Learning Pathway: Data Analytics

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Once you have booked your course, you will receive an email with your booking confirmation. The steps you will need to follow to access your online course will arrive in a separate email within 48 hours of your order being processed.

Please be aware that participants will have access to this course for 120 days from the date of receiving access via email notification

Accountants understand data. They are trained to collect, interpret and report on information their systems gather. But never before has it been possible to do that on such a large scale. The availability of big data sets, coupled with readily available tools to analyse them, creates an opportunity for accountants to be at the heart of the decision-making process within the organisation. Are you ready?

This transformation of the finance function is recognised widely. A recent survey by ACCA and IMA, claimed that 62% of companies globally cited big data as hugely important to the future of business, potentially giving savvy businesses an edge on their competitors. Data analytics offers accountants the chance to be at the heart of this, but also the threat that their role could be usurped by techies with less understanding of the finances of the business.

This learning pathway will look at what data analytics is and enable accountants to become familiar in how to use it to create added value in their organisation.  It will look at the tools and techniques available and how they can be applied by the finance professional.

In short, this learning pathway will make you ready to engage with the new world of big data and data analytics.

This learning pathway addresses the key elements of successful BPM:

• Understand data analytics
• Use excel to complete statistical analysis
• Use more advanced data analysis tools
• Understand how to apply the concepts to create value in the real world
• Anticipate the trends for the future

Course Content

What is data analytics?

• Introductory webinar: Accountants and the Data Revolution Paula Guilfoyle
• Pathway orientation and planning
• The big data era – data science data analytics and impact on accountants
• Types of analytics and data – predictive, descriptive/nominal, ordinal, categorical, numerical
• What is business intelligence

Statistics for Accountants in Excel

• Descriptive statistics in excel
• Basic probability in excel
• Variables - an overview
• The Basics of Sampling
• Hypothesis testing

More advanced data analysis tool 

• Introduction to PowerBI
• Data preparation and data cleaning
• Data modelling with CAX
• Data visualisation

Case studies 

• Case study – business intelligence in action
• Case study – loan application

Moving forward 

• Machine learning and its role in accounting
• Hadoop, big data and the cloud
• Bridging the gap between IT and accounting departments
• Wrap-up and action planning