Business & Data

Business Analytics

Use data to measure impact, track KPIs, and guide strategy for organizations.

Level: Beginner–Intermediate Beginner: 4 weeks • Intermediate: 8 weeks Contact for pricing

Prerequisites

No prior experience required — open to beginners.

Certificate

Awarded by Rescue Academy on successful completion of the program's assessments and final project.

Learn Online — Live Classes

Register, receive your schedule, and join live instructor-led Business Analytics classes on Zoom. Assignments, instructor feedback, and a certificate on completion.

Learn In Person

Attend Business Analytics classes in person in Juba with hands-on labs, instructor mentorship, and a certificate on completion.

What You'll Learn

  • KPIs, KPI trees and leading and lagging indicators
  • Metric definitions, baselines and targets
  • Data quality checks and fair comparisons
  • Communicating insights and recommendations
  • Sales, margin, customer and inventory analytics
  • Scenario planning, sensitivity and break-even
  • Testing changes, causal thinking and data ethics

Program Objectives

  • Design KPIs and metrics that guide decisions
  • Analyse performance fairly and find the drivers of change
  • Apply analytics to sales, customers, inventory and programmes
  • Plan decisions with scenarios and test changes fairly
  • Communicate recommendations and use data ethically

Who It's For

  • Managers and supervisors who make decisions with numbers
  • NGO programme, M&E and finance officers
  • Business owners and aspiring business analysts

Where You'll Use It

  • Retail, distribution and small business performance
  • NGO programme management and reporting
  • Health, education and public-service operations

Curriculum

Instructor-led, practical training. Each level is a block of 4, 8 or 12 weeks; every module ends with a practical activity and an assessment, and every level with a project.

Beginner

4 weeks · 52 guided hours · 5 modules Free taster lessons available Level overview

Module 1: KPIs and Performance Measurement 10 h

Learn what makes a good KPI, distinguish leading from lagging indicators and break goals into measurable drivers. 3 lessons

Module 2: Turning Questions into Metrics 11 h

Translate management questions into precisely defined metrics with data sources, baselines and targets. 3 lessons

Module 3: Data Quality and Comparison Analysis 10 h

Check data quality and compare performance fairly against targets, periods, peers and segments. 3 lessons

Module 4: Communicating Insights 11 h

Lead with the headline, recommend action and choose visuals that support decisions. 3 lessons

Module 5: Business Analytics Cases 10 h

Apply the level's skills to realistic sales, NGO programme and inventory cases, and complete the level project. 3 lessons

Level project: KPI Framework and Performance Review

Intermediate

8 weeks · 90 guided hours · 6 modules Level overview

Module 1: Sales, Margin and Pricing Analytics 15 h

Explain revenue and profit through volume, price, mix and margin, and analyse pricing decisions. 3 lessons

Module 2: Customer Analytics 15 h

Segment customers, measure retention and estimate customer value to focus effort where it pays. 3 lessons

Module 3: Operations and Inventory Analytics 15 h

Focus stock control with ABC analysis, set reorder points and measure service and efficiency. 3 lessons

Module 4: Scenario Planning and Sensitivity 15 h

Plan decisions under uncertainty with scenarios, sensitivity analysis and simple forecasts. 3 lessons

Module 5: Testing Changes and Causal Thinking 15 h

Judge whether a change caused an improvement, using fair comparisons and simple tests. 3 lessons

Module 6: Analytics Strategy, Ethics and Capstone 15 h

Build analytics capability in an organisation, handle data ethically and complete the decision analysis project. 3 lessons

Level project: Decision Analysis for a Business or Programme

Final practical project

Decision Analysis for a Business or Programme

An end-to-end analysis supporting a real decision — drivers, segments, scenarios, a test or monitoring plan and a recommendation with risks and ethics notes.

Deliverables

  • Decision brief with options and criteria
  • Driver, segment and scenario analysis with documented assumptions
  • Test or monitoring plan with leading indicators
  • Recommendation paper and presentation

Assessed on

  • The analysis directly answers the decision question
  • Assumptions are explicit and scenarios realistic
  • Evidence is distinguished from judgement
  • Data is handled ethically and recommendations are actionable

Worked Examples

A selection of the visual, practical examples used in this program's lessons — each teaches a different skill.

Free Course: Business Analytics Starter

A free introduction to using data for decisions: defining KPIs, turning questions into metrics, checking data quality and presenting insights leaders can act on. Free, self-study, about 5 hours — no certificate. The full program above is taught live by an instructor, with practical assignments, assessments and a certificate.

  1. 1Free lesson 1KPIs, Dashboards & Reporting Basics
  2. 2Free lesson 2Turning Questions Into Measurable Metrics
  3. 3Free lesson 3Data Quality Checks & Simple Analysis
  4. 4Free lesson 4Presenting Insights Clearly (for Leadership)
  5. 5Free lesson 5Case Examples: NGO Programs, Sales & Inventory
  6. Final checkQuick Quiz — Business Analytics Basics
Open the free course

Tools & Technologies

Primary Tools

  • Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets — Calculating KPIs, comparisons, scenarios and simple models Practice: Reliable, transparent business analysis
  • KPI definition sheet — Documenting metric definitions, sources, baselines and targets Practice: Consistent measurement

Supporting Tools

  • Power BI or Excel dashboards — Sharing KPI results with managers Practice: Clear performance reporting
  • Presentation software — Briefing decision-makers Practice: Headline-first communication

Professional / Industry Tools

  • Driver-based planning models — Scenario and sensitivity analysis for decisions Practice: Planning under uncertainty
  • Pilot and test designs — Checking whether changes work Practice: Sound causal judgement

Career Opportunities

  • Office/business analyst role
  • Administrative or reporting role in an NGO or company
  • Freelance Excel/data support services

Practical Projects

  • Produce a decision-ready analytics report answering a real business or NGO question
  • Build a simple KPI dashboard for a real or simulated organization
  • Given a messy sample dataset (duplicates, missing values, inconsistent formatting), clean it and produce one KPI you can actually trust — document what you had to fix and why

Problem-Solving Focus

Problem: Leadership asks for "more data" without knowing what specific question they're actually trying to answer

Approach: Work with them to turn a vague request into one specific, measurable metric and a clear decision it will inform, before opening any spreadsheet.

Problem: A KPI looks great on a dashboard, but the underlying data has duplicate entries or missing values that make the number meaningless

Approach: Run basic data quality checks — duplicates, missing values, obvious outliers — before presenting any number as fact.

Problem: A report full of charts and numbers gets sent to a director, and nothing happens because they don't have time to interpret it

Approach: Lead with the headline finding and one clear "so what" recommendation, not a wall of unexplained visuals the reader has to decode themselves.

Problem: A survey meant to understand customer or beneficiary needs produces biased or misleading results

Approach: Review survey questions for leading language and sampling bias before collecting a single response — not after the data is already in.