Business Analytics, Undergraduate Certificate

In addition to University Requirements:

• Complete individual plan requirements.

Students may be able to use some courses to meet more than one requirement. Contact your advisor for details.

Purpose Statement

This certificate is designed to enable learners to describe and participate in the process of data-driven decision making. This includes asking good-quality questions, describing what data is needed and where to find it, storing and accessing data in a consolidated format, selecting an appropriate modeling approach, analyzing the problem or opportunity, communicating the results of the analysis, and utilizing the analysis results to inform stakeholders and support data-driven decisions. Learners will have the opportunity to enhance their quantitative and communication skills.

Student Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrate knowledge of business analytics in the business world.
  • Describe the value of and the need for business analytics.
  • Describe current examples and competitive advantages that businesses are achieving through business analytics.
  • Demonstrate an increased understanding of how data is currently used for business decision making, and how it might be used in the future.
• Gain experience in supporting data-based decision making.
  • Demonstrate their ability to determine the usefulness of various data sets.
  • Demonstrate their ability to transform raw data into more meaningful forms.
  • Describe data storage techniques and business warehousing.
  • Configure data storage and business warehousing systems.
  • Perform descriptive analytics on data including data visualization to contribute to decision-making.
  • Perform data mining to answer questions and identify previously undiscovered data patterns, problems, or opportunities to inform decision-making.
  • Perform predictive analytics such as classification and Monte Carlo simulation to inform decision making.
  • Tell a correct and effective data story.
• Learn fundamental and useful skills for their business analytics toolkit.
  • Enhance their critical thinking skills though the process of investigating data to identify previously undiscovered trends or opportunities.
  • Effectively communicate which, why, and how specific analytical tools and methods were used to arrive at a conclusion.
  • Select the appropriate tools to use for various analytical techniques.
  • Identify spreadsheet best practices.
  • Appropriately apply spreadsheet best practices and Excel functions such as VLookup, SumProduct, Data Tables.
  • Use business analytics software such as RapidMiner, Tableau, @Risk.

Additional Admission Requirements

• Individual program admission requirements over and above admission to NAU are required.

• • This certificate is available only for those students with the Business Professional Program Milestone.

Certificate Requirements

• Take the following 15 units with a minimum GPA of 2.0:

  • Select from the following (3 units):
    • ACC 300
    • ISM 360
  • BAN 440, BAN 445 (6 units)
  • BAN 442 (3 units)
  • Select from the following (3 units):
    • ACC 448
    • BAN 450, BAN 448

• You must have completed all of the coursework used to fulfill these requirements within the last 10 years.

• This certificate may only be pursued and completed concurrently with a degree program. This certificate is not available as a stand-alone certificate.

Additional Information

• Be aware that some courses may have prerequisites that you must also successfully complete. For prerequisite information, click on the course or see your advisor.

• The FCB does not accept upper-division transfer credits from programs not accredited by the AACSB (such as the University of Phoenix or the Bachelor of Business Administration program at NAU).

  You must complete 50 percent, or 9 units, of certificate coursework that are not used in your major, minor, or other certificates, and you must complete at least 60 percent of certificate coursework at Northern Arizona University.