Freese Corporation has been in the heating and air conditioning business for more than 60 years. The founder, Jim “Deep” Freese started the business in Orange County, California in the early 1970’s as the Southern California suburbs began to grow.

Freese Corp is preparing for a management transition. Deep, the founder, is about to turn control of the business over to his son, Junior Freese. When he started the business and for most of its first 40 years, Deep Freese knew almost every customer of the business personally. However, he never created a formal customer data base. Today, he has more than 150 employees and 50 trucks operating in Orange and Riverside Counties.

Junior Freese recently graduated from the highly rated MBA program at Chapman University. He believes that the company is poised for major growth by expanding nationally and by providing a more extensive set of products and services. As he looks around the heating and air conditioning industry, he does not see companies leveraging data and analytics as a growth strategy. He thinks that is the key to his future growth.

The company, however, has no formal data function in marketing and sales. Its culture is characterized by a suspicion of technology and analytics.

You have been hired as a consultant to the company in the area of data and analytics. What would you recommend to Junior? What are the key issues you want to sensitize him to? What kinds of analytics do you think can provide him with fast “wins” in a short time frame? And, what long-term goals do you think Junior should consider for analytics to help his company grow?