Master of Business Administration – Business Systems and Analytics Specialization Online

Financial Accounting: This course is an introductory study of financial accounting. This includes studying basic accounting language and concepts, recording financial transactions, and preparing and interpreting financial statements. Reporting and analyzing operating income, operating assets, and owner financing is also emphasized.

This course serves as an introduction to the financial system and its relationship to domestic and international business activity financing. Financial market components and phenomena such as financial instruments, institutions, the flow of funds, market efficiency, interest rate determination and term structure, exchange rates, and government policy are analyzed. An introduction is given to the concept of financial asset valuation and the time value of money.

This course explores issues pertaining to the operation of businesses and the markets in which they operate. Among these are the behavior of consumers, the determinants of prices and production levels, profit maximization, the efficiency of market outcomes, and market failures. The course applies economic thinking to issues like cost/benefit analysis, the maximization of consumer satisfaction, risk analysis, economic inequality, international trade, and government regulation of markets.

The course shows how the techniques of marketing management can be used to attract and satisfy customers while building long-term business profitability. Topics include (1) market, consumer and competitive analysis; (2) segmentation, targeting and positioning; (3) product development, pricing, promotion and distribution; and (4) marketing strategy and planning.

This course focuses on the firm's management accounting system as its primary information system. It examines the problems of cost measurement, planning, coordination, control and performance evaluation. It explores how accounting systems address business problems and evolve in response to the changing economic environment. The course will relate ethical and global issues to managerial accounting topics. Students will explore and analyze real-world data and apply their gained knowledge to contemporary managerial accounting problems and cases. Prerequisite: MBA 601, MBA 602 or equivalent course work.

This is a survey course focusing on how managers can construct a decision-making process that maximizes the value of the firm. Because the majority of financial decisions require an estimate of future events, considerable time will be spent investigating how to achieve the above objectives, subject to the constraints of an uncertain future. Outside readings, case studies, and text material will be used to integrate current financial theory with pragmatic financial decision making. A working knowledge of the basic concepts in finance, accounting and statistics is assumed. The use of an electronic spreadsheet is needed for homework assignments and case analysis. Prerequisite: MBA 601, MBA 602 or equivalent course work.

This course introduces students to the growing field of business analytics. Business analytics is the use of data, information technology, statistical analysis, and quantitative methods and models to support effective organizational problem solving and informed decision making. The course includes methods, tools and techniques for summarizing and visualizing historical data, which is relevant to descriptive analytics–the use of data to find out what has happened in the past or is currently happening; methods, tools and techniques for extracting information from existing data in order to determine patterns, which is relevant to predictive analytics–the use of data to find out what will happen in the future; and methods, tools and techniques for optimization, which is relevant to prescriptive analytics - the use of data to determine the best course of action in the future. Prerequisite: MBA 601, MBA 602 or equivalent course work.

This course is designed to introduce students to the principles of business application programming for business analytics using selected high-level languages such as R, Python, and Hadoop. Emphasis is placed on identifying the capabilities and limitations of statistical computing languages for big data. Students will learn skills and techniques to solve big data problems through a series of steps that involve identification of problems, design of the solution logic, formal representation of program specifications, and implementation. The focus is on accessing data from multiple sources, manipulating different types of programming objects, performing character manipulation, and generating reports. Students will design and develop several computer programs throughout the term.

This course introduces students to decision making and problem solving with simulation and optimization tools and techniques. Students learn to formulate and construct a decision model with spreadsheets and use the optimization tools, Monte Carlo simulation, and sensitivity analysis to generate and interpret solutions. The course covers different types of optimization and simulation models, including linear programming, sensitivity analysis, integer linear programming, goal programming, multiple objective optimization, simulation modeling, and queuing theory.

One of the skills that characterize great business data analysts is the ability to communicate practical implications of quantitative analyses to any kind of audience member. In this course, students will learn how to visualize data, tell a story, and explore data by reviewing the core principles of data visualizing and dashboarding. The course aims to focus on effective and high impact visualizations of common data analyses to help them convey conclusions directly and clearly. Students will be able to get practice in designing and persuasively presenting business “data stories” that use these visualizations, helping stakeholders make decisions and take action based on their business data capitalizing on design principles.

