With the discovery of “Big Data” and the positive impacts properly using data can have on any and every business, it is no wonder that there has been an explosion of companies choosing to implement many possible uses of data. Consumers and any people who may not fully understand the process of collecting, analyzing, and visualizing data may be more easily swayed towards believing something that might not necessarily be true or represented accurately. Often it may feel like every hot topic issue has groups on both sides of the issues using seemingly objective data to prove why their side is correct. Seeing two contradictory sides with seemingly factual data can leave many people confused and unsure what the correct course of action is. With this in mind, I realized that there was a chance the businesses could be creating similar misrepresentations of data to sway customers that the company’s product or service is absolutely a necessity in their lives. After all, the world of marketing and understanding consumer preference is a wildly changing and constant moving target that companies have to navigate. Using data surrounding their products and services to create a desire in consumers to buy and use their offerings seems like a surefire way to successfully target market segments.
As I researched and conducted initial analysis for this project, I quickly ran into a few roadblocks that lead to me needing to pivot off of certain ideas and adapt my initial plans to fit what was actually being done in the current marketing environment. In reality, most businesses are not up for taking the risk of explicitly giving real metrics of their products and services to customers. Due to this, my thesis evolved into finding other ways that companies would use logical appeals to represent their products and comparatively analyze how these companies choose to represent themselves on a social media platform.

The concept of data analytics has become a primary focus for companies of all types, and from within all industries. Leveraging data to enhance the decision making power of management is now vital for companies to remain competitive. Beginning as a movement pioneered by tech-startups and teams of university researchers, data analytics is reshaping every industry that it touches, and the field of accounting has been no exception.
Corporate buzzword terms like “big data” and “data analytics” are vague in meaning, and are thrown around by media sources often enough to obfuscate their actual meanings. These concepts are then associated with company-wide initiatives beyond the reach of the individual, in a nebulous world where people know that analytics happens, but don’t understand what it is.
The power of data analytics is not reserved for company-wide initiatives, or only employed by Silicon Valley tech start-ups. Its impacts are visible down at the team or department level, and can be conducted by the individual employees. The field of data analytics is evolving, and within it exists a rapid transition in which the individual employee is becoming a source for insight and value creation through the adoption of analytics based approaches.
The purpose of this thesis is to showcase an example of this claim, and demonstrate how an analytics based approach was applied to an existing accounting process to create new insights and information. To do this, I will discuss my development of an Excel based Dashboard Analytics tool, which I completed during my internship with Bechtel Corporation throughout the summer of 2018, and I will use this analytics tool to demonstrate the improvements that small-scale analytics had on a pre-existing process. During this discussion, I will address conceptual aspects of database design that related to my project, and will show how I applied this classroom learning to a working environment. The paper will begin with an overview of the desired goals of the group in which I was based, and will then analyze how the needs of the group led to the creation and implementation of this new analytics-based reporting tool. I will conclude with a discussion of the potential future use of this tool, and how the inclusion of these analytical approaches will continue to shape the working environment.

In the modern world of business, access to information can mean the difference between thousands of dollars. Executives at any corporation, large or small, would probably agree that they need to know everything and anything at the drop of a hat. As software has become more prominent in the business world so has the demand for an ever faster representation of business data. While traditional desktop applications have been used for decades to record, store, and display data, they do have their limitations. One such limitation being location—that is, they reside on a desktop. Remote access services have alleviated some of the pain that comes from location but there is still a need for faster access to data. Thankfully, the internet offers itself as ideal platform for fast, reliable, data retrieval. An ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) application manages several departments of a business. Most sophisticated applications handle accounting, marketing, ordering, invoicing, etc. plus other business operations processes. One such ERP is Evosus, a system designed for the pool industry. While Evosus is an effective ERP system, it does suffer from the same limits that any traditional desktop application has—namely fast remote access. Evosus is an application that stores all of its data in a Microsoft SQL Server Database. MSSQL Server is known for being flexible, secure, and easy to use. The use of MSSQL Server alone allows Evosus to be more flexible than many competitors. With a few simple programming commands, all of the data stored in the Evosus database can be effectively displayed in web format. Therefore, the limitations brought on by location no longer exist. Using the Microsoft product stack, a web application has been developed to display Evosus data on the web. ASP.NET MVC is used to help with the Separation of Concerns (SoC) that accompanies all web development. The website, called EvosusConnect, is used to demonstrate how, in a real world scenario, instant access to crucial business data can benefit a company, no matter how large or small.

The Wish List is a website that allows users to input URLs of products that they like into a wish list, much like Amazon's Wish List. The website also connects users to their Facebook friends who also use the application, so that users can view their friends' wish lists and "claim" products that they've purchased. This makes the Wish List like a registry as well. This report documents the functionality and the structure of the website, but the website itself is not yet released to the general public.

Monocular is a user engagement application that offers a website owner the opportunity to track user behavior and use the data to better understand the site's strengths and weaknesses in terms of user satisfaction and motivation. This data allows the customer to make improvements to a website, resulting in a better user experience and potential for an improved bottom line.

ObamaCare is a healthcare reform looking to provide efficiency and cost savings to healthcare patients. As such, ObamaCare requires that all medical documents be in electronic form as well as a website be created to allow Americans to sign up for healthcare coverage. The ObamaCare website has many vulnerabilities: excessive code, clear text protected information, and insufficient testing. The remediation efforts will cost over one billion dollars and require many months of recoding. In order to help reduce security risks in the healthcare industry, an effective security awareness program must be implemented. This program would help to prevent the factor of human vulnerability as well as prevent healthcare companies from experiencing any bad publicity and fines as the result of a preventable security incident.