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Module overview
This online course will explain the business benefits of applying data analytics, help you build an effective data analytics function and give you the skills to interpret and challenge team outputs so that they can be presented back to the business with maximum impact.
Evidence based decision making
In this unit you’ll look at the strategic business case for analytics, how and why data driven models can be used to improve decision making, data analytics concepts, where data analytics sits within the organisation, and the benefits of finance leaders owning or exerting their influence over analytics within the business.
Data strategy, governance & integrity
In this unit you’ll look at data strategy and the role that finance should play in formulating data strategy, data governance including ethics around the use of data, data security and reliability, and take a detailed look at data management, which covers the tools, processes, and architectures to achieve good data governance.
Exploratory data analysis
In this unit you’ll look at the principal attributes of datasets and the benefits of using exploratory data analysis to evaluate and graphically represent different business scenarios to provide sound scientific evidence to support decision making.
Forecasting and risk management
In this unit you’ll look at how a data driven approach to forecasting differs from traditional methods, and how predictive analytics enables you to forecast with greater accuracy and reliability. You’ll also look at the role of analytics in risk management, and how analytics can offer insights into the characteristics of anomalous journal entries, helping identify inappropriate accounting, control overrides, or inefficient processes.
Decision-making: influencing through visualisation
In this unit you’ll focus on presenting and communicating the results of data analytics to improve business decision making. Using narrative as well as visualisation techniques, we explain how to review data visualisations and enhance business communications to influence key decision makers.
Case study
You will assume a management role in a private equity firm that has used data analytics to evaluate whether a target company is a good investment. You will provide a business case for the analytics function, and understand and challenge the analytics outputs from your team in two key areas: forecasting and anomaly identification. You will also interpret a range of visualisations and select how to utilise the most effective visualisation to translate the outputs from the case study back into the original business problem, to aid decision making. Estimated learning time for the case study is 8 hours.