Introduction to Business Analytics and Information Economics

Overview

This Introduction to Business Analytics and Information Economics course offered by Coursera in partnership with University of Illinois targets learners who seek to understand the opportunities that data and analytics present for their organization and those interested in the value of and implications for data as an asset to their organization. Individuals who manage data and make decisions about how data can be leveraged in their organization will find this specialization of particular value.

Businesses run on data, and data offers little value without analytics. The ability to process data to make predictions about the behavior of individuals or markets, to diagnose systems or situations, or to prescribe actions for people or processes drives business today. Increasingly many businesses are striving to become “data-driven”, proactively relying more on cold hard information and sophisticated algorithms than upon the gut instinct or slow reactions of humans.

In this information age, the value of data as a business asset is essential. Organizations must creatively consider and implement new ways to generate economic benefits from the wide array of information assets available. Unfortunately, information frequently is under-appreciated and underutilized. Besides, accounting practices fail to recognize the financial value of information, and traditional asset management practices fail to recognize information as an asset to be managed with earnest discipline. This has led to a business culture of complacence, and the inability for organizations to leverage available information assets.

Applied Learning Project

Learners will work on cases in every course and the specialization will culminate with a project capstone that will embrace the knowledge acquired in the courses taken in this specialization. 

The project capstone will consist of 4 weeks worth of activities that lead to a final project report and presentation that will be evaluated by classmates in peer review assignments following a very detailed rubric to make sure students receive meaningful feedback on their submission. 

What You Will Learn:

• Conceive new ways to leverage analytics to business problems. Know what makes an analytics project successful. Be aware of key analytics trends.

• Lay out new and emerging organizational roles for treating information as an actual business asset.

• Understand and apply methods for conceiving and generating broad-based and transformative business benefits from available information assets.

• Understand business models from a data perspective and apply a variety of techniques for identifying new data-driven value streams for a business.