Data-Informed Decision Making
This comprehensive course equips you with a structured approach to data analysis, focusing on business and impact throughout the exploration process. Learn a unique step-by-step framework to efficiently navigate through vast amounts of data and extract valuable insights and actionable recommendations. The course covers defining and measuring goals, tracking progress, creating an action-driving dashboard, and telling impactful data stories that drive business growth.
Course taught by expert instructors
Josh Richman
Sr. Manager, Business Analytics
Josh Richman is Sr. Manager, Business Analytics at FLASH, a leading mobility technology startup. He’s spent over a decade helping startups in multiple industries, ranging from less than 20 to over 900 employees, understand their business and drives growth through the use of analytics and data science. Having direct experience in market research, marketing, product, and data roles, Josh is able to take a business-centric, impact-driven approach to data analytics. His ultimate goal is to make people more efficient and effective at their jobs by augmenting intuition and experience with data and analytical rigor. Josh has a BS from the University of Illinois and MA from New York University, with both degrees focusing on quantitative psychological research.
The course
Learn and apply skills with real-world projects.
Business decision makers (could be any level, tactical or strategic) not in a Data or Analytics role, looking to improve their ability to use data in their decision making.
Aspiring or early-career data professionals looking to add some structure to their day-to-day processes, increase their business impact and maximize their real and perceived value to their company
Basic statistical concepts (count, sum, average, ratio, etc.)
Comfort with basic data manipulation and chart making in Excel/Google Sheets
A willingness to re-evaluate how you use data today and a drive to connect data to action
(Required) A spreadsheet tool (e.g. Excel or Google Sheets)
(Optional) A BI/data visualization tool (e.g. Tableau, Looker, PowerBI, etc.) that can pull data from a CSV
Try these prep courses first
- Learn
- Frame data deep-dives as ways to answer a bigger business problem- If it doesn’t help us take action to solve a business problem, it’s not worth doing.
- Come up with tactical paths to answer business problems.
- Shift role from data discoverer to actionable insights generator and recommendation engine.
Project- Given a hypothetical business model and data set, go through the full analytical process, from identifying a potential business problem to proposing a solution to simulating the measurement of its success.
- Learn
- Why do we need goals and KPIs?
- Popular frameworks for creating and tracking goals (OKR, MBO, SMART, BSQ, Goal Pyramid, etc.)
Project- For our hypothetical business, choose a goal framework, develop a set of goals, define how they’ll be measured, and explain how they’ll help you reach your objectives
- Learn
- What’s the real purpose of a dashboard- Hint: It’s not to be a visually appealing but static infographic
- How it should be designed and organized to aid decision-making.
- Chart types and how they’re most effectively used.
- Alerts and scheduled reports
Project- Draw (or build in Excel or your favorite BI tool) a dashboard that helps you keep tabs on the important metrics for our hypothetical business (using your goals from earlier), and write up the unique contribution that each chart/data point brings to the dashboard.
- Identify a list of useful alerts based on this dashboard, the required timeliness of the alerts, the person they should go to, and the expected action plan they should trigger
- Learn
- How to use the analytical process to build a compelling story.
- How to effectively use charts in presentations.
- How to let the data move the story forward.
- How to make your presentation memorable and impactful.
Project- Using all you’ve done so far, make a deck/presentation that tells a data-driven story and leads people to action.
Real-world projects
Work on projects that bring your learning to life.
Made to be directly applicable in your work.
Live access to experts
Sessions and Q&As with our expert instructors, along with real-world projects.
Network & community
Core reviews a study groups. Share experiences and learn alongside a global network of professionals.
Support & accountability
We have a system in place to make sure you complete the course, and to help nudge you along the way.
Get reimbursed by your company
More than half of learners get their Courses and Memberships reimbursed by their company.
Hundreds of companies have dedicated L&D and education budgets that have covered the costs.
