Handbook

In recent years, organisations have aligned technology and business in order to adapt to a challenging and hyper-competitive market environment. In a situation where organisations in many industries offer similar products and use equivalent technologies, business processes are established as one of the last points of differentiation. In a similar way, data and algorithms have become the new stronghold upon which to leverage differentiation processes, products, services and decision-making. As a result, increasingly more companies use different analytical strategies to improve decision-making, optimise processes and create data-driven products.

However, as in many other areas, technology is not sufficient to generate competitive advantage status. For example, decision-making requires actual art (based on experience and intuition) and science (based on analysis) to survive the increasing complexity of the market. Understanding how to use data, models, visuals and dashboards to create competitive advantages can be the key to the success or failure of a company in the coming years.

This course aims to introduce professionals to Data Analytics and how to develop efficient strategies within organisations. The efficiency is achieved through the combination of multiple technologies (from Business Intelligence to Big Data) and the use of algorithms to generate insights and predict the future behaviour of an organisation.

This course introduces managers to several techniques that are relevant for managerial decision-making, such as data preparation, data analysis, data visualisation and data storytelling.

This course will help students to develop expertise in a standard set of data literature techniques, which will be useful in analysing business-related data. These techniques are widely applied in a number of areas of management, including operations, marketing, finance, and human resources.