Today’s healthcare organizations are under intense regulatory and financial pressures to improve quality, efficiency, patient safety, patient satisfaction, and positive outcomes. This course is concerned with the study of how descriptive, diagnostics, predictive, and prescriptive analytics tools and techniques can impact the overall performance of healthcare organizations. Students learn to extract, collect, analyze, visualize, and interpret data from patient health records, insurance claims, financial records, and tell a compelling and actionable story. Class exercises enable students to understand ways to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare organizations.

This course is about structured analysis and design methodology for complex business systems. Students become familiar and use Entity Relationship Diagram, Data Structure Diagram, Data Flow Diagram, Data Dictionary, and Process Specifications to develop Systems Specifications. These specifications are utilized as the blueprint to develop and implement relational databases and explore the Structured Query Language (SQL) used to manipulate and operate the database. Prerequisite: MBA 693.

This course focuses on data warehousing and data mining in organizations. Topics covered in the course include: data warehousing and mediation techniques aimed at integrating distributed, heterogeneous data sources; data mining techniques such as rule-based learning, decision trees, association rule mining, and statistical analysis for discovery of patterns in the integrated data; and evaluation and interpretation of the mined patterns using visualization techniques. Prerequisite: MBA 693.

This course is designed to introduce students to one of several areas of emerging trends and technologies in Business Systems and Analytics. Students will learn the fundamental principles and concepts of analytics in a specific business domain and implement descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics tools and technologies that support data, information, and knowledge management in the area of study. Course titles include, but are not limited to, Accounting Analytics, Financial Analytics, Healthcare Analytics, Human Resources (HR) Analytics, Marketing Analytics, Sports Analytics, and Supply Chain Analytics among others. Because the topic of this course will change, it can be repeated for additional credit when taken as a different topic. Prerequisite: MBA 693; other prerequisite(s) may be required depending on the topic.

This experiential course emphasizes the importance of feedback and self-assessment for leadership development. It includes extensive assessment of each participant's management style and skills based on self-evaluations (using structured questionnaires, decision-making exercises, and role plays) and feedback from coworkers, faculty and other participants. Leadership development experiences emphasize time and stress management, individual and group problem solving, communication, power and influence, motivation, conflict management, empowerment and team leadership. Each participant identifies skills they need to develop and reports on efforts to develop those skills.

This course is about the manager's responsibilities for problem solving and decision making, and those areas in which information technology can be used to gain the insight needed to support selection of decision alternatives. Students learn about the role of data, information and knowledge in managerial problem solving and decision making. Transactional processing and database management systems (DBMS) are used to store, manage and retrieve data in organizations. Decision support system (DSS) tools and technologies (such as natural language programming and influence diagramming) are used to organize data into information for decision analytics. Expert systems (ES) are used to synthesize information into knowledge for knowledge management. Students are required to use DBMS, DSS and ES software packages in a hands-on environment.

This course integrates the areas of finance and accounting and is designed to provide students with the ability to analyze financial statements, understand the incentives of companies to manage earnings through their choices of accounting methods, understand the limitations to the usefulness of financial statements, and understand the value of financial statements in decision making from the perspective of investors, creditors and management. Prerequisite: completion of MBA core courses.

This course is designed to explore the complex ethical, legal, cultural, political, social and economic issues confronting individuals, groups and organizations. We will use various models and theories to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills to address the issues of a diverse set of organizational stakeholders. Prerequisite: Completion of MBA foundation courses.

This integrative capstone course is designed to expose students to strategies that companies use to build and sustain competitive advantage in the global market. The course provides students with industry, competitor and business-level analytic tools that help students to assess factors that influence strategy formulation and strategy implementation in both domestic and global markets. Prerequisite: all required (non-specialization) course work.