Thanks to the addition of 70 computers to the College’s Mobile Computing Lab, CBA students can develop the skills and knowledge to create new technologies and innovations essential to business today.

For example, in the upper-level undergraduate course Customer Analytics, taught by Professors Stephen Atlas, John Ni, and Brian Walsh, the new computers provide a consistent computing environment to support technical instruction. In Fall 2015 the class evolved to emphasize applied and technical skills—rebranding it from Customer Relationship Management to Customer Analytics.

Class sessions have included topics such as analyzing customer lifetime value, understanding customer acquisition and retention costs, and using purchase history to segment customers and target coupons. Our Supply Chain Modeling course taught by Professors Koray Ozpolat and Doug Hales and Advanced Excel course taught by John Ni have utilized this new computing hardware to have students advance supply chain transportation models.

The computers have enabled increased emphasis on analytical techniques, such as Excel’s pivot tables, cluster analysis and vlookup. The class also provides training in Tableau, the customer analytics and forecasting tool specifically requested by major brands, such as CVS and Coca-Cola, recruiting in the customer relationship management space.