1. COURSE DESCRIPTION

The increasing complexity of industry and commerce and global trends such as big data, the analytics revolution, or digitization mean that companies must take a more sophisticated approach towards their decision-making. The quality of decisions is often based on “hard data” to select the best course of action. Also management consultants are often required to focus strongly on quantifying their recommendations wherever they can.

However, managers often fail to understand some of the underlying (statistical) principles and they rely too often on their guts. In consulting, especially junior consultants – the level that is usually charged with extensive analytical tasks at top management consultancies – frequently face a number of challenges when being assigned analytical jobs.

The course addresses some quantitative skills and merges techniques in Microsoft Excel with basic statistical analysis skills. The course considers various types of research and analysis methods. Throughout the course, key ideas, concepts, and techniques will also be discussed extensively in class. The lectures provide both basic concepts and informative material along with some critique of the main ideas. We will use many examples that relate to international management or international business.

Please Note: Students should be aware that the course is not suited to students who already have a strong background in Excel and in statistical analysis.

2. AIMS

The course is taught using a combination of lectures, case analyses, class discussion and outside guest speakers. Main aim of the course is to deliver a set of key quantitative skills that the students can use in the future. This not only covers how to conduct a specific quantitative analysis but also to understand its value and importance in today’s business life, as well as its associated problems when it comes to preparing, managing, analyzing, and communicating data and results of analyses.

Knowledge and Understanding:

After completing the course, the student will be able to:

• examine how data assists management in decision-making
• understand the different types of data available to businesses, the ways data is collected, and what makes data usable to create knowledge.
• understand and apply specific techniques for data analysis, including techniques using Excel.

   

Cognitive and Subject Specific Skills:

After completing the course, the student will have acquired skills as follows:

• know where to obtain information which will aid decision making within a company
• demonstrate that they can move beyond a simple description of data to the analysis and evaluation of data and to the transformation into information
• be able to code and analyze primary data by using appropriate (statistical) software packages
• be able to present and interpret data analysis results in a professional manner

Key Skills:

Students upon completion of the course will have the following skills:

• Analytical skills – beyond simple description
• Discussion skills of data analysis and interpretation issues through class discussion
• Argumentation skills – to debate and defend considered arguments in class during discussions

Students failed the course if more than 20 % class time is missed. In any case missed class time is taken into account for the participation grade.

The course is taught using a combination of lectures, case analyses, class discussion (and outside guest speakers). The readings will give you a broad picture of the importance of data management and analytics.

1) In-class participation (10% - Individual)

2) Individual paper on day one (5% - Individual)

3) Quiz (20% - Individual)

4) Final exam (65% - Individual)

Attention: If you miss more than 20% of total class hours or more, you will fail the course!

! ATTENTION !

The course is not suited to students who already have a very good level in Excel and in statistical analysis.

!PREPARATION!

For day 1, prepare the following:

1. If you do not have basic knowledge of Excel, familiarize yourself with some basic Excel concepts IN ENGLISH (!) such as pivot tables, relative referencing, moving/selecting/copying/ pasting data, basic formula usage. Potential sources are e.g.

• http://www.studyfinance.com/lessons/excel/index.mv
• http://www.usd.edu/trio/tut/excel
• YouTube on pivot analysis (many good videos)

Go to the newly developed eLearning platform that supports this course. The address is http://analytics4exac.net/  the password is “pmba2018”.

2. Go through the following platform chapters and answer all in-built questions, which are called “Mini Exercises”:

  1. Introduction

  2. What is data & how is it organized?

• Do exercise 2.1

  3. Descriptive statistics

• Do exercise 2.2
• Do exercise 3.5
• Do exercise 3.10

3. Read the Case Study available on Learn@WU

Nell, P.C. “Data Management and Analysis – A”.  Case Study 310-194-1. European Case Clearing House, Copenhagen Business School.

            And write up your individual paper to be handed prior to day one. (see assessment details).

For the blocked week prepare the following:

1. Read all required readings

 Articles (available on Learn@WU).

• Davenport, T. (2013): Keeping up with the quants, Harvard Business Review, 2013 (July-August).
• Davenport, T. (2013): Analytics 3.0, Harvard Business Review, December 2013.
• Brady, C. Forde, M., Chadwick, S. (2017): Why your company needs data translators., MIT Winter 2017 Issue.
• Gallo, A. (2016). A refresher on Statistical Significance, Harvard Business Review.

2. Buy and read the Case Study – Please buy this case study via the HBS educators website (see link below)!

• Campbell, D.; Martinez-Jerez, F.; Epstein, M. (2006): “Slots, tables, and all that jazz: Managing customer profitability at the MGM Grand Hotel, Harvard Business School Case: 9-106-029. (https://hbsp.harvard.edu/import/581013)

nach Vereinbarung

!! Attention! This course will be based on and optimized for MS Windows system users !!

Mac users will face substantial difficulties as most tools differ between Mac and Windows, sometimes quite substantially!

Those of you who still prefer to use mac please find some information about the analysis toolpak solution here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2431349.