Question.496 - CHAPTER 12 CASE STUDY 1. It has been said that Zynga is “an analytics company masquerading as a games company.” Discuss the implications of this statement. 2. What role does business intelligence play in Zynga’s business model? 3. Give examples of three kinds of decisions supported by business intelligence at Zynga. 4. How much of a competitive advantage does business intelligence provide for Zynga? Explain. 5. What problems can business intelligence solve for Zynga? What problems can’t it solve?
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CHAPTER 12 CASE STUDY 1. It has been said that Zynga is an analytics company masquerading as a games company. Discuss the implications of this statement. Zynga video game company was more successful than others because the game developed was based on most game players' interests, preferences, and patterns. The data accessed was of those who were most active, bought games, had more interest in playing, and the pattern of this buying process. However, the company was not focused on applying charges for customers in the beginning, which would bring short-term success but implemented analytics to improve the user experience. Hence they succeeded in retaining more customers compared to competitors. As a result, an ecosystem was created involving players, data analysis, and games. The data collected helped keep the players playing for a long time and continue to be active. These players also shared their experiences to others and resulted in more sales and customers to the company. This all happened in a very short period because of the different approaches in the business by Zynga. The remaining companies or online game developers would fail in the gaming market because of Zynga's smart move and strategy because they would not be able to keep pace in the competition. On the other hand, game developers at Zynga did not like the strategy of data analytics instead of game development that they believed that the company retained customers but could not plug players or customers on hard games. 2. What role does business intelligence play in Zyngas business model? Zynga uses a user graph that is regularly streamed and user updated on a daily basis which is called a social graph. It has steadfast to the vertical cluster, which helps to develop a real-time graph on a daily basis. The pattern of buying and players collected is used to develop models. These models are then fed into the system so that game players can access them on the next day. Zyngas business intelligence solution has helped refine the games for users and try to create such a game model where they can be more interactive with players by targeting gifts and features. Another benefit of this strategy is that since the users are more towards succeeding in games, the number of spam players or spam player opportunities is reduced. Spam players are reduced because the company is able to recognize common patterns, interests, and behaviors of users in playing the game and they can be categorized. This kind of data is helpful for the company to target the right payer or user and promote the proper promotion with defined features. That kind of purely collected and high-level data helps Zynga to identify which game features are working and which are not working. Any feature that is not being used by user goals back to the testing process till it meets the performing expectations. Any features expected or preferred by users are taken into consideration (determined through data analytics) to improve games with those preferred features of users. All these developments made are not done based on guesses but based on the real data collected with the help of data analytics. 3. Give examples of three kinds of decisions supported by business intelligence at Zynga. With the help of vertical software, Zynga can access and use a wide range of data in a very quick and accurate way. Here, developers take the help of a social graph and analyze it effectively. Free games are offered to users based on the analysis done by product managers at Zynga. Facebook is acting as a significant and robust platform for Zynga because the main source of data they collect is Facebook. Zynga has been developing analytics graphs daily through which developers understand the preferences of users. So that they will give games with the same features in the future. The main focus of Zynga is on the active players rather than less active users to offer more developed editions and features for users in the games. Zynga has developed the software in such a way that they can get access to users profiles so that they can determine the pattern of users playing games or signing in. 4. How much of a competitive advantage does business intelligence provide for Zynga? Explain. In the year 2010, Zynga was able to make $91 million dollars with a revenue of $600, which was actually a great growth compared to the previous year. It means the revenue generated in the year of 2009 was $121. Whichever newly implemented strategies were different from other competitors or any other game industries. The original revenue that came to Zynga was from the features or virtual goods sold to players, not just the number of users who played the game. 5. What problems can business intelligence solve for Zynga? What problems cant it solve? The implementation of a business intelligence strategy promotes increased interacting activities or actions between active users or players while playing. This is to reduce the spam rates. The strategy helped collect both positive and negative types of data, which helped improve the game features for users. Also, with the same strategy, the company is able to remove all the trash from its system. Since the strategy is giving daily data and developers are getting regular updates on what needs to be changed and improved, they are able to update the gaming system. This success depends on an excellent and creative strategy. Just leaving creativity behind and focusing more on data analytics also would fail the business. So creativity, as well as strategy, are necessary to reach the target revenue and growth in the gaming market.More Articles From Management Information System
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