All in with Analytics: Giving Students a Foundation For Business Analytics
Discover the 4 crucial ways to provide undergraduate students with the needed foundation for Business Analytics
In each business field, be it marketing or management, finance or supply chain, each discipline has specific questions, specific data sources, specific analytics techniques, and ways we communicate the findings. Business analytics uses available data to address these questions across different disciplines.
As a relatively new core course in the business curriculum, it is essential to provide a foundation for all students.
One example of a way to frame business analytics for undergraduate students is the use of the SOAR Analytics Model to address business questions, which is comprised of the following:
- Specify the Question
There is an adage that says, ‘Your data won’t speak unless you ask it the right question”. For this reason, it is important to carefully specify the question in a way that the data has a chance to address it. And to ensure that addressing that specific question actually ultimately helps instructors. - Obtain the Data
Finding the relevant data to address the question is critical. Once the data is found, questions regarding its data type (numerical, categorical, etc.) and its data qualities (Is the data complete? Is it accurate? Is its use ethical?, Is data privacy maintained? etc.) are tantamount. - Analyze the Data
Once the question is specified and appropriate data is obtained, it is time to apply appropriate analytics techniques that might include summary statistics, box plots, pivot tables, regression, goal-seek analysis, time-series analysis, sensitivity analysis, etc. Since several techniques are available, it is common to use multiple techniques. - Report the Results
Once the analysis is complete, it is time to communicate the findings to the stakeholders. Some will use statistics or tables, others use visualizations including dashboards. Understanding stakeholder needs is critical for reporting results in a way that is most useful.
Using the SOAR Analytics Model, or other similar models helps give students the foundation they need to learn analytics. They know what they are doing, and what the next steps are. Learn more about the SOAR Analytics Model in Introduction to Business Analytics.