Business strategy. Plan and secure success.

Organisations are placing increasing importance on evidence-based decision-making. The rise of terms like "predictive analytics" and "big data" reflect a greater reliance on analytics techniques across commercial, government and not-for-profit sectors.

This business analytics course introduces you to an array of analytical and predictive analytics techniques that will enable you to extract meaning from data in a disciplined manner. This will lead to stronger, quantitative-based decision-making within your organisation.

This course will also build your analytical skills in a diversity of contexts, generating confidence in how you analyse data no matter what the setting is. The analytical tools covered can be applied to data generated within operations, sales and marketing, finance, human resources and customer functions.

Aims

The aims of this course are to:

• develop your analytical, critical thinking and advanced problem-solving skills within workplace settings
• provide a set of analytical and problem-solving tools to assist with decision-making
• make you feel at ease when extracting meaning from data sets and critically reviewing this data
• improve the accuracy of predictions, using Excel based predictive analytics tools
• assist you to utilise data effectively for achieving stronger work outcomes
• improve your evidence base in problem solving and managing functional areas.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• analyse data to assist with solving problems and decision-making in organisations
• critically review, then quantify the benefits and costs associated with an initiative
• develop a set of metrics for measuring performance within each functional area in an organisation
• make informed quantitative judgements
• utilise a basic set of predictive analytics tools.

Content

Course content covers business analytics used across a range of functional areas in organisations, including:

Customer analytics

• Techniques for measuring user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX)
• Ways of measuring customer satisfaction (including Net Promoter Score and associated benchmarks)
• Design and administration of surveys
• Analysis of survey data for advanced problem solving and generating solutions

Operations analytics

• Determining probability of an undesired event
• Evaluating the magnitude of an impact
• Use of decision trees as part of the critical thinking process for solving problems
• Using 5 Whys analysis and fishbone diagrams for determining the root cause of an event

Supply chain analytics

• Use of value stream analysis for critically reviewing current practices and removing waste
• Calculating defects per million opportunities (Six Sigma metric)
• Setting of joint KPIs as part of a collaborative negotiation process

Sales & marketing analytics

• Use of predictive analytics/regression equations for estimating customer demand
• Establishing sales metrics for cortically reviewing performance and solving problems
• Application of social media metrics, eg number of clicks
• Calculating Return on Investment (ROI) = benefit/cost of initiatives

Human resource analytics

• Use of KPIs/metrics for evaluating performance
• Using staff attrition rates as a marker variable for being an employer of choice
• Design and application of staff satisfaction ratings for critically appraising current workplace dynamics

Financial analytics

• Forecasting techniques
• Use of variances (actual - budget) for critically reviewing and solving problems
• Designing, utilising and critically reviewing a dashboard of financial ratios for overcoming problems

While the above techniques have been listed against specific functional areas, we will look at their cross-functional application to your areas of interest. This includes advanced problem solving exercises. For this reason, the number of attendees per class is strictly limited.

Intended audience

This course will assist people interested in analytics from all backgrounds. You may be progressing towards management, be a new manager, or a manager with many years of experience across any of the following fields:

• Sales & marketing professionals
• Human Resource Managers
• Customer Experience Officers/Managers
• Supply chain/ Logistics/Operations Managers
• Finance Officers/Managers
• Business Managers
• Business Analysts
• General Managers
• Procurement Officers/Managers
• Risk managers
• WHS team members/Managers
• Program Officers/Managers
• Executive Officers

Delivery modes

• Face-to-face, presenter taught workshop
• Online workshop via the platform Zoom

Delivery style

Delivered as an interactive workshop. You will learn through a variety of methods including:

• individual and group activities
• group discussion
• case studies
• quizzes
• role plays.

Materials

Course materials are distributed electronically using Dropbox.

Before the course

Although not essential, a laptop with pre-installed Excel software would be helpful.