“From Data to Insights”

Business Analytics is a set of skills, technologies, applications and practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning. Business analytics focuses on developing new insights and understanding of business performance based on data and statistical methods.

Course Description

Nowadays, making decisions just on the basis of intuition is not enough. This course is a great investment for anybody looking to learn how data analysts describe, predict and reach business decisions in specific areas of marketing, human resources, operation, accounting and finance. By the end of this program, you will have an analytical mindset that will help you to make strategic decisions based on data, gain practical experience with data analysis and turn business intelligence into real-world outcomes. If you are someone who is fascinated with data and would love to make informed business decisions by drawing insights from large datasets then this specialization is something that will grab your attention. Throughout the lessons, you will use powerful and technical tools and methods to analyze data, model business scenarios, create forecasts and models, design visualizations, grow business, increase profits and create maximum value for shareholders, look into the various parameters of data and use them to gain different dimensions of information from it.

As a data-driven and evidence-based manager, you will get a clear picture of the vital roles business data analysts play in a company through gaining basic, intermediate and advanced analytical skills and managerial judgment that will be useful in analyzing and interpreting data. Gain the capability to make impactful business decisions based on logical calculation and prediction and not on simple intuition.

Key Course Takeaways

• Analyze functional data using Excel
• Demystify the concepts of business analytics and apply them to your work
• Harvest data to make business decisions
• Leverage Excel’s business analytics and modeling capabilities
• Apply prescriptive modeling and analysis methods
• Make analytical predictions and forecasts using your formatted data sets
• Master data visualization techniques to effectively communicate your analysis
• Add interactivity to data sets with dashboards
• Answer business questions by applying criteria to your data

 Course Objectives

• Key analytic technologies and techniques such as predictive modeling, prescriptive modelling and the role that can be played in managerial decision making.
• Effectively manage the analytical processed and use the results as the basis for making informed and evidence-based decisions.
• Understand how organizations can use analytics as the basis to create value.
• Acquire the ability to explain complex analytical models and results easily with the help of demonstrations.
• Deep understanding of Visualization and Dashboard Design to turn raw data into visual insights to help support business decisions.
• To introduce frameworks and ideas that provide insights into a spectrum of real-world business challenges.
• To become familiar with the processes needed to develop, report, and analyze business data.

Delivery Methods

• No prerequisites are required to get started with this specialization.
• Each analytic topic is covered individually in an elaborate manner with proper examples.
• The final project gives an opportunity to apply the acquired knowledge to a real business challenge.
• Lots of exercises to follow along with the lectures for better understanding.
• The classes use real-life datasets from publicly available sources which creates a realistic environment to approach the challenges.
• The lessons are perfectly paced which helps the students to learn easily.
• Learn to apply fundamental analytics to common business decisions.
• Plenty of assignments to practice the concepts covered in the lectures.
• A wide variety of examples helps you to get a clearer view of the topics.
• The course material and lecture can be accessed for free and the certification can be added for an additional cost.
• Work on a capstone project where you will have the opportunity to integrate your knowledge and apply the skills to real world challenges.
• The training is divided into appropriate sections along with interactive quizzes.

Who this Course is for

• Aspiring Business Analysts looking to get a foothold in the IT Industry and improve their understanding of the business analyst role as well as those seeking to leverage analytic skills.
• New Business Analysts wanting to improve their craft
• Other positions that are performing business analysis duties such as administrators, managers, and project leads.
• Organizations wanting to make better and more informed business decisions, as well as looking for ways to explore business data and implement statistical analysis.
• Managers looking to optimize business processes.
• Individuals and entrepreneurs who need to visualize data
• The above mentioned group commonly fall under the following professions and roles:
  (Business analyst, Business strategist, Data analyst, Project manager, Data mining specialist, Data warehousing specialist, Managers and executives, Administrative and executive assistants)

What You’ll Learn

The course will pragmatically demonstrate and apply descriptive tools, diagnostic tools, predictive tools and prescriptive tools through a capstone project that will be put into use through exploring different features and capabilities necessary for better data extraction, visualization and interpretation.

Facilitator Insight

Business Analytics is not based on rote memorization of equations or facts, but focuses on honing your understanding of key concepts, your managerial judgment, and your ability to apply course concepts to real business problems. This course begins with basic descriptive statistics and progresses to regression analysis. Throughout the course, you will receive clear guidance on how to implement analytical techniques using different data analytical tools. No matter your job function or career aspirations, this course will demystify data analysis and equip you with concrete skills to apply in your work or further studies.

Work on the process of re-framing a business question as a data question, reason about what data might be useful and how to achieve it. Apart from obtaining the data the lectures also talk about important steps such as cleansing and analyzing the data, performing analysis deriving and communicating insights from it.

We will explore such key areas as the analytical process, how data is created, stored, accessed, and how the organization works with data and creates the environment in which analytics can flourish. What you learn in this course will give you a strong foundation in all the areas that support analytics and will help you to better position yourself for success within your organization. You’ll develop skills and a perspective that will make you more productive faster and allow you to become a valuable asset to your organization.

Developing these models and gaining insights from data do not necessarily lead to successful implementations. This depends on the ability to communicate results to those who make decisions. Presenting findings to decision makers who are not familiar with the language of analytics presents a challenge. In this course you will learn how to communicate analytics results to stakeholders who do not understand the details of analytics but want evidence of analysis and data. You will also learn how to develop and deliver data-analytics stories that provide context, insight, and interpretation.

What is really exciting about this course is that you won’t need to know a computer language or advanced statistics to learn about these predictive and prescriptive analytic models. Basic knowledge of Excel is all you’ll need to start and explore advanced tools like Tableau and Power BI

Business problems need solutions based on data, not intuition. Yet most organizations struggle to translate the abundance of data they have today into meaningful business insights.

Now more than ever, data analytics, approached with a business management mindset, is an essential function for successful decision making in every industry. It can help frame problems, create comparisons, forecast outcomes, and make predictions.