Practice Prize
A celebration of outstanding applications of business analytics with significant organisational impact.
The Centre for Business Analytics Practice Prize
The Centre’s Practice Prize celebrates outstanding applications of business analytics with significant organisational impact with a $10,000 honorarium.
The work must be analytically sound, innovative (either in terms of a new methodology or application in a new problem context), and appropriate to the problem and organization. The work is also expected to provide evidence of verifiable and quantifiable impact on the organisation’s performance. The implementation of the work should be completed within the three-year period prior to the year of the competition.
The competition welcomes successful advanced analytics applications in business, government, healthcare, education, and non-profit.
2022 Finalists Included:
Inaugural Practice Prize Winners: Suncorp
Geospatial Technology Introduced in Industry First
The project saw Suncorp transform insurance operations by challenging the status quo and questioning if there was a different way to gather data which resulted in fewer questions for customers to answer. "It was an industry-first," said Emily Chong, Pricing Manager at Suncorp.
"We used geospatial intelligence to inform our risk selection and pricing, removing the need for customers to answer 50 per cent of property questions on their application."
The technology was able to identify property building attributes from aerial images of more than 9 million Australian homes, turning these images into usable data.
"The new capability brings a better, simpler customer purchasing experience, and puts Suncorp at the leading edge when it comes to the innovative use of new technology for the benefit of our customers," Ms Chong said.
"Analytics when used as a strategic advantage across all areas of business operations, could deliver profitable financial outcomes for the business, delight our customers by delivering on promises and allow us to keep ahead of a competitive market."
Call for 2023 Submissions
The Melbourne Business School’s – Centre for Business Analytics (CfBA) solicits entries for the 2023 Practice Prize Competition, the culmination of which will take place at the 2023 Melbourne Business Analytics Conference 2 August 2023.
Application Process
Initial Application
- A 500-word abstract of the work
- A 1000-word summary of the impact of the work on the organisation’s performance
- Deadline: 4 April 2023
- Please send applications through to PracticePrize@mbs.edu
Semi-finalists
- Announced 6 April 2023
- Will be invited to submit a full report by 6 June 2023
- The report (25-page limit, double-spaced, 12-point font, normal margins) should elaborate on the context, problem, methodology, and evidence of impact.
Finalists
- Announced 21 June 2023
- Academics and Practitioners will be invited to present their work during the 2023 Melbourne Business Analytics Conference (2 August 2023), which provides a forum for 1,000+ board members, senior executives, industry professionals, and academicians to discuss the transformation of decision making through data science, advanced analytics, Big Data, Machine Learning and AI. Winner to be announced after presentations
- The winning submission will be awarded prize money of $10,000 AUD.
