Melbourne Business School
Data Analytics for Business Professionals
- Delivery: Online
- Study Level: Intermediate
- Duration: 6 weeks
- Course Type: Short Course
- Total Price: $3,500
Learn how to use data to drive innovation, improve performance, and make a real impact in your organisation.
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Course overview
Master the art of data-driven decision-making to gain a powerful advantage in your role. This course teaches how to measure relationships between variables and solve business problems using optimisation models. Business professionals managing complex systems and resource allocations will benefit from improved decision-making and increased confidence when collaborating with analytics teams. Using Excel, math, statistics and data storytelling, this course helps create persuasive, data-informed business narratives for stakeholders.
Key facts
5th October, 2026
What you will study
- An analytics mindset - Identify how organisations extract value from data analytics and explore what it means to be a data driven decision-maker.
- Data literacy: interpretation and communication - Explore the language of data analysis and distinguish between population and data distributions.
- Statistical significance: is 'it' real? - Explore the key ideas behind statical variation and hypothesis testing and use the key ideas to make evidence-based judgements.
- Correlation and causation: signal or noise? - Use data to measure the relationships between two variables and examine the importance of correlation in business decisions.
- Optimisation: central concepts - Formulate business problems as optimisation models for best decisions.
- Optimisation: sensitivity analysis and business application - Examine the concept of sensitivity analysis in linear programming and develop the skill to model more complex business problems.
Who should attend
Mid-career to senior professionals
- This course is tailored for mid-level professionals or managers from a variety of sectors who want to leverage data literacy within their role.
- The course content is suitable for professionals who have access to organisational data sets and are part of strategic planning, operational management, and commercial forecasting.
Business owners, entrepreneurs and IT professionals
- Professionals wishing to unearth data-driven insights to improve their organisational outcomes.
Outcomes
Master data analytics to improve operational performance
- Appraise the language of data analysis, measure the relationships between variables, and solve business problems using optimisation models.
- Avoid making costly mistakes by understanding the process and advantages of data-driven decision-making.
Acquire practical business analytics skills
- Learn technical data analytics skills from leading academics.
- Master Excel for data analysis and utilise statistics to draw meaningful insight.
- Embrace the art of data storytelling to craft compelling narratives that persuade stakeholders.
Identify new market opportunities & growth areas for your organisation
- Use predictive analysis to identify new market opportunities and areas of demand and predict future trends.
- Turn data into insights that drives action.
Who You Will Learn From
Yalçın Akçay
Program Director and Professor of Operations
Yalcin is a Professor of Operations Management at Melbourne Business School. He holds a dual-title PhD degree in Business Administration and Operations Research from Pennsylvania State University. Yalçın’s research focuses on revenue management, dynamic pricing, inventory management, retail operations, stochastic modelling of service and manufacturing systems.
Michael Stanley Smith
Chair of Management (Econometrics)
Michael is a Professor of Econometrics at Melbourne Business School. Prior to joining MBS, he was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and a co-director of the University of Melbourne's Bayesian Analysis and Modeling research group. He has held visiting positions at London Business School, the Wharton School, McCombs School of Business, the University of Munich, and University College London.
Gerardo Berbeglia
Associate Professor of Operations
Gerardo has a PhD in Operations Research (Université de Montréal). Previously, he was a Senior Scientist at ExPretio Technologies Inc and a Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University. Gerardo teaches Operations, Optimisation and Decision Making, and Supply Chain Analytics on the MBA and Master of Business Analytics program. He received the MBS Teaching Excellence Award in 2019, 2020, and 2021.