Curriculum

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Wharton Executive Education’s Advanced Business Analytics Program (ABAP) curriculum is designed and delivered by world-renowned Wharton faculty who are at the cutting edge of data analytics, artificial intelligence, and business leadership. The comprehensive curriculum ranges from in-depth core modules to interactive online sessions, as well as online and on-campus electives.


The core curriculum is structured in a way to provide you with the necessary in-depth information on business analytics that can enhance your decision-making process. This involves understanding the role data plays in decision making, studying how descriptive analytics and prescriptive analytics can back your decisions, and applying AI and ML tools to analyze data. Over 20 weeks, you will build a strong foundation before moving on to specialized electives.


Data Analytics and Executive Decision Making

The first week of the program begins with examining why data is crucial to making informed strategic decisions in the modern business world. In the course of the week, you will get a broad overview of descriptive, prescriptive, and predictive analytics and other content covered in the program. You will explore how a careful and thorough analysis of an organization's data helps inform — and consequently improve — its decision making. Through practical examples, you will see how data is changing decision making and facilitating an industry shift away from
intuition-based thinking and toward arriving at more scientific decisions.


Descriptive Analytics for the Marketplace: The Data Pipeline

You will learn how to connect to a data source and view a data set in Tableau, how to use geographic coordinates in a data set to create a map visualization, and how to use a time dimension to create an animation. You will also learn two data collection methods — web scraping and application programming interfaces. Once you have scraped the data, you will learn to map it in Tableau to gain meaningful insights. Additionally, you will learn the different ways in which data can be used to craft narratives through data — driven storytelling.


Effecting Change through Data: Prescriptive Analytics

You will learn the basics about data types and data collection and see how actions map to outcomes. To understand how this works in practice, you will explore two extensive case studies related to common business concerns — pricing products to maximize the quantity sold and determining the efficacy of an advertising campaign. You will also get an overview of A/B testing and the role it plays in data analysis and gain an understanding of how it ensures causality in your data. This module will also delve into the ethical implications of A/B testing and the best practices to be followed when setting up and conducting the A/B test.


Decision-Making Tools: Predictive Analytics and AI/ML

This week’s sessions dive deeper into the fundamentals of how the internet works, the implications of cloud computing on businesses, and how the regulation of networks impacts the effectiveness of AI. It will also focus on ML in detail and Suggest toward the use of training data. Once you have gained an overview of AI/ML, you will learn how to use it for driving strategy in your organization. Through examples, you will learn how businesses are using AI to make better decisions as well as get an introduction to no-code tools such as Weka. In addition, you will learn various uses of NLP as well as explore how to prepare text for processing and how to prepare unstructured data for ML.


Beyond the Decision: Implications of AI for Business

In this module, you will focus on the rapidly growing area of automated machine learning (AutoML) and understand how it changes the AI/ML workflow. You will also delve into aspects of AI bias and define types of algorithmic fairness. Through examples, you will understand key approaches to fix AI/ML bias and also discuss AI governance and the legal issues around it. In addition, you will understand the legal and ethical concerns surrounding these technologies, especially as they take on a bigger role in decision making across more industries.


Moving Forward: Analytics and Organizational Change

In the final core module, you will be introduced to various applications of AI and how you can unleash the power of ML to adapt a data analytics strategy for your organization. You will discuss the benefits and limitations of different ways of embedding analytics functions in organizations and identify opportunities for more efficient operations and value creation. This will help you devise a template for AI transformation as well as a checklist of ethical considerations. You will conclude by focusing on the customer journey and identify places where technology and analytics can help address pain points while creating a plan to use AI/ML to address them.


During the 20-week core module period, you are invited to join an exclusive series of weekly live group sessions with Wharton faculty, industry speakers, career advisors, and of course, your success coaches and peers. With the inclusion of the two-session orientation module, the ABAP will feature a total of 22 live sessions during the core module period.


