Foundations of Business Analytics
Successful contemporary businesses are data-led and draw on large and complex data sets to guide decisions. They require business practitioners who know how to find and collate data that can inform good business decision-making and enhance performance by making sense of complex and uncertain information through appropriate quantitative analysis. These practitioners know how to compute, process, manage and communicate statistical information in ways that can affect beneficial and evidence-led change to business practice and planning.
This module aims to scaffold the core technical skills of a business analyst with the skills needed to draw insight out of data and communicate quantitative business information in engaging ways – building a solid foundation in the data handling, numerical summarisation and visualisation skills upon which more advanced business analytics and modelling practice is built.
By studying this module, you will develop the practical and technical competencies you need to handle and prepare complex business data effectively – and become skilled at collecting, cleaning and preprocessing business data, managing datasets effectively, and dealing with errors and inconsistencies that they may contain. You will become practiced at selecting and applying descriptive statistical methods to summarise data and at generating valuable insights from the statistics that you compute. You will also develop your awareness of the importance of communicating quantitative information and your ability to use visualisation techniques to communicate complex patterns and ideas to non-specialist stakeholders.
Statistical Methods and Hypothesis Testing for Business Analysis
Businesses operate in complex environments. The ability to use statistical methods to reveal and make sense of complex patterns and relationships that are hidden within business data is a core business analysis skill. It enables businesses to better understand the impacts of their own behaviours and those of their competitors and customers. It is essential for developing testable ideas and making predictions that are underpinned by levels of confidence and likelihood.
This module will help you become a business analyst that can use statistical testing, modelling and inference to support business enhancement and performance optimisation. You’ll develop the technical competencies you need to make sense of complexity in business contexts and communicate it to others.
By studying the module, you will recognise how statistical methods can be powerful tools to reveal the interplays between different variables that can impact a business. You will develop your ability to use statistical inference to draw conclusions about these interplays and their relative importance, and to quantify how significant they are and how confident you can be about them. You will become skilled in hypothesis testing and in using industry-standard statistical software to develop and execute statistical testing and modelling. You’ll also practise communicating the meaning of statistics and statistical model outputs to non-specialist audiences.
Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning for Business Analysis
Business has to plan ahead and, to do this, it needs analysts that can use data to make predictions and forecast outcomes. Accurate and evidence-based forecasting of emerging trends is crucial to the success or failure of a company. Increasingly, this forecasting work is done by machine learning algorithms that can find the hidden patterns that exist in large, complex datasets and use them to make automated and accurate predictions when new information becomes available.
This module will help you develop the technical competencies needed to use cutting-edge machine learning and numerical modelling tools to make business forecasts and predictions. By studying this module, you will become equipped with the foundational knowledge and technical skills that are needed to build predictive models and apply them to real-world business problems. You will gain a strong foundation in numerical modelling techniques that use hidden relationships in data to make predictions and you will learn how to implement, tune and optimise these models effectively.
You will also develop the skills needed to evaluate and interpret model performance so that you can compare model outputs and communicate results clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. The module emphasises the practical application of predictive modelling, guiding you through the entire workflow – from data preparation to model development, execution and interpretation.
Data Visualisation, Business Intelligence and AI for Business Analysis
Maximising the value from business analysis requires complex numerical outputs and insights to be effectively summarised and communicated in ways that can support good decisions. Increasingly, this work is supported by AI algorithms and engaging visualisations – and contemporary business analysts need to be skilled at using them.
This module will develop the competencies you need to harness the power of AI and visualisations to direct business decisions. By studying the module, you will become skilled at using industry-standard software to design and create engaging data visualisations and dashboards that can support business decisions. You will gain experience of integrating AI-generated information into business analytics workflows to simplify complex information and inform business dashboards. Through hands-on experience, you’ll focus on turning raw data into meaningful insights through simulated tasks commonly encountered in business and industry.
You’ll also address the ethical issues surrounding AI, enabling you to formulate and communicate summary information and dashboard outputs in ways that are robust and ethical.
Business Analytics Capstone
In this module, you’ll explore real-world challenges and issues that can be addressed through the application of business analytics, drawing on the knowledge, skills and behaviours that you have developed in previous business analytics modules.
You will be provided with a project brief that sets out a real-world problem, scenario or case study that is encountered by contemporary business professionals and that details a set of outcomes and/or products that are being sought. Working independently, but benefitting from weekly surgeries and opportunities for collaboration with other students, you will need to:
- Identify methods, techniques and tools that are appropriate for delivering the outcomes and/or products set out in the project brief
- Formulate and execute a plan of work to generate them
At the end of the project, you will be required to present your products and/or outcomes, critically evaluate your approach to generating them and detail recommendations that could be used by others tasked with similar work.
