0380 - Modern Analytics for Business Forecasting

Course Description

Overview 

Harnessing the power of data is essential for organizations today. It can provide insights that help make better-informed decisions, improve operations, and enable businesses to stay ahead of the curve. For leaders looking to maintain a competitive advantage, the ability to understand and analyze data, forecast future trends, and identify opportunities is critical to success.

This course, designed for organizational or team leaders who make or impact business decisions, enables you to work comfortably and confidently with predictive analytics. It is perfect for individuals who influence teams or analysts responsible for managing large amounts of data. Through exposure to a variety of forecasting models and case studies based on real-world scenarios, you will discover how and when your organization’s own data can be used to make well-informed decisions, take proactive measures, reduce costs, and increase sales and revenue.

Upon completion of the program, you will understand how industry-standard predictive analytics processes can provide you with valuable insights into your operations, customers, and markets. You will also be able to transform business questions into data analytics problems and collaborate with your teams to make data-backed decisions that drive growth and enhance business operations.

Who Should Enroll 

• Business leaders, managers, or team leads from organizations of all sizes responsible for guiding and collaborating with team members who work with data.
• Mid-upper-level management with responsibilities in insights, informing strategy, resource deployment, and business decisions in general.
• Individuals who need to perform forecasting from internal data, including sales managers, entrepreneurs, marketers, startup founders, product managers, and operations managers.

What you will learn 

• Translate business problems or questions affecting your organization into well-defined, actionable data requests for your team.
• Understand how predictive analytics can be used to draw insights and guide your business decisions and recommendations.
• Plan and organize resources to oversee data analytics projects using the cross-industry standard process for data mining (CRISP-DM).
• Compare and evaluate the insights and reliability of different forecasting models using real-world data.

Real-world applicability

This course is designed to provide you with a personalized learning experience that’s applicable to your workplace. It integrates real-world tasks, situations, and problems into your learning activities and assignments and offers you an opportunity to explore a question or issue that impacts your organization. No prior knowledge or experience required!

Discuss your questions with your peers from other organizations and receive practical feedback from your instructor that can be applied directly to your business decisions.

Course Details 

• Expert instruction from University of Waterloo faculty.
• Live sessions via Zoom every Friday from 10 – 11 a.m. ET (also available as recordings).
• Peer discussions and opportunities to receive feedback and insights about the questions or issues facing your organization.
• Instructor support to ensure ease of understanding with course concepts.
• Case studies featuring real-world situations or problems.
• Five to seven hours each week (including live sessions, peer engagement, independent study, and text-based milestone assignments).
• Final group capstone project that integrates your learning.
• Attendance requirement: It is highly recommended that participants attend the first four live sessions, but it is not required. Live sessions will be recorded and available for later viewing. The last two live sessions are mandatory.

Receive a certificate from the University of Waterloo

Upon successful completion of this program, you will receive a professional education certificate from the University of Waterloo.