Make Data-Driven Business Decisions – University of Pennsylvania

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Achieve fluency in business data strategies by taking four discipline-specific courses created by The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In the Coursera “Business Analytics Specialization“, you’ll learn how data analysts describe, predict, and inform business decisions in the specific areas of marketing, human resources, finance, and operations, and you’ll develop basic data literacy and an analytic mindset that will help you make strategic decisions based on data. In the final Capstone Project, you’ll apply your skills to interpret a real-world data set and make appropriate business strategy recommendations.

About The Business Analytics Specialization

This Specialization provides an introduction to big data analytics for all business professionals, including those with no prior analytics experience. It comprises the following four courses plus a capstone project:

COURSE 1: Customer Analytics
Upcoming session: Jan 2 — Feb 13.
Commitment: 4 weeks of study, 5-6 hours/week
This course provides an overview of the field of analytics so that you can make informed business decisions. It is an introduction to the theory of customer analytics and is not intended to prepare learners to perform customer analytics.

COURSE 2: Operations Analytics
Upcoming session: Jan 9 — Feb 13.
Commitment: 4 weeks of study, 2-3 hours/week
This course is designed to impact the way you think about transforming data into better decisions. In this course, you will learn how to model future demand uncertainties, how to predict the outcomes of competing policy choices and how to choose the best course of action in the face of risk. The course will introduce frameworks and ideas that provide insights into a spectrum of real-world business challenges, will teach you methods and software available for tackling these challenges quantitatively as well as the issues involved in gathering the relevant data.

COURSE 3: People Analytics
Upcoming session: Jan 2 — Feb 6.
Commitment: 4 weeks of study, 1-2 hours/week
This course is an introduction to the theory of people analytics and is not intended to prepare learners to perform complex talent management data analysis. By the end of this course, you’ll understand how and when hard data is used to make soft-skill decisions about hiring and talent development so that you can position yourself as a strategic partner in your company’s talent management decisions.

COURSE 4: Accounting Analytics
Upcoming session: Jan 9 — Feb 13.
Commitment: 4 weeks, 3 -5 hours per week
This course has been designed to help you make better business decisions about the emerging roles of accounting analytics so that you can apply what you’ve learned to make your own business decisions and create a strategy using financial data.

COURSE 5: Business Analytics Capstone
Upcoming session: Mar 20 — Apr 24.
Commitment: 4 weeks of study, 4-5 hours/week
Designed with Yahoo to give you invaluable experience in evaluating and creating data-driven decisions, the Business Analytics Capstone Project provides the chance for you to devise a plan of action for optimizing data itself to provide key insights and analysis, and to describe the interaction between key financial and non-financial indicators. Once you complete your analysis, you’ll be better prepared to make better data-driven business decisions of your own.

Summary of Main Course Features

Created by: The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is recognized globally for intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of business education.
The University of Pennsylvania (commonly referred to as Penn) is a private university, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
Comprises: 5 courses
Commences: January 2, 2017
Projects: To help you practice and apply the skills you learn.
Certificates: Available
Beginner Specialization: No prior experience required.