Business Analytics MSc (Amsterdam)
12 Months Full-Time | September Start

In this module you will gain an understanding of the academic skills that are required to produce a Masters Dissertation. By the end of the module you will have written a 15000 word Masters dissertation. The areas included are:

• Justification for the choice of topic
• Appropriate understanding, awareness and critical analysis of existing and up to date literature evidenced by a comprehensive and well-referenced literature review with an extensive reference list
• Selection, justification and application of an appropriately rigorous methodology - including limitations of the approach selected
• Clear statement of the findings of the research
• Critical analysis of the findings
• Explicit links between the analysis and the conclusions supported by critical argument
• Evidence of original work or thought for example in the form or context of the data collected, analytical process or application of findings

This option is offered as an alternative to the NBS Masters’ Dissertation on all 1-year MSc programmes and in the second semester of year 2 on the 2-year programme variants with Study Abroad and with Advanced Practice (if the students select an Internship in semester 1), again as a Dissertation alternative. It is also offered as alternative to the Management Investigation on the MBA.

On this consultancy based module you will enhance your individual effectiveness and employability skills by locating the learning and development in an organisational context. In doing so, you will promote personal and group development, commercial awareness, and a range of inter-personal, intellectual and practical skills and knowledge centred on and demonstrated through a group negotiated real-time work-based project.

The content of the management report will be unique. The nature and scope of the area of your investigation will be defined and agreed in collaboration with the organisation and the University supervisor. The syllabus will include:

• Conducting research in organisations.
• Identifying researchable questions.
• Consultancy and project management skills.
• Research methods and doing a literature review
• Presentation, communication and report writing skills.
• Analysing findings.
• Writing recommendations and action plans.
• Reflecting on work based experiential learning.

In undertaking this project based module, you will critically reflect and evaluate upon organisational practices and their relation with academic theory, and in doing so, provide practical and actionable recommendations through an investigative management report.

The assessment for your module consists of a Group Consultancy Report (7,000 words) and Final Client Presentation, weighted at 60%, alongside an Individual Assignment comprising a Literature Review (4000 words) and a Reflective Learning Statement (2,000 words), weighted at 40%.

This module engages you in personal and professional development in order that you develop and hone your teamworking, management and leadership skills,

capabilities and attributes, and in so doing, enhance your employability. On this module, you will not only prepare for your first job after you graduate but also kickstart

your commitment to life-long personal and professional learning. In the first part of the module you will be supported in a self-analysis by a range of activities, including

the completion of self-administered tool-kits to demonstrate an increased self-awareness and self-understanding. This will also involve applying theoretical frameworks

and researching contemporary literature for a more in-depth understanding of self. A key outcome of this process is how you will be able to exploit this development in

order to lead, and manage, more effectively in your future careers. The second part of the module contains activities which enable you to build on your self-analysis and

explore further your strengths, weaknesses and areas for development in the context of your career development plans. You will receive guidance on how to craft

professional, postgraduate CVs, LinkeIn profiles, and supporting documentation to meet the needs of employer. Furthermore, you will use your understanding of self to

help you to understand the key issues and specific challenges that you face, with your skills profile, in relation to your employability prospects in your target

profession/industry/sector. This will also include the development of knowledge into the global graduate market, (including routes such as self-employment and

developing your career with an existing employer) drawing upon local, national and international examples.

In this module you will learn about a comprehensive range of research methods and business analytics techniques. This will equip you with the knowledge and practical skills necessary for you to conduct research at Masters’ level and prepare you to complete a Master’s Dissertation, Consultancy Project or Management Enquiry. By the end of the module you will know how to apply both quantitative and qualitative data collection and business analysis techniques. In quantitative techniques you will learn about sampling, questionnaire design, statistical inference, and hypothesis testing while qualitative techniques covered will include methods such as interviewing and focus groups. Analysis methods such as content analysis and thematic analysis will also be covered. In addition, you will gain some understanding of research philosophy (positivism and interpretivism) and research ethics and you will be able to write a research proposal to bring these ideas together.
Furthermore, this module will provide clear, critical, and analysis of data, you will also be able to consider the use of analytics implementation skills, where you will be introduced to analytics software such as SPSS. SPSS statistics analysis is one of the powerful solutions that is designed to help businesses and researchers to solve problems by various methods (geospatial analysis, predictive analytics and hypothesis testing).

