Capstone Project

Gain Real-World Experience

The M.S. in Business Analytics capstone project is designed to develop your problem-framing, teamwork, project management and communication skills while integrating all of your previously gained technical knowledge by managing a business analytics project using real datasets provided by clients and other relevant databases.

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Built around student teams, the capstone project gives students the opportunity to provide business analytics solutions to real organizations under the guidance of on-site corporate managers and faculty members. Potential capstone projects cover a wide range of industries in the Los Angeles area, with a focus on engaging the surrounding Silicon Beach community.

The LMU M.S. in Business Analytics Advisory Board is highly involved with our program's capstone projects, providing guidance and support in the development of the curriculum, as well as directly to the student teams throughout their project.

Past capstone projects include:

• Fandango: Analyzed and predicted theater occupancy based on past sales data, movie data and other external data sources to provide strategic insights for marketing, pricing and operational decisions.
• RMDS + Future Data Lab: Analyzed how retail agglomeration affects business performance using geographic information systems, census data and business performance data in order to effectively design retail conglomeration.
• Qdoba: Assessed the performance of stores in multi-unit retailing systems by using the synthetic control method to create a synthetic benchmark store for evaluating new management teams, A/B testing for products and promotions, and competitor impact on a store.
• RPA: Analyzed consumer behavior during the COVID-19 crisis using a wide range of consumer data from Natural Language Processing, Convolution Neural Network and other mining techniques to provide insights for RPA to better communicate and design post-crisis advertising messages for their clients.
• Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles: Analyzed past patient behavior to build a predictive model for patient appointment cancellations and no-shows to plan appropriate levels of staffing without compromising the level of service or wait times.

By giving you the opportunity to manage a business analytics project from conception to final presentation of findings, you gain valuable work experience that will provide numerous benefits as you look toward your future career path.

“Working with Adobe was one of the best experiences I had in my time at LMU. We were fortunate enough to have access to a wide variety of data and reporting tools used by Adobe as well as tremendous support from the Adobe staff. The vast data that I had access to allowed me to develop my data modeling skills with real world data and observe impactful differences. Beyond the very valuable technical skills that this project enhanced, I recognized the importance of communicating sophisticated findings clearly to the different levels of stakeholders.”

Joshua Rotuna, M.S. '21
Data Analyst
Tillster

“The LMU M.S. in Business Analytics curriculum prepares students for real life challenges companies are trying to solve on a daily basis. Through the capstone project, LMU students contributed to the design of a data set Adobe uses to predict future business based on social listening methods that gauge marketing presence and competitive pressure in the industry. Working with the Adobe capstone team, I saw firsthand how students use their technical skills to creatively solve problems, adding value to their organization. As an alum, it’s great to see the next generation of leaders from LMU.”

Ryan Komagome '03, MBA '04
Senior Director, FP&A Marketing
LinkedIn