Business Consulting Leadership and Management
Effective business consultants recognise that their ability to influence change centres on the extent to which they have engaged with and are trusted by the stakeholders that the change will impact. They operate under clear sets of values and demonstrate high levels of ethics and behavioural standards in their practice – and this underpins the relationships, co-operations and collaborations that enable them to be effective change agents.
This module will develop your interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence – competencies that are needed to lead and manage consulting relationships. You will explore the values, ethics and codes of practice that guide contemporary business consulting practice, and you’ll become skilled at putting these into practice to build cooperation and trust with your stakeholders. You’ll also develop the ability to review and reflect on your own values, behaviours and ethics as a mechanism for maintaining alignment between your practice and the expectations of professional codes of conduct.
Business Consulting Strategy Analysis and Insight
Business is uncertain and effecting positive change often requires strategies to be revisited and updated as new information becomes available. Consultants are a key agent in this process. They need to know how to fact find and scope the contexts in which businesses operate, recognise the uncertainties that exist and have the ability to structure problems and solutions in conditions of ambiguity.
This module will develop your competence at breaking down and making sense of business problems, embracing the uncertainties that surround them, and building feasible and effective solutions. It aims to do so in the context of business strategy, so you can communicate your ideas and recommendations to senior business leaders effectively.
By studying the module, you will become skilled at analysing business strategy to identify the opportunities and challenges that it presents – and breaking these down to make sense of them and build out solutions and recommendations to clients. You’ll also become comfortable operating with uncertainty and ambiguity.
Relationship Development and Operational Delivery for Business Consulting
Enacting change in a business requires buy-in from its stakeholders and the development and management of relationships that enable influence to be had over decision-makers. Business consultants are highly skilled in doing this and are able to use their commercial acumen to formulate recommendations and solutions that are widely supported by stakeholders.
This module will develop your ability to engage stakeholders and manage your relationships with stakeholders, so that you can effectively influence the decisions they make. You will learn how to recognise the different styles of relationships that can exist with different stakeholders – and how to analyse their different needs to so you can provide solutions and value propositions that have wide stakeholder support.
By the end of the module, you’ll be able to adopt operational models that manage and nurture stakeholder relationships in order to deliver effective business consulting outcomes. You’ll also know how to maximise your influence through stakeholder analysis and mapping – and how to embed stakeholder requirements, concerns and expectations within your professional practice.
Securing Business Consulting Engagement
Developing a compelling proposal for a client, and then negotiating prior to closing the deal, is a key element in any business consulting engagement. It requires practitioners that can identify the drivers, disrupters and risks in different business sectors and that can listen to and make sense of a client’s need within this larger context. It requires individuals that can make their proposals stand out.
In this module, you will develop the skills you need to engage clients; develop tailored proposals that meet their needs and are differentiated from competitors; and negotiate and close deals. You’ll work on identifying and reacting to the needs of potential clients and gain experience of using recognised negotiation approaches to support deal making.
By studying the module, you will become practiced at assessing the contexts impacting different business sectors and connecting these to client requirements within proposals. You will apply interest-based negotiation frameworks to support your ability to close a deal in a consulting engagement.
Business Consulting Capstone
In this module, you’ll explore real-world challenges and issues that can be addressed through the application of business consulting, drawing on the knowledge, skills and behaviours that you have developed in previous business consulting modules.
You will be provided with a project brief that sets out a real-world problem, scenario or case study that is encountered by contemporary business professionals and that details a set of outcomes and/or products that are being sought. Working independently, but benefitting from weekly surgeries and opportunities for collaboration with other students, you will need to:
- Identify methods, techniques and tools that are appropriate for delivering the outcomes and/or products set out in the project brief
- Formulate and execute a plan of work to generate them
At the end of the project, you will be required to present your products and/or outcomes, critically evaluate your approach to generating them and detail recommendations that could be used by others tasked with similar work.
Research Project
You will undertake an independent business-focused research project that gives you the opportunity to apply the skills, knowledge and competencies learned during your course.
You will formulate a plan to address a research project brief through the application of business consulting. You’ll identify and apply appropriate business tools, methods and techniques for addressing a complex issue – and evaluate the performance of the solution developed.
The purpose of this business research project is to draw together learning from the two module sets and apply it in the context of a real-world problem, scenario or case study that you are likely to encounter in your career. You’ll independently explore contemporary questions and matters in consulting and business and demonstrate mastery of key concepts, behaviours, skills and values that are essential in consultancy and business analytics.