The 2015 Hilti Big Data Analytics Competition. Big Hilti for Hilti Online

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1 The 2015 Hilti Big Data Analytics Competition Call for Submission Big Hilti for Hilti Online Join Hilti s Big Data team to bring Hilti Online to the next level! Hilti IT Innovation Competition is a management initiative conducted annually to ignite innovative ideas related to new technologies from students and graduates. The 2015 Hilti Big Data Analytics Competition aims at collecting and preparing innovative ideas related to Big Data technologies for enhancing Hilti Online (HOL, Being a platform to distribute information and software and to sell Hilti products, HOL plays an important role in Hilti businesses as well as in customer engagement. Hilti maintains a HOL webpage specific to each country. Sample ref: HOL for the US, https://www.us.hilti.com/ Hilti is a highly integrated company horizontally and vertically and has a direct sales model. Customer feedback and customer insights are Hilti s most important resources. With our customer insights we drive our product development, improve our services and create tailor-made software to support our customers in their business. Customer insights are gained from the analysis of transactional data, i.e. purchasing history, as well as master data (general customer information about size, trade, potential, etc.). These are internal structured data. With Big Data technologies, we can process and leverage much more information, varied data (external data, unstructured data), data streams and apply advanced statistical methods. We believe that Big Data technologies will help Hilti to gain tremendous customer insights and thereby to listen even closer to the voice of the customer. 1 of 8

2 Objectives 1. Leverage Big Data technologies within HOL to use data-driven customer insights for tailor-made leads and to provide a 1:1 marketing experience. 2. Hilti as a possible future employer for all participants. Target group The main target group consists of students (universities and colleges) and graduates. The participation of interdisciplinary teams is explicitly desired. Topics Hilti s main goal is to provide 1:1 marketing experience to the customers via our HOL webpage. We need a diverse team to accomplish this goal, so please choose the challenge that best fits your skills and join Hilti s Big Data team. Topic 1: Improve marketing capabilities of HOL using Big Data Big Data marketing experts: HOL is currently a great webpage where customers buy Hilti products. Hilti s goal is also to make HOL a great webpage to sell products. Task: Come up with innovative marketing ideas how to target our customers better on our webpage and translate B2C concepts into the B2B world. What is the difference between a B2C and a B2B webshop? Which Big Data insights can help the marketing? What type of data can we generate and collect via HOL? Which business processes can we drive with the collected HOL data? What do digital natives expect from Big Data functionalities? For this task you have a lot of freedom to generate ideas. We expect a seminar work with a strong conceptual part as well as mock-ups of the user interface. Further explanation on Topic 1 is available in the Appendix section of this Call for Submission. Topic 2: Cross-selling opportunities in Hilti Online Data scientists: Amazon.com obtains 30% and Netflix 70% of its revenues via its other customers have also bought recommendations. Task: Develop a recommendation engine that provides tailor-made leads for our HOL customers. Translate B2C concepts into the B2B world and offer our customers an amazon experience. This task is a combination of a cross selling engine and a conceptual marketing work. Hilti provides you with the data and you should do the data mining. We hand over anonymized sales data, customer and material master data. 2 of 8

3 The sample data set is appended at the Appendix section of this Call for Submission. With this you are supposed to answer the question: Given customer xy, which product (tool or consumable) should I recommend to him? You are free to choose the program to do the data mining, but it is highly recommended to use open source tools (e.g. R or Python). Important dates Final Submission Date Dec. 31, 2014 Semifinals Jan. 23, 2015 Final Round Invitation Jan. 30, 2015 Final Competition Mar. 4-6, 2015 Prizes 1st place; once-in-a-lifetime trip: The winning team of up to five people will be awarded a five-night stay and round-trip airfare to one of Hilti s strategic IT locations: Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Tulsa (USA) or Schaan (Liechtenstein). The trip will be arranged according to the home country of the winning team. E.g. If the winning team is from Kuala Lumpur, they will get the chance to travel to Schaan or Tulsa. The team members will have the opportunity to learn about Hilti IT services as well as to build their Hilti network. 2nd and 3rd place; a piece of Hilti: All members from the 2nd and 3rd place teams will be awarded a personal Hilti power tool. All finalists; internships: Each finalist will have access to a fast-track application process to a paid internship. The internship provides finalists with the chance to further develop their idea and to bring it to life at Hilti. Condition of participation This is a competition for students and graduates with focus on Hilti products and Big Data challenges. Participation: Submissions from single participants as well as from teams of up to five people are welcome. Team size is not a part of the evaluation criteria. Participants must read and accept the conditions of participation. Students from universities, universities of applied science, from IT, business, engineering and all other disciplines are welcome. Neither programming skills nor detailed technical knowledge concerning the construction industry is necessarily required to participate. 3 of 8

