Around the world, data availability is exploding. Recently, the International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasted the volume of data created in the next three years will exceed the volume of data created in the last thirty years. Organizations are increasingly turning to accountants to interpret the large amounts of data created by business operations. The public accounting firm EY, for instance, offers its clients analytics services in the areas of financial reporting, mergers and acquisitions, tax, and forensics. Public accounting firms, in general, are aggressively hiring business school graduates that also have technology skills. PwC plans to spend $12 billion and hire 100,000 employees. Other accounting employers are providing input to universities on the design of graduate programs to ensure new hires obtain the necessary analytics skills.
This course is designed to be hands on and introduce participants to topics such as data sources and extraction, data cleaning and preparation, data tables and PivotTables, and data modeling and visualizations. In addition to introducing participants to advanced Microsoft Excel techniques, the course will allow participants to work with the latest and greatest analytics software tools (e.g., Tableau, Power BI, Alteryx). Participants will learn how to perform descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive analytics and time will be spent on best practices in communicating the results of data analysis to key decision makers within a firm.
Learning Objectives:
