Strategic Business Analytics Specialization

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, in particular in marketing. 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. Business Analytics, Big Data and Data Science are very hot topics today, and for good reasons. Companies are sitting on a treasure trove of data, but usually lack the skills and people to analyze and exploit that data efficiently. Those companies who develop the skills and hire the right people to analyze and exploit that data will have a clear competitive advantage. It's especially true in one domain: marketing. About 90% of the data collected by companies today are related to customer actions and marketing activities.The domain of Marketing Analytics is absolutely huge, and may cover fancy topics such as text mining, social network analysis, sentiment analysis, real-time bidding, online campaign optimization, and so on. But at the heart of marketing lie a few basic questions that often remain unanswered: (1) who are my customers, (2) which customers should I target and spend most of my marketing budget on, and (3) what's the future value of my customers so I can concentrate on those who will be worth the most to the company in the future. That's exactly what this course will cover: segmentation is all about understanding your customers, scorings models are about targeting the right ones, and customer lifetime value is about anticipating their future value. These are the foundations of Marketing Analytics. And that's what you'll learn to do in this course.

Who is this course for ?

This course is RESTRICTED TO LEARNERS ENROLLED IN Strategic Business Analytics SPECIALIZATION as a preparation to the capstone project. During the first two MOOCs, we focused on specific techniques for specific applications. Instead, with this third MOOC, we provide you with different examples to open your mind to different applications from different industries and sectors. The objective is to give you an helicopter overview on what's happening in this field. You will see how the tools presented in the two previous courses of the Specialization are used in real life projects. We want to ignite your reflection process. Hence, you will best make use of the Accenture cases by watching first the MOOC and then investigate by yourself on the different concepts, industries, or challenges that are introduced during the videos. At the end of this course learners will be able to: - identify the possible applications of business analytics, - hence, reflect on the possible solutions and added-value applications that could be proposed for their capstone project. The cases will be presented by senior practitioners from Accenture with different backgrounds in term of industry, function, and country. Special attention will be paid to the "value case" of the issue raised to prepare you for the capstone project of the specialization. About Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions—underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network—Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With more than 358,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com.

The Capstone project is an individual assignment.

Participants decide the theme they want to explore and define the issue they want to solve. Their “playing field” should provide data from various sectors (such as farming and nutrition, culture, economy and employment, Education & Research, International & Europe, Housing, Sustainable, Development & Energies, Health & Social, Society, Territories & Transport). Participants are encouraged to mix the different fields and leverage the existing information with other (properly sourced) open data sets. Deliverable 1 is the preliminary preparation and problem qualification step. The objectives is to define the what, why & how. What issue do we want to solve? Why does it promise value for public authorities, companies, citizens? How do we want to explore the provided data? For Deliverable 2, the participant needs to present the intermediary outputs and adjustments to the analysis framework. The objectives is to confirm the how and the relevancy of the first results. Finally, with Deliverable 3, the participant needs to present the final outputs and the value case. The objective is to confirm the why. Why will it create value for public authorities, companies, and citizens. Assessment and grading: the participants will present their results to their peers on a regular basis. An evaluation framework will be provided for the participants to assess the quality of each other’s deliverables.