As many as one in four college students in California suffer from food insecurity, unable to get proper nutrition, in quantity or quality. The student team assisted the UC Davis Center for Student Affairs Assessment (CSAA) in creating a system to monitor and improve the campus food supply chain.

Students tapped Internet-of-Things technology to explore real-time occupancy data with the goal of understanding how the workforce interacts with their office environment and how to influence productivity by improving space utilization. CBRE is the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm serving owners, investors and occupiers. Headquartered in San Francisco, McKesson Corporation—5th on the FORTUNE 500—is a global leader in healthcare supply chain management solutions, retail pharmacy, community oncology and specialty care and healthcare information technology.

The MSBA practicum team worked closely with the Analytics & Business Insight organization to build an interactive, self-service dashboard that provides a state-of-the-business view of key metrics for Charles Schwab. 

Two student teams are working with Autodesk’s data scientists, engineers and business leaders. The first team is examining how Autodesk to better engage with cloud customers throughout their subscription lifecycle. The second team is analyzing the performance of key operational systems to improve performance and end-user experience. Based in San Francisco, Autodesk is a global leader in in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software that helps people imagine, design, and create a better world.

Omni-channel Merchandising at Fashion Retailer

Optimizing the product assortment at nearly 250 retail locations and integrating the in-store customer experience with its rapidly expanding e-commerce channel is key to Lucky Brand’s profit strategy. This multi-dimensional project gives students exposure to the company’s different organizational processes including demand management, facility planning, and merchandising. Founded in 1990 in Los Angeles, Lucky is an iconic American lifestyle brand specializing in denim.

Innovative Business Models for California’s Electric Vehicle Infrastructure

The plug-in electric vehicle market is growing quickly in California, with 1.2-1.5 million vehicles expected on our roads by 2025 and 5 million by 2030. Public charging is critical for drivers who need more range, don’t have home charging, have slow chargers, or travel longer distances. The students are analyzing charging event data in collaboration with ITS-Davis researchers to design sustainable business models and capacity expansion strategies for charging station providers. ITS-Davis is the leading university center in the world on sustainable transportation, hosting the National Center on Sustainable Transportation since 2013 and managing major research initiatives on energy, environmental, and social issues.

Managing Profitability Leakage in Enterprise Sales

Students are working with the Hilti finance team to determine a fair market pricing model based on customer segmentation and revenue potential. The goal is to form fundamental guidelines around pricing based on statistical analysis of Hilti’s current sales data combined with an understanding of business processes. Hilti is a global leader in providing technology-leading products, software and services to the worldwide construction industry through quality, innovation and direct customer relationships.

Optimizing Agricultural Output at a California Farm

The project goal is to provide Bowles management with actionable intelligence on crop rotation to strategically optimize yields and revenues. As a companion to optimized crop rotation, the students are tasked with creating a risk management practice to robustly predict and minimize negative impacts of factors such as water allocations, market prices, and weather. The 11,000-acre Bowles Farm, where the company grows cotton, tomatoes, field crops, and specialty produce, is managed by the sixth generation of farm owners in California’s Central Valley.

Based in San Francisco, Autodesk is a global leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software that helps people imagine, design, and create a better world.

Multiple MSBA student teams have worked with Autodesk’s data scientists, engineers, and business leaders. The first team examined how Autodesk can better engage with cloud customers throughout their subscription lifecycle. The second team analyzed the performance of key operational systems to improve performance and end-user experience. The third team worked with Autodesk’s product managers and data scientists on analytics to support customer success programs.  

The MSBA team is applying Machine Learning and advanced Data Science to drive customer retention, churn and expansion decisions at this cloud-based enterprise log management and analytics-as-a-service vendor. The analysis combines usage data from Sumo’s petabyle-scale platform and its CRM to identify strategies for customer retention and opportunities for market expansion. Sumo Logic is a SaaS company that helps customers monitor, troubleshoot and secure business-critical applications via a secure, cloud-native, continuous intelligence platform.