Business Analytics (Taught)

Learn how to harness the power of data to drive business success on our MSc Business Analytics, preparing you for a range of in-demand jobs.

Our flexible course blends general management topics such as strategy, leadership, and project management with data analytics subjects, including soft systems methodology, statistics, coding, database management, and data visualisation. Available to study full-time and part-time, this course equips you with the skills to structure, integrate, and analyse qualitative and quantitative data to formulate effective business solutions.

With businesses generating vast amounts of data both internally and externally in today’s data-rich environment, there are great career opportunities for those who can understand and leverage this data to create business insights and enhance business processes and practices.

Our MSc in Business Analytics covers a range of topics essential for understanding and leveraging data in business contexts. You will graduate with strong theoretical and practical knowledge of the following areas:

• Data analytics and visualisation - learning how to analyse and visualise data using tools like Python or R;

• Big data technologies – gaining an understanding of the technologies that enable the management and analysis of large datasets.

• Soft systems methodology – exploring methodologies for addressing complex business problems involving multiple stakeholders.

• Business fundamentals – covering the core tenets of business and management, such as finance and strategy, for managers.

• Contemporary issues for business and society - learning about key challenges that business and society face and refining your critical insight, preparing you to become a successful business analytics leader in our fast-changing, global ecosystem.

• Consulting and project management - developing skills in managing projects and consulting within business analytics contexts.

Additionally, you will also benefit from:

• Having a ‘Capstone’ choice – you will have a choice between three ‘Capstone’ options, including (1) creating your own business, (2) consulting for a real business on a high-level problem, or (3) undertaking your own specialised research dissertation. Each of these options is designed to build your skills, knowledge, and employability;

• Building your confidence – you will develop and nurture your confidence, as well as your decision-making abilities; and

• Receiving the optimum balance of theory and practice, you will gain an excellent academic underpinning along with opportunities to develop real-life, practical experience, giving you an employability edge upon graduation.

Business Analytics

• Data Analytics for Management Decision-Making: This module explores the sources of data, how that data is collected, processed, and presented, and then continues the data lifecycle by considering how this is used within informed decision-making processes within contemporary enterprises.

• Statistics and Analytics for Data Visualisation in Business: In this module, you will explore data and the questions it can answer. Using existing datasets, you will develop research questions, describe variables and relationships, calculate basic statistics, and present results clearly.

• Systems Analytics and Data Architecture: This module provides a strategic view of business information systems and their data structures to support analytics and business re-engineering. It covers methods for analysing and designing information systems using object-oriented methods. Students will learn about the system development lifecycle, professional standards, and roles at each stage.

• Business Forecasting and Data Modelling: Business forecasting and data modelling are essential in business analytics. This module covers forecasting, predictive analytics, and data modelling, employing various methodologies to meet evolving business needs. You’ll learn to distinguish true signals from noise, perform forecasting using time-based data, and apply techniques like regression, classification, clustering, Bayesian, and machine learning.

• Contemporary Issues in Business and Society: This module aims to enable you to reach a well-grounded understanding of the theory and practice of international management and relate it to events taking place at a global and national level. Utilising the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a discursive element within the module, the ways in which businesses can positively contribute to achieving these will be critically evaluated.

• Finance for Management: This module develops your critical understanding of essential management accounting and finance topics within a business environment, enabling you to develop a high-level understanding of how financial information helps to make informed and accurate management decisions. This module is CIMA accredited.

• Strategic Management: concerns itself with assessing what’s important, determining how to get there, and avoiding the potential pitfalls. By focusing on long-term sustainable success, strategic management enables practitioners to avoid the noise of the day-to-day.

• Research Methods: Problems and Solutions: Research has an important role within academic studies but is also a core skill for managers and leaders within contemporary enterprises. This module is designed to develop both theoretical research knowledge, and practical insights into the purpose, nature, execution, and value of research approaches and how these can be effectively utilised in the solving of problems in the context of academic knowledge creation or organisational professional practice.

Business Consultancy in Practice: This is a hands-on practical project where you will work with a business on a live project, determine the project parameters, manage the project, and deliver a consultancy report recommending actions the company can implement.

The Business Incubation Programme: The aim of this module is to critically evaluate a range of nascent, micro and family businesses and to develop, through inception, investigation and planning, a new start-up business or social enterprise of your own design.

Dissertation: To enable students to develop, plan and critically evaluate a piece of research in the relevant degree subject related area, written up in the form of a dissertation.