Self

British scientist and Wolfram Research founder Stephen Wolfram began tracking all his emails in 1989. “One day,” he wrote in a prophetic blog post, “I’m sure everyone will routinely collect all sorts of data about themselves.”

One day is today. We are in the age of the quantified self.

Big data is no longer the sole purview of businesses. More than one million people use the computational search engine Wolfram Alpha to analyze their Facebook data. More than 55 million Americans track their diet or fitness activity using apps such as Lose It!

“‘Life logging’” is creating new industries and opportunities for entrepreneurs and companies,” says J-P Contreras (BUS ’97, MBA ’01), general manager of IBM business analytics at Perficient, an IT-solutions-driven consulting firm. “Companies that think entrepreneurially in this space will identify an analytical need for the data that hasn’t been served yet,” he says.

“People are looking for data on themselves that will benefit them.”

The opportunity for growth in the personal analytics arena is expanding each year. A Pew Research study found that 69 percent of adults track a personal health indicator, and one in five use at least one form of technology for this tracking. In addition, 34 percent of health data trackers share that information with others, including their doctors or spouses and partners.

J-P Contreras (BUS ’97), (MBA ’01)

Moreover, customers are using their personal analytics to influence companies to make products better.

Fitbit Force, a hot-selling item during the 2013 Christmas season, allows users to track physical activities through a wireless-enabled wristband. Selling at $129, the device took over the wearable fitness market with a 60 percent share, beating similar products by Nike.

But just months after it became the top seller in its category, Fitbit Force wearers began doing some data tracking of their own on how many users were developing rashes. They created an online Google Docs forum detailing rash symptoms, duration and cures. In all, more than 500 users uploaded personal data for the world to see—pictures included. Shortly thereafter, Fitbit voluntarily stopped sales of the Fitbit Force, recalled the product and issued refunds.

Experts say businesses shouldn’t be threatened by consumers’ grasp of their own data, but embrace it as a way to improve their companies. Says Carlson, “If you’re coming up with ways to provide value to new and existing customers, consumers will want to do business with you.
The general public will be more forgiving if you make a mistake and are viewed as a consumer-conscious company.”

Trend Three: Improving Business Operations

Increasingly, companies are looking inward and using aggregate data to improve their operations, experts say.

Eileen Carlson (MBA ’85)

At Perficient, Contreras works with some of the largest retailers, financial services companies and health care conglomerates to collect data on their own processes to make them more efficient. For example, pharmaceutical companies are creating “e-pedigrees,” or electronic tracking dossiers, that follow products from the raw-materials-gathering stage through packaging and on to store distribution. The data are used not only to comply with drug regulations, but also to identify weak links in the supply chain. If a defective product is detected, companies can now pinpoint exactly which batch is the source of the problem, avoiding a mass recall.

Other companies are improving their operations by using radio frequency identification (RFID) sensors to watch their planes, trains and automobiles move through the supply chain in real time, and then using the data to improve delivery and production times.

Big data also is forcing companies to destroy old silos that keep internal departments from sharing information.

“A startup company should be looking at implementing totally integrated systems and processes,” Carlson says.

“Many companies segregate their sales force from their customer service organization. The sales force is not aware that a customer has called customer service multiple times for the same issue. Yet, the sales force starts telling the customer how important she is and that they want to build a relationship, while the customer is thinking, ‘If I am so important, why don’t you know that I called three times in the last month for the same issue.’”

Trend Four: Emerging Business Technologists

By all accounts, the team of well-educated attorneys who work with Colclasure at Acxiom are smart and capable. Yet, she has asked them to become students again: “‘Your challenge,’ I told my team, ‘is to become technologists.’”

For the last two years, Colclasure and her team have been immersed in understanding technology and what the data scientists are doing at Acxiom. They are not merely looking at data output, but at the architectural schematics of the data itself, combing through it bit by bit. No longer will they depend upon the IT crowd to interpret and protect the data. They are learning firsthand about the technology engineering necessary to parse big data.

Sue Fogel, Marketing Chair

Acxiom is not alone. Peers who work in compliance at high-tech companies “are saying they’ve got to apply analytical thinking to this space, and they need the technology skills to do it,” Colclasure says.

This trend of merging skill sets—where understanding the creation, interpretation and protection of data is as essential as knowing profit and loss statements— has begun to affect the job market. According to a recent Manpower survey, about one in three jobs go unfilled because applicants lack the required technical skills.

That’s why DePaul’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business offers an MS in Marketing Analysis and has partnered with the College of Computing and Digital Media to launch an MS in Predictive Analytics degree. Sue Fogel chairs the Department of Marketing, which offers both programs. “Graduates of these programs understand how data fits into creating best business practices, what all that data can tell a company and how it can affect a company’s decision-making process,” she says. “They are in high demand for everything from digital marketing to risk analysis to telecommunications.”

Big Data’s Future

Big data as an industry is still in its adolescent phase—both enhancing and disrupting industries, lives and careers as it inserts itself into our daily life. The key to understanding big data personally, professionally and within business, our experts say, is to never forget its purpose—the individual customer.

By Ovetta Sampson