In this module you will learn about how to use statistical tools and analytical software in Business Analysis. You will learn the necessary skills to make sure that processes run efficiently, particularly with the application of these statistical analytical tools in real business cases by taking into consideration all the face of opportunities and challenges arising from the worldwide reach of business. You will gain the basic and the essential knowledge in addition to practical analytical skills to think as a professional business analyst, project manager, operations analyst,


digital analytics specialist or data analytics consultant in a globalised digital environment. Moreover, you will discover the basic analytical statistical thinking of data analysis in business and put your learning into practice by applying it to real case studies which will help you to gain experience with the recent issues in business and digital market. Business Statistics and Data Analytics work hand-in-hand, because analytics turns data into insights that guide intelligent business decisions. You will learn how to discover and create knowledge from data analysis assem well as data preparation, data visualization, statistical analysis and other advanced analytics tools by using SPSS and applying one of the most famous analytics tools “SAS software” which is known as Analytics Leader. This course will help you in understanding business statistical analysis, develop your data analysis skills and will qualify you to work in organisations and help them to achieve their digital transformation goals.

In this module, you will discover what data is and think about what questions you have that can be answered by the data – even if you’ve never thought about data before. Based on existing data, you will learn to develop a research question, describe the variables and their relationships, calculate basic statistics, and present your results clearly. This module is designed to teach you to handle data programmatically, without being software engineers. By the end of the module, you will be able to use one of the powerful data analysis tools – R – to manage and visualize your data, including how to deal with missing data, variable groups, and graphs. Throughout the module, you will share your progress with others to gain valuable feedback, while also learning how your peers use data to answer their own questions.

This module aims at educating you in the field of forecasting and predictive analytics to respond to the job market needs using a variety of methodologies. Your journey shall be a quest to distinguish the "true" signal from a universe of "noise" through the lenses of forecasting and predictive analytics. To be more specific, this module covers the typical methodological steps of a prediction exercise, statistical modelling, and artificial intelligence methodologies for prediction via applications in different business settings. This modules teaches you fundamental techniques used for predictive analytics: regression, classification, clustering, Bayesian and other machine learning approaches and models. You will learn how to perform forecasting using time-based data to predict future values from a model. You will get practice with classification and use various techniques for clustering and linear regression to solve common business problems; as well as learn techniques for assessing the effectiveness of your solutions.

This module prepares you to develop competitive business strategies by developing key “hard” skills that are essential in a competitive landscape. In this module you will learn how to use marketing and supply chain analytics to progress your skills on enhancing the functional performance of a modern business. This includes specialised approaches, methods, and techniques that complement your learning with R analytics, SPSS, and SAS in the previous modules. You will be introduced to competitiveness techniques that help you automate, inform, and strategize business processes and enhance the overall value chain. You will practice business analytics in key business areas such as logistics, operations, marketing, and decision support systems. This learning-by-doing (action learning) philosophy will enable you to use “passive” and “active” business analytics to enhance your skills for competitiveness and strategizing. Examples of passive analytics software included in this module are KISSmetrics, RetentionGrid, Metrilo, Clicky, and Adobe Marketing Cloud. Each of them will be demonstrated using a practical case study in four functional areas, including procurement/ inbound logistics, operations, marketing, and after sale services.

To strengthen this application of analytics to organisational competitiveness and the pursuit of competitive advantage, you will also participate in a business simulation where you will be exposed to cross-functional business decision making in the pursuit of a competitive business strategy.

A prominent theme throughout this module is to give you experience in contemporary analytics software applications used in the key business functions, and by doing so, this will enhance your employability for graduate-entry analytics roles. In addition to being able to provide critical analysis of data, you will also be able to consider the business implementation and communication skills required. This module emphasises the development of practical skills and techniques required by businesses to help them in strategizing their operations. You will also develop “soft skills” relating to communication and conflict resolution as well as enhancing your knowledge of commercialisation and market positioning strategies.