W14290

GETCLARITY INC. (A)

Mathew MacFayden and Matthew Morden wrote this case under the supervision of Professor Xinghao (Shaun) Yan solely to provide
material for class discussion. The authors do not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation.
The authors may have disguised certain names and other identifying information to protect confidentiality.

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Copyright © 2014, Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation Version: 2014-07-23

INTRODUCTION

It was a late-December evening, and Mathew MacFayden, a second-year HBA student at the Richard Ivey
School of Business, had just finished his final exam of the semester. He sat down at his desk and
reviewed an e-mail he had received an hour before starting his exam. The message was from a startup
called getClarity Inc. for whom MacFayden and his fellow classmate, Matthew Morden, had been
working. One of getClarity’s recently acquired clients was requesting a data-analysis report. After
examining the report requirements, MacFayden got up to make a pot of coffee. It was going to be a long
night.

GETCLARITY INC.

GetClarity Inc. was a start-up firm that specialized in the accumulation, analysis, and sale of various types
of data, including its own data, which was obtained through an exclusive contract. The firm launched its
application and services in January 2012, at which point it began an intensive sales process that was
directed at industry-leading clients.

There were three main revenue-generating functions within getClarity. The first was the company’s
proprietary software, which was licensed out and used to display integrated sets of data on a GIS mapping
system. The second revenue stream derived from consulting services that utilized getClarity’s data to
solve a variety of business issues. Finally, getClarity provided unique reports that varied from the simple
application of getClarity’s own data to the complex integration of customer data.

Since getClarity was still in its start-up phase, only limited personnel was available, and thus the team
included the two founders, as well as two current HBA students (MacFayden and Morden), and one
contract salesman. The team’s small size meant that MacFayden and Morden were given plenty of
opportunity to take on considerable responsibility in a variety of the business functions. Still, the majority
of their work centred on data analysis and development of client facing reports. The data typically
belonged to getClarity, but occasionally, clients would incorporate their own data into the report in order
to gain further insight.

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MacFayden and Morden’s job involved figuring out how to extract value from getClarity’s data and apply
it to each client. The main goal was to display the data and analysis in such a way that senior management
could understand the implications and would then go on to ask intelligent questions of their analytics
department.

REPORTS

The reports that MacFayden and Morden formulated involved various forms of data analysis, including
everything from the creation of simple displays of the data to pivot tables to more sophisticated statistical
analysis, all depending on the client and on the report requested. The goal was to simplify and display any
amount of data onto one page.

CLIENT REPORT REQUEST

The current report request came from an auto-manufacturing client that sought to analyze a potential
dealership location. The basis of the initial analysis centred on population age, and the report would make
use of getClarity’s population data for the requested area. MacFayden and Morden would study the
demographic data for the selected area as percentages of the area population (see Exhibit 1), and this data
would then to be compared to national population data to see the relative age of the area. See Exhibit 2 for
national demographic data as percentages of total national population. The need for this comparison arose
when the client’s management determined that an older average age served as a strong indicator that the
dealership would be successful. Furthermore, identifying the average age of the consumers in the area
would provide some insight into which vehicles the dealership should stock. For these reasons, it was
necessary to determine whether the area was above or below the national average for age.

In order to accomplish this task, a simulation would have to be performed, followed by a t-test with
varying hypotheses for the average age of the area. The overall goal of this portion of the analysis was to
determine, on average, how much older or younger the selected area was, compared to the rest of the
population.

DECISION

After reviewing the report request, MacFayden and Morden started to discuss how best to go about their
task to provide some useful feedback for getClarity’s client. What types of analysis would need to be
performed? What would be the best way to display the data once that analysis had been performed? And
how conclusive would their analysis prove to be?

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EXHIBIT 1: DEMOGRAPHIC DATA

Statistic Value
Population 26,380
% Work at Home 5.30%
Pop % 0-19 24.60%
Pop % 20-29 13.30%
Pop % 30-39 17.80%
Pop % 40-49 14.10%
Pop % 50-59 9.80%
Pop % 60-69 7.70%
Pop % 70-79 7.40%
Pop % 80 + 5.50%
Never legally married 33.60%
Legally married 47.40%
Separated 2.70%
Divorced 8.10%
Widowed 8.20%
Not Common-law 94.70%
Common-law 5.30%
2-person family 42.30%
3-person family 24.20%
4-person family 20.60%
5+-person family 13.00%
New to FSA per year 18.90%
No degree 15.00%
Any degree 85.00%
High school certificate 20.00%
Trades degree 9.10%
College degree 15.10%
Any university degree 40.70%
University degree below BA 7.50%
University cert. or degree 33.20%
Bachelor's degree 20.10%
University degree above BA 3.70%
Medical degree 0.70%
Master's degree 7.50%
Doctorate degree 1.20%
Avg. Vehicle Age 5
Avg. Vehicle Estimated Value 10,937
Avg. House Age 36
Avg. Building Value 400,559
Percentage Value Of Provincial Avg. 150.50%
Older Smoker 25.00%
Mid-Age Smoker 53.10%
Young Smoker 21.90%

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EXHIBIT 2: NATIONAL DEMOGRAPHICS

Statistic Value
Population 34,362,970
% Work at Home 7.30%
Pop % 0-19 24.10%
Pop % 20-29 12.60%
Pop % 30-39 13.30%
Pop % 40-49 16.70%
Pop % 50-59 14.40%
Pop % 60-69 9.10%
Pop % 70-79 6.10%
Pop % 80 + 3.60%
Never legally married 35.00%
Legally married 48.00%
Separated 3.00%
Divorced 8.00%
Widowed 6.10%
Not Common-law 88.90%
Common-law 11.10%
2-person family 49.00%
3-person family 21.70%
4-person family 20.20%
5+-person family 8.60%
New to FSA per year 13.80%
No degree 15.80%
Any degree 83.90%
High school certificate 23.50%
Trades degree 12.90%
College degree 20.40%
Any university degree 27.10%
University degree below BA 4.80%
University cert. or degree 22.30%
Bachelor's degree 14.10%
University degree above BA 2.30%
Medical degree 0.70%
Master's degree 4.30%
Doctorate degree 0.80%
Avg. Vehicle Age 4
Avg. Vehicle Estimated Value 8,136
Avg. House Age 33
Avg. Building Value 323,935
Percentage Value Of Provincial Avg. 102.90%
Older Smoker 23.50%
Mid Age Smoker 55.10%
Young Smoker 22.10%

This document is authorized for use only in Prof. Goutam Sutar's Data Analysis for Management-I - 8.18.2020 at Thiagarajar School of Management (TSM) from Aug 2020 to Feb 2021.