4 Mentors, industrial visit, data-set: Hilti can provide as an optional arrangement a mentor to each team throughout the competition. This optional arrangement is provided upon request. Industrial visits and discussion sessions with the area experts in Hilti can be further arranged as needed. For this purpose, the participating teams must their details (name, contact number, ) to Each participating team is then given a registration form. Teams interested in Topic 2 will be signing Non- Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with Hilti before obtaining the data set. Submission: Participants are only asked to submit their creative ideas by Dec. 31, Your submission should explain the purpose of your idea and how it supports Hilti and our customers. Use an illustrative and attractive way to present typical situations of application, a proposal for the design and the benefits of your idea for Hilti. Feel free to make reasonable assumptions about the technical requirements and data necessary. Semifinals: The selection event will be conducted via video conferencing. Further arrangement will be shared with the participants. On-site workshop: The top eight teams designated as finalists will be invited to a 2 ½ day on-site workshop at Hilti Asia IT Services Sdn. Bhd. at Level 7-01, Symphony House, Pusat Dagangan Dana 1, Jalan PJU 1A/46, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia. Here, teams can further develop their ideas and learn more about the Hilti business while networking with a group of highly creative individuals. The final winners will be reviewed, assigned, and announced by an International panel of experts. All finalists are also invited to an awards ceremony, where they will be recognized for their accomplishments by Hilti s CIO and the competition s international jury members. Participation at this event is mandatory for prize eligibility. You may choose one of the following submission forms to present your idea: Prototype: Develop a prototype of your idea and include a brief description of the major functionalities and key benefits (five pages maximum). Written submission: Develop a concept, calculate a business case or envision a process description or application scenarios, including pictures or screenshots. In any case, include a brief description and describe the key benefits of your idea (ten pages maximum). Movie: Make a movie illustrating your idea and include a brief description of the major functionalities and key benefits (five pages maximum). Evaluation criteria: Submissions will be judged based on innovation, expected benefits for Hilti and our customers, technical feasibility, preparation and presentation of the solution. 4 of 8

5 In case you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us at Facebook.com/hilticareer Appendix Topic 1 A B2B (Business to Business) platform needs to maintain a good, successful, long-lasting business relationship with its customers. In this topic, you are required to address at least the following points: What is the difference between a B2C and a B2B webshop? Business to business selling is different from business to consumer retail since only professionals interact and the purchasing behavior is less driven by ad-hoc decisions. Explain how this affects a B2B web shop. Which Big Data insights can help the marketing? Set the goals for HOL-B2B and determine the Big Data analytics and technologies that can support HOL-B2B goals. What type of data can we generate and collect via HOL? Outline the type of data needed to understand and serve the customers and build long-lasting business relationships with the customers. Which business processes can we drive with the collected HOL data? What do digital natives expect from Big Data functionalities? Outline how HOL can become a successful provider for our current and future digital customers. You are not restricted to the above four points. You are required to come up with an innovative idea for HOL. This idea should involve redesigning of the current HOL. Appendix Topic 2 Data Sources: As is quite common in data mining, there are multiples sources of data. Two of them are customers transactional data (i.e. purchasing history) and their attribute-based information (i.e. number of employees in the 5 of 8

6 customers company or their engagement status). Additionally, you can use information about the interactions with customers (such as phone calls, meetings and complaints). Retaining accurate customer information is vital to smooth business operations. The four data tables used as data inputs come from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The following figure illustrates them: Purchase table contains transactional data; Customer contains data about customer attributes; Product has data about product; and Activity has data about interactions. Purchase refers to the information about the purchases. One transaction (one line in the dataset) represents a purchase of one specific item by one specific customer. The resulting dataset covers the span of several years and contains a few million lines. The following table illustrates the description of this data: Attribute name Attribute type Attribute description CustomerID Text Unique identification of the customer ProductCode Text Unique identification of the product PurchaseDate Date Date of the purchase Quantity Numerical Number of items purchased NetSales Numerical Net sales from this purchase SalesChannel Categorical Used sales channel (one of five). For example, HOL or Hilti Center. 6 of 8

7 Product data: Information about the products is gathered in the following table: Attribute name Attribute type Attribute description ProductCode Text Unique identification of the product IPCLine Categorical Category of the product (one of 50) IPCClass Categorical Type of the product (one of seven). For example, consumable, tool or accessory. Interactions with customers: Interactions with customers include so-called activities (e.g. meetings, calls, complaints, s), which are illustrated in the following table: Attribute name Attribute type Attribute description CustomerID Text Unique identification of the customer ActivityDate Date Date of the activity Category Categorical Type of the interaction (one of 37). Objective Categorical Objective of the activity (one of 28). For example, marketing campaign, technical support or debt collection. Result Categorical Result of the activity (one of 47). For example, onsite testing, order or new jobsite. ContactPerson Categorical Job type of the contacted person (one of 70). For example, safety officer, project manager or engineer. RelatedCampaigns Text Relevant only for specific categories of activities (for marketing campaigns) Permanent customer attributes: This group of customer attributes includes the ones that are permanent for the customer. The historical information for those properties is not available, hence they can be used as static ones throughout your analysis. The following table shows these attributes: Attribute name Attribute type Attribute description CustomerID Text Unique identification of the customer EngagementStatus Categorical One of 5 statuses PotentialClass Categorical One of 5 classes FleetUser Categorical If the customer is active, not active, or not a fleet user HOLUser Binary If the customer uses HOL or not TradeCode Categorical One of 12 trade codes 7 of 8

8 VisitFrequency Numerical Visit frequencies (in weeks) NumberEmployees Numerical Number of employees in the company PostalCode Text The postal code of the customer Aggregated features: Feel free to aggregate the attributes to get new features, for example: Feature name Feature type Feature description PreferredSalesChannel Categorical Preferred sales channel NetSalesLastMonth Numerical Net sales in last month OverallNetSales Numerical Overall net sales before the purchase Big Data putting analytics into action 8 of 8