Data Analytics for Strategic Managers Course

With the business world evolving to handle Big Data and its growing importance as a commercial asset, there is a pressing need for leaders that understand how to extract opportunities out of data and how to work with data science teams to generate value. This course will give delegates an overview of the current data trends and technologies that affect business models and inform strategies.

Day One

Data and Information

• Data in the Real World
• Data vs. Information
• The Many “Vs” of Data
• Structured Data and Unstructured Data
• Types of Data

Data Analysis Defined

• Why do we analyze data?
• Data Analysis Mindset
• Data Analysis Steps
• Data Analysis Defined
• Descriptive Statistics vs Inferential Statistics

Types of Variables

• Categorical vs Numerical
• Nominal Variables
• Ordinal VariablesInterval Variables
• Ratio Variables

Day Two

Recognize Data as a Key Business Asset

• Identify data as a business asset
• Learn to prioritize data assets

Data analysis tools and techniques

• Consolidating data from separate files and sheets
• Advanced data validation using lists, dates and custom validation
• Powerful array functions
• Cell management tools: left, right, mid, concatenate, value
• Naming, editing, and managing cells and ranges
• Subtotal, sumif, sumifs, sumproduct, count, countif, countifs
• Looking-up data, texts, and values using vlookup
• The incredible table-tools technique
• Slicing dates into day names, weeks, week numbers, month names, years and quarters
• Text-to-columns and dynamic trimming using trim and len
• Managing texts and numbers using replace, find, and substitute
• Text change functions

Day three

Mastering data reporting: the 20 must learn pivot-tables tools

• Creating pivot tables
• Number formatting techniques
• Designing report layout
• Sorting in ascending, descending and more sort options
• Filtering labels and values
• Expanding and collapsing reports
• Drill down option
• Summarize values by sum, average, minimum, maximum, count
• Show values as % of total and % of
• Pivot table options
• Inserting formulas
• Date analysis
• Copying pivot tables
• Creating pivot charts
• Dynamic chart labeling
• Mastering the slicer
• Showing report filter pages
• Linking pivot tables and pivot graphs with PowerPoint
• Conditional formatting with pivot tables
• Designing reports using the getpivotdata

Day Four

Value Creation with Big Data

• Introduction to Big Data technologies
• Trends in Big Data
• Big Data applications, use cases and best practices across industries and functions
• Data sourcing strategies and challenges
• Ideation phase: creating first successes
• From ideation to Proof-of-Concept and minimum viable product

Central Tendency of Data

• (Arithmetic) Mean
• Median
• Mode

Day Five

Charting and visualization techniques

• Using the camera tool
• Working with formula-driven visualizations
• Using fancy fonts
• Leveraging symbols in formulas
• Working with sparklines
• Creating unconventional style charts

Stewardship and Governance of Data Through the Lifecycle

• Core Data Stewardship Concepts
• Data quality, integrity, accessibility and security
• Core elements of a data governance plan
• Data protection, risk assessment, compliance requirements, stakeholder management and access management