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ESSEC Business School

Foundations of strategic business analytics

ESSEC Business School via Coursera

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Overview

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Who is this course for? This course is designed for students, business analysts, and data scientists who want to apply statistical knowledge and techniques to business contexts. For example, it may be suited to experienced statisticians, analysts, engineers who want to move more into a business role. You will find this course exciting and rewarding if you already have a background in statistics, can use R or another programming language and are familiar with databases and data analysis techniques such as regression, classification, and clustering. However, it contains a number of recitals and R Studio tutorials which will consolidate your competences, enable you to play more freely with data and explore new features and statistical functions in R. With this course, you’ll have a first overview on Strategic Business Analytics topics. We’ll discuss a wide variety of applications of Business Analytics. From Marketing to Supply Chain or Credit Scoring and HR Analytics, etc. We’ll cover many different data analytics techniques, each time explaining how to be relevant for your business. We’ll pay special attention to how you can produce convincing, actionable, and efficient insights. We'll also present you with different data analytics tools to be applied to different types of issues. By doing so, we’ll help you develop four sets of skills needed to leverage value from data: Analytics, IT, Business and Communication. By the end of this MOOC, you should be able to approach a business issue using Analytics by (1) qualifying the issue at hand in quantitative terms, (2) conducting relevant data analyses, and (3) presenting your conclusions and recommendations in a business-oriented, actionable and efficient way. Prerequisites : 1/ Be able to use R or to program 2/ To know the fundamentals of databases, data analysis (regression, classification, clustering) We give credit to Pauline Glikman, Albane Gaubert, Elias Abou Khalil-Lanvin (Students at ESSEC BUSINESS SCHOOL) for their contribution to this course design.

Syllabus

  • Introduction to Strategic Business Analytics
    • In this module, we will introduce you to the course and instructional approach. You will learn that Strategic Business Analytics relies on four distinct skills: IT, Analytics, Business and Communication.
  • Finding groups within Data
    • In this module, you will learn how identifying groups of observations enables you to improve business efficiency. You will then learn to create those groups in a business-oriented and actionable way. We will use examples to illustrate various concepts. The assessments will also provide you with opportunities to replicate these examples.
  • Factors leading to events
    • In this module, you will learn why using rigorous statistical methods to understand the relationship between different events is crucial. We’ll cover two examples: first, using a credit scoring example, you will learn how to derive information about what makes an individual more or less likely to have a strong credit score? Then, in a second example drawn from HR Analytics, you will learn to estimate what makes an employee more or less likely to leave the company. As usual, we invite you to replicate those examples thanks to the recital and to use the assessments provided at the end of the module to strengthen your understanding of these concepts.
  • Predictions and Forecasting
    • In this module you will learn more about the importance of forecasting the future. You will learn through examples from various sectors: first, using the previous examples of credit scoring and HR Analytics, you will learn to predict what will happen. Then, you will be introduced to predictive maintenance using survival analysis via a case discussion. Finally, we’ll discuss seasonality in the context of the first example discussed in this MOOC: using analytics for managing your supply chain and logistics better.
  • Recommendation production and prioritization
    • So far, you’ve learnt to use Business Analytics to glean important information relevant to the success of your business. In this module, you’ll learn more about how to present your Business Analytics work to a business audience. This module is also important for your final capstone project presentation.You’ll learn that it is important to find an angle, and tell a story.Instead of presenting a list of results that are not connected to each other, you will learn to take your audience by the hand and steer it to the recommendations you want to conclude on.You’ll learn to structure your story and your slides, and master the most used visualization tips and tricks. The assessment at the end of this module will provide an opportunity for you to practice these methods and to prepare the first step of the capstone project.

Taught by

Nicolas Glady

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Reviews

2.9 rating, based on 8 Class Central reviews

4.4 rating at Coursera based on 651 ratings

Start your review of Foundations of strategic business analytics

  • Profile image for Gregory J Hamel ( Life Is Study)
    Gregory J Hamel ( Life Is Study) @greg
    Foundations of Strategic Business Analytics is the first course in the “Strategic Business Analytics Specialization” offered by ESSEC business school on Coursera. The 4-week course covers data analysis topics including clustering, exploring relation…
  • Anonymous
    omg! The 3rd course of this specialization is HORRIBLE! Just like the other reviewer here said, this course contains nothing but commercial videos for Accenture! I know Accenture is the sponsor (who paid for the creation of the specialization) but ESSEC should at least provide some useful contents! Why should we pay Coursera $79 for commercials??? I also dropped out and got my refund before the two-week deadline.
  • Anonymous
    I did the first two courses of it. The quality was less than expectation, not much content, but still bearable. The third course (accenture cases) is just a joke. It contains nothing but sales presentations of accenture, telling you how great accenture is. So quitted it.
    It's a waste of money and time.
  • Profile image for Harish Krishnan
    Harish Krishnan
    This is a really good course for someone who is looking for a managerial perspective of data science. Data science is fashionable these days and every MOOC that is available focuses on the technical aspect while this one focuses on applying it to business decisions. It's offered by the world renowned ESSEC school of business and Prof.Glady does a great job. The presentation is professional and interesting and the problems at the end of the course are achievable. Looking forward to completing the rest of the courses in this specialization.

    Teaching Assistants could be more proactive and trigger conversations.
  • Jimmy Chu
    omg! The 3rd course of this specialization is HORRIBLE! Just like the other reviewer here said, this course contains nothing but commercial videos for Accenture! I know Accenture is the sponsor (who paid for the creation of the specialization) but ESSEC should at least provide some useful contents! Why should we pay Coursera $79 for commercials??? I also dropped out and got my refund before the two-week deadline.
  • Profile image for Jason Michael Cherry
    Jason Michael Cherry
    A very solid overview of business analytic techniques, with an emphasis on the business relevance of analytics. There's just enough technical information provided to do the analyses, so you should come in with at least some background in R, but what you get is a very nice conceptual and practical understanding of business analytics.
  • Bar
    This course is a waste of time and money, particularly the third one. A lot of its content is marketing content advertising Accenture. Remaining part is focusing a lot on how to make slide set :)
  • Kiran Khuspe
    The course "Foundations of strategic business analytics" is Better to improve your knowledge about business analytics
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