Purpose and Objectives

The Master's in Business Analytics program (MSBA) prepares students with knowledge, tools, and skills to analyze big data, to make effective business decisions, improve performance, create shared value, and enable the digital transformation from basic to smart organizations. Graduates of the program will learn the various data analytics processes from managing, modeling, analyzing, visualizing, and recommending solutions to challenges in various domains, including supply chain and operations, project management, marketing, human resources, and finance.

    

 

    

 

 

 

Program Objectives

• Identify technological frameworks for collecting, preparing, processing, analyzing, and delivering data.
• Develop advanced analytical modeling and problem-solving skills to best address challenges in various industries.
• Learn reporting techniques with emphasis on visual display of big data and analytical results.
• Learn how to effectively communicate analytical and complex results to different audiences.
• Develop core management skills relevant to business analytics projects, including designing, planning, implementing, leading teams and managing conflicts.

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge

On successful completion of this program the graduate will be able to:

• Identify technological frameworks for collecting, preparing, processing, analyzing, and delivering data.
• Recognize the challenges of implementing business analytics solutions, including strategic alignment, planning, project management, team leadership, conflict resolution, negotiation, and convincing techniques.

Competence & Skill

On successful completion of this program the graduate will be able to:

• Clean data.
• Analyze data.
• Effectively communicate complex analytical results and insights to a mixed audience.
• Exhibit advanced analytical modeling and problem-solving skills to best address challenges in various industries.
• Exhibit core management skills relevant to business analytics projects, including designing, planning, implementing, leading teams and managing conflicts.

Responsibility and Autonomy

On successful completion of this program the graduate will be able to:

• Apply advanced analytical models and software tools to address various types of business analytics problems.
• Recommend appropriate analytics solutions to business problems, including defining business requirements, relevant data, needed information technology, competitive edge, and value-added proposition to the business.
• Apply reporting techniques with emphasis on visual display of big data and analytical results.

Course Description

MSBA 500 Business Understanding in Analytics - 9 ECTS

This course will focus on the business understanding and problem framing. This includes analysis of previous findings; identifying stakeholders’ challenges and organization eco-system; understanding innovation essentials and components of analytics framework to compete on analytics; developing a data strategy for defining key performance metrics, data quality checks, benchmarking indices, and data sources; introducing big data concepts and technological infrastructure for processing information; discussing innovative business models, appropriate analytical tools and necessary leadership role to implement analytics initiatives and prioritize them for budgeting; efficient in a business domain.

First, the course will establish that business analytics is distinct but related to analytics in general and that the distinction is the focus of the overall course as well as the whole MSBA program.

Second, this course will familiarize the students with key notions in business, e.g., strategy, operations, and marketing vis-à-vis business analytics. Third, the students will be introduced to a framework of how to devise analytics solutions to business problems. Fourth, the course will demonstrate how analytics can be applied and improve business situations through specific industry and company cases.

MSBA 501 Data Processing Framework - 9 ECTS

The course focuses on the technology processing of data prior to performing data analytics to extract actionable intelligent insights. It covers data preparation, integration and processing using open-source software tools such as Python, Hadoop and Spark-based platforms. Topics include identification of the datasets of interest; preparing the data; building data models using SQL and NoSQL databases and performing operations to explore large and complex datasets. It also explores big data and how and when to integrate big data platforms within an enterprise information system. Through guided hands-on tutorials, students will become familiar with data processing techniques using different frameworks. (Prerequisite: MSBA Bootcamp)

MSBA 502 Applied Statistical Analysis - 9 ECTS

This course is designed to familiarize students with various applied statistical methods and tests. It will enable students to gain statistical knowledge and skills needed to solve business problems. In addition to the overview of hypothesis testing methods and exploratory data analysis (EDA), the course covers in-depth a wide range of parametric and non-parametric regression models such as multiple linear regression with interaction terms, multicollinearity diagnostics, variable selection, logistic regression, and classification and regression trees (CART). Students will already have received an early hands-on training as part of the prerequisite boot camp on using the statistical tools and packages required for this course such as R/R-Studio, Python, Excel, and SPSS. Resource allocation, effective creation of shared values, and sustainable performance growth.

MSBA 503 Optimization & Simulation - 9 ECTS

This course is an introduction to quantitative models for managerial decision-making in a complex and dynamic business environment. Students learn to develop linear, discrete, non-linear, and multi-criteria optimization models, perform sensitivity analysis, develop constraint programming models, analyze decisions under uncertainty, and conduct scenario analysis using simulation. The course introduces students to some advanced software tools used in optimization and simulation.

