Course Syllabus

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TBANLT 510 Business Analytics - Autumn 2021

Instructor: Michael Turek
Email (best method of contact): turekmd@uw.edu                                                                                                       

Class Time: Sat 9/25, 10/23, 11/6, 11/20; 1:30 - 4:50pm                                                                                         

Class Location: Class sessions held both virtually via zoom at https://washington.zoom.us/j/95416268178 and on campus in building/room Joy 215                  

Class Recordings: Class recordings can be found within the Zoom section in canvas

Office Hours: Online by appointment

To download complete syllabus click here

Course Description

Today’s dynamic marketplace demands quick business decisions based on data, analysis and facts, and intuition. Executives, managers, analysts and everybody in organizations demand more but relevant information faster in usable format, with less tolerance for ambiguity or errors. The challenge, however, is that many organizations do not have information organized properly and/or the necessary processes for efficient and effective decision making.

Business Analytics, or BA, is neither a product nor a system. Business Analytics refers to a dynamically evolving strategy, vision, architecture, technologies, applications, processes and practices for the collection, integration, analysis and presentation of data with analytics to generate information and knowledge for efficient and effective evidence based management. Setting up a business intelligence program with analytics takes more than just installing the technology. A successful BA program involves a set of concepts and methods designed to make informed business decisions that execute corporate strategy, improve performance and ultimately produce the best possible results by putting targeted information into the hands of those who need it most and empowering people, at whatever level they occupy, from strategic to tactical and then operational.

The MSBA curriculum contextualizes business intelligence & analytics within the business enterprise continuum. This course ensures a foundational understanding of that continuum by covering how data flows and is managed across the landscape of enterprise business processes. Course content also addresses how data integrity, data warehouses, analytics tool suites, business metrics and analytical models are created, deployed and managed to improve and optimize business productivity, to innovate new processes through experimentation and to improve decision making. Foundational information management (e.g. operational vs. decision support systems); data management topics most important to business intelligence & analytics include requirements analysis, relational vs. dimensional modeling.

Introduction of SQL analytics, master data management, analytics model lifecycle management and mobile / virtualized / cloud-based analytics platforms will be provided. The culture for data, information and analytics adoption is addressed through topics ranging from evidence-based decision making to business rule automation. Introduction to eight levels of analytics are examined: standard reporting, ad hoc reports, OLAP, alerts, statistical analysis, forecasting, predictive modeling and optimization. What does BA mean to professionals in every field? This course has significance for all professions. Proficiency in BA means excelling at what you do with the help of information.

  • Marketing professionals: understanding not only what the customers want to buy, but how much they are willing to pay, how they would like to buy, and what keeps them loyal.
  • Supply-chain & logistics managers: not just tracking inventories, but also anticipating and preventing future problems and designing more responsive supply networks.
  • Human capital managers: knowing how much personnel contribute to or take away from the bottom line, how salary relates to their performance, and how to keep good employee in the company.
  • Finance professionals: being able to not only measure performance based on accurate financial information, but also asses the value of intangible capabilities. It also means having a balanced portfolio of metrics as a strategic management system.
  • Engineers and production managers: maximizing yields, and predicting equipment malfunction before breakdowns occur.
  • Sales professionals: knowing what, when and how customers want to buy, and how much they are willing to pay.
  • Healthcare personnel: saving patient lives by intervening at the first tell-tale signs in real-time.
  • IT professionals: reinvigorating the company’s CRM and ERP systems and integrating information into a data warehouse. It means having an IT strategy and cross-functional teams that support the above initiatives.
  • Utility service professionals: what, when and how customers are using the services.
  • Insurance companies: profitably insuring customers traditionally in high-risk categories, detecting fraudulent behavior before it is too late, and optimizing rate structures.
  • And many more…

There are two key objectives of this course: 1) to provide students with an understanding of the fundamental concepts and elements of evidenced-based managerial decision making, and 2) to help students to improve creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, technology utilization and team work skills.

Learning Objectives

The primary objective of this course is to facilitate students’ understanding of how to collect, store, manage and convert data to information, knowledge and actionable insights to support managerial decision-making.

