MENU Using Data for Business Strategy and Decisions
How to Marry Statistics with Business Wisdom
Two days in person or Four half-days online
The amount of data available to businesses and other organizations is expanding every day. Innovative “big data” applications can help you make charts and graphs from this volume of information, but how do you assure that the right information is enabling the right people to make business decisions that will improve operational performance and fulfill strategic objectives?
Improve your understanding of data and statistics by learning about and discussing the essentials of data, analyzing data and making business decisions with data. Examine ways to measure business performance and how to best present data to an audience.
Great Course – I got a lot out of the content. I do a lot of interpreting between tech and business and understanding different ways to show data is going to come in handy. Being able to make suggestions on better tools is going to be clutch. Additionally, I am the person who creates the flow charts for my team, so I was tickled to see it in action in these cases. It gave me some validation that all of the time I spend learning these processes and identifying pain points is not a waste of time. Seeing how everything fits together is an important step of the journey to understanding what data may be important.
What You Will Learn
- Determine the role Business Analytics should play in your organization
- Leverage techniques vital to the identification, collection, display, and interpretation of data
- Convert data and graphics into useful business information
- Use statistical results and your business knowledge to make good decisions
- Communicate key data and conclusions to executives and other stakeholders
Seminar Outline
I. Introduction and Overview
- What are Business Analytics?
- Support Structure for Success – Strategy, People, Processes, and Systems
- Results – What can be achieved?
II. Essentials of Data
- Bad data = bad decisions; how to get “the right stuff”
- Data collection principles
- Avoiding data overload – Differentiating “nice to know” from “need to know”
- Communicating with data scientists
- Data deception – Manipulation and misinterpretation of averages, percentages, rankings, and other basic stats
III. Analyzing Data
- Probability- can we predict the future?
- Types of stats – Understand what has happened (descriptive) versus making estimates about what will happen (inferential)
- Predictive Analytics
- Understanding variation as a management tool
- Pitfalls of using histograms / bar graphs
- Trend / control charts
- Regression analysis- when and when not to use it
- Finding patterns in data- cluster analysis, stratification and disaggregation
- Decision Trees
- Is it all about the data?
- The role of intuition
- Understanding your business
IV. Making Business Decisions
- Converting statistical conclusions to business decisions
- Case studies from various industries
- Scorecards and dashboards
- Application workshops
V. Transforming Classroom to Reality
- Building your operational data analytics strategy
- Barriers to success
- Parting thoughts
Who Should Attend
- Operational Manager
- Business or System Analyst
- Project Manager
- Leader of a Process Improvement team
- Data Scientist with limited business experience
- Lean Six Sigma Green Belt or other problem solver
Instructors
