Business Analytics: Identifying and Capturing Value Through Data
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Sep 14–16, 2020 | $6,450 |
"Business analytics is an integral part of modern management. This program will provide you with best practices and tools to identify value capture as well as understand and apply state-of-the art methods to drive value."
The program's Faculty Director Omar Besbes, Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School

The ability to use data effectively to drive rapid, precise, and profitable decisions has been a critical strategic advantage for companies as diverse as WalMart, Google, Capital One, and Disney. In addition, many current and recent startups such as Palantir and Splunk are based on the application of analytics to large data bases. With the increasing availability of broad and deep sources of information – so-called “Big Data” – business analytics are becoming an even more critical capability for enterprises of all types and all sizes.
In this three-day program, executives learn to identify, evaluate, and capture business analytic opportunities that create value. Learn how to use data to develop insights and predictive capabilities using machine learning, data mining, and forecasting techniques. Next, find out how the use of optimization can support decision-making in the presence of a large number of alternatives and business constraints. Finally, explore the challenges that can arise in implementing analytical approaches within an organization.


Please Contact Us
Please contact our Learning Solutions Specialists at +1 212-854-3395 for a personal conversation to learn more.
IMPACT
The program emphasizes that business analytics can provide real business insights and improve the speed, reliability, and quality of your business decisions. The concepts learned will help you identify opportunities in which business analytics can be used to improve performance and will make you alert to the ways that analytics can be used – and misused – within an organization.
Attending this program will:
- Help you think critically about data and the analyses based on those data — whether conducted by you or someone else
- Expose you to many different applications of business analytics across industries and sectors
- Enable you to identify opportunities for creating value using business analytics
- Empower you to estimate the value created using business analytics to address an opportunity
You'll receive access to leading research, best practices, and thought leadership from our university which has ranked among the top universities for its research in analytics-related areas.
Upon completion of this program, you will earn three days towards a certificate with select alumni and tuition benefits. Learn more.
PROGRAM STRUCTURE
The program is organized around three days, taking participants through several key topics and applications.
Day 1: Predictive Analytics
On day one, we will cover applications in consumer lending, recommendation systems, healthcare analytics, financial analytics, and sport analytics, which will allow you to:
- Predict outcomes
- Assess the quality of our predictions
- Quantify the economic trade-offs that result
Day 2: Prescriptive Analytics
On the second day of the program, we will discuss different frameworks to support decision-making in organizations, which allow you to:
- Leverage the data already collected
- Simulate the future to quantify today’s trade-offs
- Optimize millions of decisions in conjunction with thousands of business and physical constraints
We will cover applications in retail, insurance, pharmaceutical detailing, and financial analytics among others.
Day 3: The Analytic lifecycle
On the third day, we will discuss the analytic lifecycle, including:
- Diagnosing inefficiencies
- Identifying the appropriate analytical approach
- Deploying a decision-support system
PARTICIPANT PROFILE & TESTIMONIALS
The program is designed for managers and team leaders looking to gain a better understanding of how to leverage data to drive business results.
It is ideal for, although not limited to, executives working in the following industries:
- Consulting whose backgrounds include strategy, strategic planning, or process optimization
- Consumer products, including cosmetics and luxury goods, and manufacturing
- Finance and financial services
- Healthcare and pharmaceuticals
- Insurance
- Publishing, television and entertainment
Executives from the following companies have attended this program:
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Typical Participant Mix
Geographic Spread
Years of Management Experience
Job Function
Industry
Hear from Past Participant:
Don Cantow
Vice President of Enterprise Sales Organization at Mentor Graphics
"Businesses often shy away from real analytics, thinking they understand fact decision making. This course takes it to a much higher level than common practice."
Raul Lozano
Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, S.C.
"An excellent course. Applicable to any business executive."
Gerard Gato
Vice President at Citi
"Great professors that understand the challenges and biases of analytics and help to account for them to find an optimal solution."
Dr. Janice Bell
Chief Executive Officer at WAGPET
"Business Analytics sounds like a dry topic, but it's just the opposite. It opens the world of mathematics and the expanding access to data to the needs of every business leader in every industry. This course covers the theory, the tools, and — most importantly — their application to your organization, whether you are a data manager or an executive."
Jason Rhodes
Senior Director at New York Power Authority
"Professor Besbes and Mister Guetta did an exceptional job in conveying complex analytical theory into real-world examples that resonated."
FACULTY
Omar Besbes, Faculty Co-Director
Associate Professor of Business
Decision, Risk, and Operations Division, Columbia Business School
Omar Besbes is an associate professor in the Decision, Risk & Operations division at Columbia Business School.
His primary research interests are in the area of data-driven decision making with a focus on applications in e-commerce, pricing, and revenue management, online advertising, operations management, and service systems. His research has been recognized by the 2012 INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Section prize as well as the 2013 M&SOM best paper award. He serves on the editorial boards of the flagship journals of the discipline, Management Science and Operations Research.
He has taught core MBA courses in Operations Management and Business Analytics, an MBA elective on advanced business analytics, as well as various PhD seminars on stochastic models, revenue management, and data-driven decision making. He is a recipient of the Dean's award for teaching excellence in the core at Columbia Business School.
Besbes is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique in France and received a MSc from Stanford University in 2000 and a PhD from Columbia University in 2008. Before joining Columbia, he was on the faculty at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Daniel Guetta, Faculty Co-Director
Lecturer in the Discipline of Decision, Risk and Operations,
Columbia Business School
Daniel Guetta is the director of the Business Analytics Initiative, jointly led by the Columbia Business School and Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. He is also a lecturer in the Discipline of Decisions, Risk, and Operations at Columbia Business School. He teaches classes in business analytics, including data science, pricing, and supply chain management. Prior to joining Columbia, he was a deployed computational engineer and engagement manager at Palantir Technologies, where he worked with clients in from a wide array of industries ranging from finance to pharmaceuticals, helping them solve their business challenges by leveraging data. He completed his undergraduate studies in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and MIT, and holds a PhD in Operations Research from the Columbia Business School.
Along with Professor Besbes and Daniel Guetta, additional Columbia Business School faculty contribute to and teach in the program.