MSBA 507 Operations Management - 9 ECTS

This course gives an overview of the strategic and tactical decisions involved in operating a production or service system for sustainable competitive advantage. Emphasis is on the core concepts of capacity, variability, and quality. Topics include: evaluating process capacity; estimating and reducing labor costs; batching and flow interruptions; waiting-time problems and throughput losses; quality management, statistical process control and six-sigma capability; and lean operations. Links among operations, finance, and strategic success are explored.

MSBA 601 Data Visualization & Communication - 9 ECTS

This course introduces students to the latest data visualization techniques and tools to visualize data using dashboards, scorecards, and other formats. Students will learn presentation techniques with emphasis placed on the data story, the visual display of data, and smart reporting of results. Students will acquire hands-on skills to create effective presentations leveraging the latest technology and software such as Tableau, QlikView, or IBM Insights. Other covered topics include web analytics and communication.

MSBA 602 Predictive Analytics & Machine Learning - 9 ECTS

Students in this course will learn about supervised and unsupervised training methods. The focus is on identifying relationships that cannot be found by basic statistics and used, for example, in customer satisfaction, branding, machine failure, resource allocation, fraud detection, and fraudulent activities. Techniques include Nearest Neighbors, Naive Bayes, deep learning, text mining, clustering, association rules, regularization, and dimensionality reduction. The bias/variance trade-off and model selection are a focal point of the course and will be illustrated from multiple angles. Students will acquire hands-on experience with all techniques taught.

MSBA 603 Data-Driven Digital Marketing - 9 ECTS

Digital marketing in the era of fast-browsing, redundancy of choices, and lack of time has quickly evolved into a challenging science of perception, with data as its core driver. This course covers the key concepts and strategies of data-driven digital marketing and growth hacking with real-world applications and case studies. The aim is to demystify the role of data in providing critical marketing insights that can pave and shape marketing strategies. Students will examine the various techniques for search engine optimization and will learn how to implement and manage search-advertising campaigns. They will also learn how to effectively engage with customers across a diverse range of social media platforms and experience the best practices for creating and delivering effective email and mobile marketing campaigns. The course utilizes relevant theory, empirical analysis, and practical examples to develop the key learning points. (Prerequisites: MSBA 500 Bootcamp: Knowledge of R and Python, MSBA 501, MSBA 502)

MSBA 604 Healthcare Analytics - 9 ECTS

The rise of preventive care, health technology, and telemedicine has generated massive amounts of multidimensional health data. The magnitude and complexity of these data are overwhelming for healthcare providers and stakeholders to analyze and extract meaningful knowledge to make informed decisions. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has unveiled profound weaknesses in the healthcare systems of most countries. Global investments in private health systems and private healthcare solutions have witnessed a 6% increase in Q2 2020 and are predicted to increase significantly in the future.

The expected digital transformation will not be possible without data and analytics. In this course, you will be equipped with the knowledge to work in the healthcare field or with a healthcare client as an analyst or consultant. You will be introduced to the pillars of healthcare systems and the main health concepts and measures. You will learn about healthcare data types and sources, how to formulate data queries, how to use geospatial information systems to map health data, and how analytics is applied in the healthcare field. Finally, you will dive into the economic evaluation and financial impact of health-related interventions and programs. (Prerequisite: MSBA 602)

MSBA 605 Forecasting Analytics - 9 ECTS

Time series forecasting is essential for every organization that deals with quantifiable data. It is widely used in retail stores, international financial organizations, energy companies, banks and lending institutions, and in many other industries. Forecasting analytics enable managers and policymakers to better make informed decisions. This course is a hands-on introduction to quantitative forecasting of time series. Students will learn the most popular forecasting techniques used in practice. The course covers topics such as pre-processing, characterization, and visualizing time series, model performance evaluation, smoothing methods, time series regression models, Box-Jenkins models, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models, models with binary outcomes, and neural networks for time series (if time permits). (Prerequisite: MSBA 502)

MSBA 606 Social Media Analytics - 9 ECTS

This course addresses the move towards social media to build intellectual capital, communicate with society, exchange knowledge among a global workforce, and provide the public face of business for marketing and corporate communications. The course explores the role of social media technologies (e.g., Twitter) in shaping societal and business trends, and emphasizes analyzing social media data in terms of reach, engagement, influencers, etc. using Python and open-source tools. The course also explores social networks in the importance of information propagation in social media. (Prerequisites: Bootcamp Python, MSBA 501, MSBA 502)