Ranyard Medal


The Ranyard Medal is awarded in recognition of the most outstanding contribution to the philosophy, theory or practice of business analytics published in the Journal of Business Analytics within the relevant two year period.

This is a new award and reflects the success this journal has achieved in the three years since its launch. The Ranyard Medal will be awarded biennially. This inaugural award relates to work published in the 2018 – 2019 editions [Volumes 1-2].

This award is named in honour of John Ranyard, who made a significant contribution to the field of Business Analytics. 

Dr John Ranyard had a distinguished career as a practitioner within OR, establishing himself as a leader in building relationships between academics and industry, commerce, and the public sector.

He has been awarded several honours over his distinguished career, including the Companionship of the UK Operational Research Society 2005.

John Ranyard.jpg

Citation for the Ranyard Medal 2022

Shylu John, Bhavin Shah, Varun Dixit & Amol Wani

An integrated approach to renew software contract using machine learning.

As its title suggests, improving the rates of software contract in a b2b setting is an important element in improving profitability. While the topic is not new, its focus on resellers and the effective use of limited data in developing a model that targets resellers for interventions is novel.

The paper’s strength lies in the careful identification of the factors affecting contract renewal that by using cluster analysis establishes profiles of four groups of resellers with very different success rates. With limited resources only the poorer performing resellers could be helped to improve through for example earlier timely customer contact.

The analysis has been implemented through a R software tool, with graphic interface and has led to improvements of 4-7 percent in the renewal rate.

Overall, the paper is an effective demonstration of all aspects of business analytics, from problem structure through to software implementation.

Journal of Business Analytics, Volume 4 (1) 14-25

https://doi.org/10.1080/2573234X.2020.1863749

Left to right: Shylu John, Bhavin Shah, Varun Dixit, Amol Wani

Ranyard Medal 2020

Amir Hassan Zadeh, Anand Jeyaraj

Alignment of business and social media strategies: insights from a text mining analysis

This year’s medal is awarded to Amir Hassan Zadeh and Anand Jeyaraj. both of whom are based in USA. This is a paper that has the potential to be a highly cited paper from the JBA. It uses analytics to solve a problem that is common among businesses, i.e., strategic alignment, and, in particular, the alignment between the overall strategy of the company and its social media strategy. In business life, social media strategy is sometimes an afterthought whose relevance to the business model and strategy of the company is not given sufficient attention. This paper dispels this notion and provides practical help to organisations in identifying drift between the formal stated strategy and the potentially more idiosyncratic view of strategy presented in social media. Crucially, the issue analysed by the paper has not only practical relevance but also has theoretical significance for the study of strategic alignment. In terms of techniques, it uses text analytics in a way that is clever technically but still replicable for other types of firms, sectors, and business applications.

Journal of Business Analytics, Volume 1 (2) 117-134

www.doi.org/10.1080/2573234X.2019.1602002

Left: Anand Jeyaraj, right: Amir Hassan Zadeh