Course Syllabus
Welcome to BUS610: Advanced Business Intelligence and Analytics
Specific information about this course and its requirements can be found below. For more general information about taking Saylor Academy courses, including information about Community and Academic Codes of Conduct, please read the Student Handbook.
Course Description
In this graduate-level course, explore how BI supports managerial decision-making, from data- and text-mining to warehousing and conducting analytics, and learn how to effectively report what you learn from data by creating visualizations to communicate your analysis.
Course Introduction
Business management teams need good information to function. Having a strong business intelligence team supports data-driven decision-making at all levels and at all stages of an enterprise's lifecycle. Of course, having data alone is not enough. Knowing how to collect, filter, and analyze data and then report the intelligence gleaned from it ensures that management teams have what they need to make informed decisions. Business intelligence (BI) involves collecting, analyzing, and presenting data from reliable sources in formats that help the management team understand and use it efficiently. Throughout this graduate-level course, we will explore how BI can be used in every stage of the decision-making lifecycle and how and when to focus on specific BI applications and approaches.
From start-up through growth periods, to competition battles, through maturity and reinvestment or reinvention to prevent decline, business intelligence provides critical information about all aspects of the firm's health and prospects. Throughout the course, we will explore the use of BI in every stage of the life cycle to understand how and when to focus on BI applications and approaches.
For a real-world example, consider how you make decisions for yourself or your family. When you shop, do you choose products based on price? Packaging? Whether they're on sale? If you have a coupon? The prestige of the brand? A friend's or expert's recommendation? Product reviews? We collect and synergize this kind of information daily without thinking about how we do it. In this course, we will break down how businesses conduct this process at a larger scale – from recognizing a need to fulfilling it – just like you do when making decisions.
If you choose the wrong brand of shampoo, your family will get over it, but when a business makes the wrong choice, its bottom line suffers, and the company itself may fail to survive. This is the value of BI.
This course includes the following units:
- Unit 1: Business Intelligence Overview
- Unit 2: BI as Business Support
- Unit 3: Data Mining and Text Mining
- Unit 4: Data Warehousing and Integration
- Unit 5: Data Analytics
- Unit 6: Data Reporting and Visualization
- Unit 7: Data Analysis Dashboards
- Unit 8: Project Management
Course Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Describe how business intelligence concepts and processes have changed over time due to business needs and technological change;
- Explain how business intelligence supports managerial decision-making today;
- Describe the approaches to managerial decision-making at each level in an organization and across different types of organizations;
- Describe data- and text-mining processes;
- Evaluate which data warehousing approaches are most appropriate for your business case;
- Use common KPI (key performance indicators) to develop data visualization products to improve internal business processes;
- Model best practices in business intelligence by selecting appropriate data sets, extracting and exploiting data, and producing a data analysis;
- Infer actionable information from data through exploitation and analysis;
- Explain how the intelligence production process can be used to improve organizational decision-making; and
- Ensure intelligence products are decision-maker focused and aligned with BI requirements.
Throughout this course, you will also see learning outcomes in each unit. You can use those learning outcomes to help organize your studies and gauge your progress.
Course Materials
This course's primary learning materials are articles, lectures, and videos.
All course materials are free to access and can be found in each unit of the course. Pay close attention to the notes that accompany these course materials, as they will tell you what to focus on in each resource and will help you understand how the learning materials fit into the course as a whole. You can also see a list of all the learning materials in this course at this link.
Some parts of this course may have been created or reviewed with the support of artificial intelligence (AI). To make sure you receive accurate, high-quality, and academically sound learning materials, all AI-assisted content is carefully checked and approved by Saylor Academy's faculty and subject matter experts.
Evaluation and Minimum Passing Score
Only the final exam is considered when awarding you a grade for this course. To pass this course, you will need to earn a grade of 70% or higher on the final exam.
Your score on the exam will be calculated as soon as you complete it. Be sure to study in between each attempt! If you do not pass the exam, you will not complete this course or receive a certificate of completion. You can attempt the exam as many times as you want.
There are end-of-unit assessments in this course that are designed to help you study and do not factor into your final course grade. You can take them as many times as you want until you understand the concepts they cover.
You can see all of these assessments at this link.
Continuing Education Credits
The certificate earned by passing this self-paced course displays the program hours you completed and continuing education credits (CEUs). CEUs document successful completion of courses that are designed to improve the knowledge and skills of working adults. Many industries value CEUs, and now your certificate reflects them clearly, and they may be used to support career advancement or to meet professional licensing standards. This course contains 8.3 CEUs.
Tips for Success
BUS610: Advanced Business Intelligence and Analytics is a self-paced course, meaning you can decide when to start and complete the course. We estimate the "average" student will take hours to complete. We recommend studying at a comfortable pace and scheduling your study time in advance.
Learning new material can be challenging, so here are a few study strategies to help you succeed:
- Take notes on terms, practices, and theories. This helps you understand each concept in context and provides a refresher for later study.
- Test yourself on what you remember and how well you understand the concepts. Reflecting on what you've learned improves long-term memory retention.
Technical Requirements
This course is delivered entirely online. You will need access to a computer or web-capable mobile device and consistent internet access to view or download resources and complete auto-graded assessments and the final exam.
To access the full course, including assessments and the final exam, log into your Saylor Academy account and enroll in the course. If you don't have an account, you can create one for free here. Note that tracking progress and taking assessments require you to log in.
For more details and guidance, please review our complete Technical Requirements and our student Help Center.
Optional Saylor Academy Mobile App
You can access all course features directly from your mobile browser, but if you have limited internet connectivity, the Saylor Academy mobile app provides an option to download course content for offline use. The app is available for iOS and Android devices.
Fees
This course is entirely free to enroll in and access. All course materials, including textbooks, videos, webpages, and activities, are available at no charge. This course also contains a free final exam and a free course completion certificate.