Upon completion of this course MSBA students should be able to:

  • Evaluate the concepts with innovative uses of information systems, data, information, knowledge and analytics to support managerial decision-making.
  • Analyze fundamentals of database management, OLTP, OLAP, data warehousing and ETL.
  • Synthesize the directions in which BA is evolving. Which are the cutting-edge practices and solutions (e.g. mobile, social, cloud intelligence) within BA through which competitive advantage can be built?
  • Analyze the BA governance structures (competency centers, decentralized governance, etc.). What are the key success factors about changing people’s decision making processes, and cultural change?
  • Evaluate the foundations of analytics with different levels of analytics, such as graphs, standard reporting, ad hoc reports, score cards, key performance indicators, dashboards, alerts, statistical analysis, forecasting, predictive modeling and data/text mining.
  • Recognize and analyze ethical dilemmas and social responsibilities.

Course Format

This class will be delivered a hybrid format.  All class sessions will be held live. Class sessions will be both synchronous remote via zoom and held on campus. Class sessions will occur at the regularly scheduled times per the UWT time schedule. All class sessions will be recorded and be made available to view by start of the following day. Each weekly module will contain assigned readings and prerecorded lectures. Please complete these prior to our live class sessions.

How will my performance be assessed?

This course includes weekly quizzes and homework assignments, and a final exam. You will be assessed in this course on these components at the following weights:

  • Discussions, contributions, exercises, and peer evaluations (Individual) 10%
  • Self Assessment Quizzes (Individual) 30%
  • Exercises (Individual & Team) 30%
  • Final project (Individual) 30%

Quizzes: each module will contain a quiz that is to be completed in canvas. Quizzes will based on material directly from the corresponding module readings. These quizzes will not be timed, and you will have two attempts to complete each quiz with the highest score being accepted. At the end of the quarter, the lowest quiz score will be dropped.

Exercises: each module will contain one or more exercises. The exercises will be based on content within the textbook and other sources. The purpose of these exercises is to provide students with a gauge to determine if they have understood key points from modules. Check for feedback left on your assignment submission.

Final Project: this final project will be a comprehensive learning experience and is an individual effort.

Note: late submissions for Quizzes and Exercises will be accepted for a period of 7 days after the due date. However, late submissions will be deducted a point value equal to 20% (-20%) of the maximum possible score.

More Course Information

Grading Policies · Course Format and Structure · Technology Requirements · Accessibility · Getting Help

Required Textbook: Sharda, Delen, Turban: "Business Intelligence, Analytics, and Data Science, 4th Edition", Publisher: Pearson, 2018.

Required Textbook: Jukić, Vrbsky, Nestorov, Sharma: "Database Systems – Introduction to Databases and Data Warehouses, 2nd Edition", Publisher: Prospect Press, 2020.

Please note that you will need to purchase this text from one of the sources below:

Teradata University Network: course materials are available on the Teradata University Network: https://learning-academics.teradata.com. TUN is a free resource sponsored by Teradata and vendor partners, such as MicroStrategy & SAS. The site includes articles, webinars, software, and even Teradata certification. Make sure to use student pwd "Analytics" during your registration.

Here are the steps to sign up for a new account:

  • To sign up for the new Teradata University for Academics, please navigate to: 
    https://learning-academics.teradata.com
  • You will be taken to a pop up window and click SIGN UP and fill out the simple form.
  • Students: the only requirement would be to sign up using your .EDU email addresses and you 
    will be automatically granted access. No more special password required to sign up.

Software Resources: This course will utilize the following software which can be accessed either at the link provide below obtained at no charge hereLinks to an external site..

Online Tutorials:

Resources

For information on other campus and student resources, including the Academic Calendar, Disability and Support Services, the Library, Campus Safety, and more, visit: The e-Syllabus: Campus Information, Resources, Policies and ExpectationsLinks to an external site. page.

Please be aware that the syllabus is tentative. I might make changes to the schedule and the order of subjects covered. If there is a change, I will inform the class through through canvas.  Therefore, please visit the course canvas site frequently.

Course Summary:

Date Details Due