Students identified digital tools to support data gathering and analysis at EY

EY (Ernst & Young) asked students from the School of Business to conduct research on the digital tools that can improve the data gathering and analysis process available in the market. The aim was to gain a better understanding on current data gathering technology trends.

Information and Service Management Master’s students Iina Laine and Emilia Xue carried out the project. The project allowed them to apply their theoretical knowledge and deepen their expertise by learning about the latest analytics and artificial intelligence trends.

‘The project gave us a unique opportunity to study technology trends from the transaction advisory services’ perspective. The conversations we had with the people from EY were the highlights of the project as every conversation deepened our understanding and helped us select the most suitable tools for EY’s needs’, students tell.

Technology improvements enable more effective analysis of information

According to the project’s academic advisor, Professor of Practice Esko Penttinen, the latest developments in the area of machine learning and software robotics pave the way for a more efficient use of these technologies to analyze external information. He sees that these technologies will gain in importance when assessing a company’s potential to generate revenue.

‘I was very pleased to see that two students from our department were selected to this project, both of them will definitely be able to use the learnings in their future career’, Esko Penttinen says.

In the project, the students discussed with a number of Transaction Action Service professionals to understand the user needs and desired features from the digital tools. The final recommendation was created based on the identified needs and companies, which could tailor feasible solutions to these.

The potential of the identified data tools to be carefully estimated at EY

EY’s contact person for the project was Esa Tolonen, who was pleased about the breadth and depth of the listing of potential tools.

‘This listing will be useful to us and provides a nice groundwork when we assess different technological platforms and tools to analyze companies’ external information. We already employ some of these tools but there were also some interesting new acquaintances that we now need to analyze and see, whether they fit to our portfolio of tools’, Esa Tolonen concludes.

The Customized Student Business Projects concept offers students the opportunity to work on solving current challenges faced by corporate business, giving the assigning company the possibility to develop and spar new ideas together with the students.
 

EY Transaction Advisory Services acts as a strategic adviser to private equity investors and corporations involved in acquisitions and divestments as well as capital management, restructuring and company development. Transaction Advisory Services helps companies set strategic goals to reach the company’s targets by analyzing the target market's dynamics, strategic growth drivers and risks, and identifying opportunities for business enhancement.