![\"Fabio](\"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/fabio-knijnik.jpg\" "\\"Fabio")
It was a unique opportunity for the FIU College of Business graduate students to work on a real-world problem with help from the ATOM Think Tank<\/a>, FIU\u2019s first faculty consulting service. ATOM, which stands for Analytics, Technology and Operations Management, resides in the College of Business\u2019 Information Systems and Business Analytics (ISBA) Department<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the project\u2019s end, students delivered a live presentation with a predictive model the company could use in decision making, giving class members the opportunity to not only work on a real project, but present it to the company\u2019s cofounder.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was amazing,\u201d said SellersFunding co-founder Fabio David Knijnik. I really enjoyed participating, interacting with the students and sharing our passion for the subject.\u201d<\/p>\n Said Mirzaei, \u201cThis is a good exercise. Students learn to deal with \u00a0the challenges when faced with real data, and then, they learn to come up with appropriate methodologies to solve the problems and answer the business questions.\u201d<\/p>\n Learning to swim in data. <\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s no secret that the Internet age is all about amassing vast realms of data. But how to use it demands 21st<\/sup> century creativity. Analytics majors have to learn what information is germane and what isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n In this case, Mirzaei\u2019s class had access to Amazon records and other data, and \u201cthey had to mine the data, and develop predictive models using different techniques that we learned in class,\u201d she said. And while she and other ATOM faculty members combed out some of the data that would not be relevant, students were still presented with more than 5,000 records of Amazon sellers. They had to figure out which questions to ask about the remaining data; for example, how many items were sold by one seller, and the costs of sold items across the months.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first thing, we needed to do was define what it means to be a good performer,\u201d explained Joshua Lugo, who is working on his master\u2019s degree in data science. Was that someone who sold one $10,000 item in one month, or someone who sold thousands of $10 items over three months \u2013 or both?<\/p>\n Two rounds of analysis, and fine tuning the procedure they used \u201creally put to the test some of the things we\u2019ve learned,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was really good practice.\u201d<\/p>\n Spoorthi Rajendrababu worked on a project that required business analytics application, noting that the students had to evaluate more than 15 variables and come up with credit-worthy parameters, while pulling out what is, essentially, noise.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really a great opportunity,\u201d Rajendrababu said. \u201cWhen we knew we were getting real time data, it was mind blowing.\u201d<\/p>\n At project\u2019s end, the results were presented to the company, marking the first time Mirzaei, who has been teaching the course since August, 2016, was able to bring live, real-world data into the class.<\/p>\n \u201cThe experience was really good for me and the students because we had to meet the expectations of the company,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was challenging and exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n Knijnik had similar feelings about the project.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a pleasure working with the faculty and the students,\u201d he said. \u201cTala Mirzaei and (ISBA Senior Instructor and ATOM director) Nicole Wishart are amazing professionals and helped define and implement the project with a very straightforward approach. I am\u00a0looking forward to having a chance to do that again.\u201d<\/p>\n And rather than merely serve as an academic exercise, for SellersFunding, the class provided real-world solutions, Knijnik said.<\/p>\n \u201cRight after the competition, we started to implement some of the ideas, models and insights I got during the presentations,\u201d he said. \u201cSellersFunding is an innovative platform with a forward looking approach, and the students got the spirit right away.\u201d<\/p>\n ATOM, which launched in mid-2015, is focused toward helping small businesses learn how to integrate state-of-the-art technology and analytics into their organizations. The non-profit is supported through its own work and has provided services to a number of companies, including those in the health and tourism industries.<\/p>\n Disclaimer: \u00a0SellersFunding takes its customers\u2019 privacy and data protection very seriously. All data shared and or utilized in this project was generic in nature. No specific or identifiable information linked to SellersFunding\u2019s customers has been revealed at any time.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many businesses sell on Amazon. And SellersFunding, which provides loans and capital to small businesses, wanted to find the stars among the small-marketplace online merchants, and identify which might be good investment opportunities. They turned to the students in Assistant Professor Tala Mirzaei\u2019s Business Analytics Applications class to find out. It was a unique […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":32545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3901,3785,3959,3973,4513],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32533"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32561,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32533\/revisions\/32561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Fabio](\"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Fabio-David-Knijnik.jpg\")
![\"Tala](\"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/mirzaeit.jpg\" "\\"Tala")
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