Business Analytics (ICAS)

Business Analytics (ICAS)

Thanks to the ever increasing sophistication and power of IT and associated technologies, along with their reducing costs, organisations now have the capability to acquire and process vast amounts of data.Yet the possession of huge pools of data is of little value unless it can be intelligently assembled into something that can provide real business value, management insight and predictive capability.In fact, the possession of such quantities of data can be a real hindrance to intelligent decision making as "the wood cannot be seen for the trees."Who is this for?This course can benefit finance directors, financial controllers, finance analysts, management accountants, operational and commercial managers and change managers in all commercial sectors, plus public sector and not for profit organisations.What will you learn?Business Analytics may be thought of as a series of skills, technologies, processes and tools by which we can analyse and convert data not just into management information but into predictive insights and business intelligence (BI). This feeds into both the management decision-making processes and corporate performance management framework (CPM).The aim is to move beyond reporting what is happening and into why things are happening and consequently what might happen in the future. This course looks at the many facets of business analytics and the tools and techniques being employed.The course covers:What are Business Analytics?Where do we get data from?Examples of Analytics applications and Basic Analytics tools - statistical and non-statisticalAnalysing what we have patterns and relationships in dataTime series and trend analysisRegression and correlation analysisPrice elasticityProbabilitiesDistributional analysisReference class and consensus forecastingCause and Effect analysisFuture value analysisAnalytics and Performance MeasurementWhat should we be reporting to managers?Using analytical methods to determine the "right" measuresIdentifying key drivers in the businessAvoiding the law of unintended consequencesThe "vital few" Vs the "Many" getting focusDashboards, scorecards and control charts for reportingGoal setting What does "good" look like and benchmarking