Coursera - Foundations of Strategic Business Analytics Review

Foundations of Strategic Business Analytics is the first course in the “Strategic Business Analytics Specialization” offered by ESSEC business school on Coursera. The 4-week course covers data analysis topics including clustering, exploring relationships between variables, forecasting and communicating results. All discussion is geared toward a business context, so the focus is on producing clear, actionable insight instead of looking at low-level details. The course uses the R programming language for analysis; basic familiarity with R is assumed. Grading is based on 3 quizzes and a peer-graded assignment.


Each week consists of two main content sections: a lecture section that introduces concepts and data analysis techniques and then a recital section that teaches you how to use the methods discussed in lecture in R. The lecture videos themselves are polished with nice text graphics. The lecturer’s English takes a little time to get used to, but he speaks clearly and he does a good job framing each topic in the context of business. The programming recitals are easy to follow and let you get some hands-on experience with lecture topics right away.


Foundations of Strategic Business Analytics is a good introduction to thinking about data analytics in a business setting, but it is a bit short if taken as a standalone course. Follow-up courses should let you dig your teeth deeper into the material. Also note that the specialization is listed as “Advanced”, but this course is not very technical and only really requires basic R knowledge as a prerequisite.


I give Foundations of Strategic Business Analytics 4 out of 5 stars: Very Good.