You will engage in multiple live sessions with faculty, including three sessions with faculty director Prasanna Tambe and one each with Professors Ron Berman and Kevin Werbach. You will also experience three additional featured faculty sessions led by professors from Analytics at Wharton and two industry speaker sessions (previous speakers have included senior business analytics officers from IKEA, Fidelity, Santander Bank, and Saudi Telecom). In addition, you will have two career advisory sessions in partnership with market-leading career advisory firms and and two peer networking sessions designed to foster community building and networking within the cohort. You will also have the opportunity to interact with cohort peers via eight to 10 coach-led themed discussions.

After completing the core modules, you will choose two areas of specialization from multiple topical electives. These electives have been designed to help you dive deeper into the application of analytics specific to your industry or your role within your organization.


Financial Analytics Forecasting

The Financial Analytics Forecasting elective is tailored for today. Data drives financial decision making as never before, and our world-class faculty will show you how to harness the power of data science.


HR Management and Analytics: Unlock the Value of Human Capital

This seven-week elective combines theory with practical application and flexibility with rigor to give you a holistic view of strategic HR management with an overview of people analytics.


Marketing Analytics

The Marketing Analytics elective combines leading-edge analytical techniques with real-world applications, empowering you to add value to your company’s marketing and growth efforts.


Revenue Analytics: Price Optimization

This elective introduces the essential concepts and techniques required for revenue management and optimization. It focuses on the tactical use of forecasting and optimization tools to get more revenue out of scarce operational capacity and implement classical demand estimation and capacity allocation models.


Supply Chain Analytics

The elective introduces the essential statistical concept, tools, and techniques required for supply chain management and optimization. It provides an in-depth exposure to various dynamics of analytics and its application across all drivers of supply chain.


Choose any two from the list. Final list of electives is subject to change.

In addition to the elective modules, you also engage in monthly live sessions, including faculty discussions, peer networking sessions, career advisory sessions, industry speaker sessions, and success coach-led live discussions.

The curriculum concludes with an on-campus Wharton Executive Education elective in a topic of your choice. This elective is taught over five days on the Wharton campus in Philadelphia. In the instance of unavoidable COVID-19 restrictions, an option to attend virtually may be provided.


Finance

  • Advanced Corporate Finance
  • Corporate Valuation
  • Finance and Accounting for the Non-Financial Manager
  • Assessing Commercial Real Estate Investments and Markets
  • Shareholder Activism and Corporate Governance
  • Distressed Asset Investing and Corporate Restructuring

Leadership

  • Leading Organizational Change

Marketing

  • Pricing Strategies: Measuring, Capturing, and Retaining Value
  • Strategic Marketing for Competitive Advantage
  • The Neuroscience of Business: Innovation in Leadership and Strategic Decisions
  • Customer Analytics for Growth Using ML, AI, and Big Data

Innovation and Strategy

  • Business Essentials for Executives
  • Driving Growth through Strategic Partnerships
  • Scaling Ventures: Developing the Playbook for Profitable Growth
  • Leading Digital Transformation
  • Effective Decision Making: Thinking Critically and Rationally
  • Effective Execution of Organizational Strategy
  • Mastering Innovation: Strategy, Process, and Tools
  • People Analytics: HR Transformation through Data
  • Strategy and Management for Competitive Advantage
  • Business Model Innovation in the Digital Age

Note: Final list of electives is subject to change.

Please also note that participation in the Advanced Business Analytics Program (ABAP) (a) will not result in a degree from, alumni status with, or earned credit at the University of Pennsylvania or the Wharton School (or, to Wharton’s knowledge, any other institution), (b) will not be recorded on a University of Pennsylvania or Wharton transcript, and (c) does not guarantee or suggest that a participant will be admitted to the University of Pennsylvania, the Wharton School, or to any other university or institution.

Certificate

Earn a Wharton Executive Education digital certificate upon successful completion of the program. Alumni of this transformative program get exclusive access to a wide range of professionals, events, and networking opportunities. Furthermore, you can also benefit from additional tuition assistance on enrolling in further online electives from Wharton Executive Education.


Note: After successful completion of the program, your verified digital certificate will be emailed to you in the name you used when registering for the program. All certificate images are for illustrative purposes only and may be subject to change at the discretion of the Wharton School.



Example image of certificate that will be awarded after successful completion of this program
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