Spanning approximately one week, several self-formed, multidisciplinary teams of Wharton and Penn students, ranging from undergraduates to MBAs, compete to present the most innovative solutions that may include machine learning to examine your business challenge and make recommendations using your data.
Datathons occur during the fall and spring semesters and are typically planned six months in advance.
Benefits
“The outcomes of Evite’s Datathon have definitely given inspiration to our data and development resources, and we are in active conversations internally about other potential machine learning approaches that were inspired by the winning team.”
– Victor Cho, W’93
CEO, Evite
How it Works
Scope Your Project
Identify the business challenge, objectives, and datasets
Prepare and Share Data
Agree to a process around secure data sharing
Launch Datathon
Host a webinar and share information about your company, project, and data
Participate in the Symposium
Discover insights, models, and solutions developed by the team
Select the Winning Teams
Choose the winning teams based on their ingenuity and strategic solutions
Evaluate Impact
Discuss recommendations and project impact on your business with WCA
Spring 2021 Datathons
January 28 – February 5, 2021
Overview
Essity’s global Tork brand uses IoT sensors in dispensers, bins, and people counters to help their customers clean more effectively. It is sold as a subscription service directly to end customers and has a number of features in addition to the cleaning functionality such as customer feedback, messaging, and APIs.
Essity would like to understand if there is untapped value in the data being collected as part of Tork’s IoT solution for smart washrooms.
February 19-26, 2021
Overview
This unique datathon experience will be composed of teams made up of both Fulton Bank employees and Penn Students to come up with insights and recommendations for Fulton Bank using their data around selected business challenges in HR, Operations, Consumer, Commercial and Finance. Students will present their findings to Fulton Bank leadership on Feb. 26 and a winning team will be selected.
Previous Datathons
DISCOVERING NEW CUSTOMERS AND GAME USAGE VIA NEW DATA LENSES
Student teams had one week to analyze user data from Origin Access, EA’s all-you-can-play subscription service, including their activity on the games included in the subscription catalogue and individually purchased games.
Driving Revenue Through Guest-To-Host Conversion
Students were asked to increase revenue for Evite by addressing one or more of the core drivers of growth. The winning team’s solution would be deployed on the Evite platform to make real-time decisions and to drive measurable improvement to an aspect of Evite’s user experience or lifecycle.
Identifying Key Customers and Industries through Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) Modeling and Regression Analysis
Twenty self-formed teams comprised of approx. 80 Penn/Wharton students were provided the same core set of Ryder System, Inc., customer data at the contract level to model the most valuable customers and industry segments to their business.
Articles
Datathon Challenge: How to Boost Sales for a Global Retailer
Students compete is WCA’s first virtual datathon to help an international retailer find innovative ways to help the company improve its gross margins.
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WCA Datathon Student Finalists Present Their Data Findings to Evite
Evite CEO Victor Cho, W’93, and VP Jay Neuman learned what Wharton and Penn student teams discovered about their company’s data at the Datathon finale.
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Evite Launches Machine Learning Project with No In-House Data Scientists
Evite and WCA teamed up to create a datathon for Wharton and Penn students to design and implement data-driven solutions for improving the user experience of the Evite platform and increasing revenue for the company.
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