Mastering Business Data Collection, Analysis and Presentation

Course Objectives:

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Understand the business context of data collection
• Learn to obtain and analyse business information from a wide range of primary and secondary information sources including stakeholder consultations, surveys and research
• Use proven diagnostic and analytical tools to organize, verify, validate and priorities data
• Apply some simple statistical analysis tools to obtain specific business insights
• Develop and present viable business solutions based on a rational analysis of options
• Learn a simple, tried and tested approach for persuasive and influential presentation of business information

Course outline

Introduction and key concepts

• Fundamentals of business decision making
• Decision process and critical thinking
• Data, information, knowledge
• Fact, statistic, rumor, fiction
• Understanding business problems / opportunities
• Recognizing business problems
• Formulation of objectives
• Problem definition
• Recognizing and formulation of assumptions, priorities and constraints

Collecting relevant evidence

• Data for decision making; uses of business research
• Business research process
• Research purpose, objectives and value
• Research design
• Data sources
• Sampling
• Research proposal
• Gathering and organizing relevant data
• Surveys / questionnaires: asking the right questions
• Asking the questions right

Data verification and validation

• Types of business data
• Data reliability and validity
• Decision models and basic spreadsheets
• Visualizing and exploring data
• Data analysis: analyzing information, basic business statistics and tools
• Charts and frequency distributions
• Pivot tables
• Descriptive statistics
• Descriptive analysis
• Using the measures of central tendency and variability in business decisions

Probability distributions and data modeling

• Probability in management decisions
• Statistical decision theory
• Simple business applications of probability distributions
• Business data analysis
• Measures of association in business: correlation and regression analysis
• Popular diagnostic and analytical models
• Fundamentals of option analysis
• Choice heuristics
• Payoff tables and decisions under certainty, risk and uncertainty
• Decision trees and utility theory

Effective business communication to persuade and influence

• A framework for persuasive communication: AIM-FOCUS
• The importance of AIM
• The need to FOCUS your message
• Writing convincing reports
• The art of influence through business presentations
• Case study
• Lesson learned