Data Driven Decision Making: For Small Businesses

Catalog description

This course’s focus is on how to use business data to make an impact on business performance. It will inform students on how to use data to reduce inventory, determine product and customer profitability, gain insight into customer ordering behavior, how to determine if your cash flow is getting better or worse, and determining if a business is becoming more or less efficient as it grows. The intent of this course is to show the students what is possible rather than teaching mathematical techniques. Using real-world case studies from various functional areas, from simple to the more advanced, the course will deliver a series of analytics using software that most businesses already possess, suitable for anyone wishing to take their business to the next level. The course will also examine the advantages and disadvantages of trying to build these capabilities in-house and will provide a realistic view of the challenges associated with analytics in the business world. Different data analysis and visualization tools will also be discussed. (Offered as an elective in the Business Analytics concentration of the Graduate School of Technology’s M.S. program in Data Analytics.)