Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Business analytics skills are a requirement across various job functions and are in high demand from employers. Data analysis is designed to expose students to the importance of analytic applications used in industry communication and decision-making processes.  Analyze data in Excel with logical, summary IF's, and approximate match lookup functions. Work with financial functions to analyze loans and investments by creating one and two-variable data tables, amortization schedules, calculating interest and principal payments on loans or investment opportunities. Prepare depreciation schedules and determine payback periods. Use regression analysis is to evaluate the effects of one or more independent variables on a single dependent variable. Automate tasks with Macros. Visualize data with advancing charting, building data models, and dashboards. 

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

1. Describe how organizations utilize software applications to explore, prepare, analyze and visualize data.
2. Design and create data visualizations for informative measures using critical thinking skills.
3. Use spreadsheet and analytic software in the business environment.
4. Connect and study business data using analytic vocabulary.

A letter grade will be issued for this course based upon:

• Case study analysis
• Individual or group assignments
• Assessment examinations
• Skill assessment software

Themes, Concepts, Issues

• Performing calculations, analyzing and charting financial data
• Managing data with data tools from multiple sources, and automating tasks with macros
• Performing What-IF analyses and exploring financial tools and functions
• Exploring and summarizing data with Data Models, PivotTables, Dashboards
• Analyzing Data with Business Intelligence (BI) tools and Power Query
• Visualizing and reporting data with Smart Dashboards and presentations 

Competencies/Skills

• Create financial formulas and functions
• Use lookup tables and logical look up functions
• Work with IF Logical functions
• Perform What-If Analyses using One and Two Variable data tables
• Create and edit Charts and Chart elements
• Work with multiple worksheets, and workbooks, and create Data Models
• Manage data with sorting, filtering, calculating subtotals, removing and highlighting duplicate values and records, and applying conditional formatting rules.
• Create and format Dashboards, PivotTables and Pivot Charts
• Build Data Models and use Power Pivot tools to transform data
• Analyzing data with Business Intelligence (BI) tools, using Power Query to write, edit and retrieve data
• Create Smart Dashboards and data visualization reports