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Working Paper: Case Study

comScore, Inc.: Making Analytics Count

This case study describes how comScore developed a patent-protected technical platform, developed a global workforce, and cultivated practices.
By Barbara H. Wixom, Jeanne W. Ross, and Cynthia M. Beath
CASE STUDY

An in-depth description of a firm’s approach to an IT management issue (intended for MBA and executive education)

Abstract

Data and analytics providers are highly experienced at working with big data. They create, build, and hone capabilities to exploit their data assets. comScore is one such company—a 14-year-old marketing research firm with fourteen petabytes of online data, collected real time from around the world. This case study describes how comScore developed a patent-protected technical platform; hired and developed a 1200-person global workforce with varying levels of “data science” abilities; and cultivated practices to ensure that its clients would actually act upon insights.

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About the Authors

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Jeanne W. Ross, MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research (CISR)

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Cynthia M. Beath, University of Texas at Austin

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