Essential Analytics for Solo and Small Business Owners
What you'll learn
- Build a basic analytics skill set crucial to small business success
- Learn and practice charting techniques to visualize data
- Understand variability - what it is, why it's killing your ability to recognize meaningful trends, and how to measure it
- Learn why the shape, or frequency distribution of data is important
- Practice finding frequency distribution of data sets using histogramming techniques
- Learn simple tips on data collection and organization
- Understand how to choose key performance measure(s) unique to your business
- Create a model by "characterizing" those key business performance measures
- Establish a performance baseline for your business
- Learn methods and strategies to plan and implement change
- Learn how to use a fishbone diagram proactively when planning change
- Mathematically predict how long it will take to get statistically significant results
- Learn to practice discipline and vigilance during change to reduce external influences
- Understand and internalize that correlation and causation are different
- Understand what "confidence level" means, and how much confidence is reasonable to expect
- Learn step by step how to conduct a t-test on before-and-after data sets to see if they are different in a statistically significant way
- Learn how to interpret t-test results
- Understand the Pareto technique to create a long term success plan by prioritizing change
- Understand why incremental failures can be constructive, and how to leverage that data to best advantage
- Practice all the skills and techniques taught, start to finish, on two project businesses (using workbooks)
Requirements
- Suitable for beginner Excel users.
- Ideal for students who learn quickly when shown, and who appreciate lots of examples.
Description
This course teaches basics of business analytics, and translates that knowledge into practical application. Students will come away from this course knowing how to apply simple analysis tools to characterize key performance measures of their business both before and after a strategic change, and to expose and quantify statistically significant results even in the most variable business climate.
Students will learn that the critical need to differentiate a business introduces a complication: business strategies that work for the competitors might not work for them. A bit of trial and error is necessary. By designing a strategic approach and applying analytics as taught in this course, students will put their small or solo business on a steady upward trajectory.
Who this course is for:
- Anyone thinking of quitting their day job to pursue a dream of self-employment
- Anyone concerned about the variability of demand for their product or service
- Anyone embarking on solo or small business ownership, but confused about how to predict performance in a volatile and ever changing market
- Small business owners ready to invest in marketing, but nervous about getting quantifiable results
- Anyone frustrated with advertisers who take your money and don't deliver on promises
- Anyone in a business rut, searching for ways to raise their game
- And also statistics students looking for less math and more context and examples in their instruction
Course content
- Preview05:08
- Preview18 pages
- Preview03:38
- Preview04:22
- Preview02:01
Instructor
![Susan Kawa](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.5 Instructor Rating
- 32 Reviews
- 252 Students
- 1 Course
I come to web-based teaching with over 20 years tech industry experience in software, electrical, and systems engineering, including fascinating assignments across commercial technology, government defense, maritime, and aviation segments.
After shivering through my Electrical Engineering Bachelor's Degree at Cornell University, I basked through Master's Degree studies (Systems Engineering) at sunny Florida Tech. My day job, a technical leadership role with a top-10 defense contractor, is analytics-centric: I hold a Six Sigma Green Belt, practice Earned Value as a Project Engineer, and spread wisdom on Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) along technology's front lines. I’ve completed dozens of focus assignments on analytics, metrics development and retooling, and team “reprogramming.” Mentoring in the engineering department is my specialty.
My affiliations include: INCOSE (International Council on Systems Engineering), Society of Women Engineers, the 99's International Organization of Women Pilots, and American Mensa. In my free time, in addition to writing analytics coursework, I judge the science fair at the elementary level (because I'm not very scary), and write science grants for the local public schools.
I'm delighted to debut as a web-based instructor. Enjoy my course! I look forward to your feedback.