BUSINESS ANALYTICS IN SERVICES - 2023/4

Module Overview

Corporations, governments, entrepreneurs, and various organisations around the world are using data to extract patterns and generate insights to support strategic decision-making and create innovative solutions to business problems. This module will equip you with the fundamental concepts and tools needed to understand the emerging role of visual analytics in service organisations, will show you how to use a leading business intelligence platform -Tableau-, and will inform you how to best communicate your data with industry professionals for making better business decisions. Emphasis will be placed on applications, concepts, visualisation, interpretation, and communication of results, rather than theory and calculations.

Module provider

Hospitality & Tourism Management

Module Leader

PEREIRA DOEL Pablo (Hosp & Tour)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 7

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 2

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None

Module content

Indicative content:

• Overview of data-driven decision-making and business intelligence


• Introduction to Excel and Tableau


• Managing different types of data in Tableau: data sources, data classification, data quality, and dealing with missing data


• Fundamentals of descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics and applications in Tableau


• Data visualisation and its application in Tableau


• Business intelligence dashboard and story in Tableau


• Storytelling with data

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

The summative assessments will be replaced with a Business Intelligence Dashboard and Story with Tableau (individual) and recorded presentation (individual)

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to enable you to demonstrate your ability to analyse and effectively communicate data, visually and verbally, for business insights to support organisational decision-making in the services sector. You will be required to show that you have both the relevant analytical and diagnostic tools and appropriate methodologies to manage data and suggest recommendations and solutions. In addition, the assessment strategy will enable you to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of trends and developments in the industry and how you would respond to these developments by making sense of patterns extracted from big data. 

Thus, the summative assessments for this module consists of: 

• You will form a group to work on a data set to identify business insights to solve specific business problems for a service organisation(s). The group will need to identify variables from the data set to analyse using Tableau. The group will use appropriate data analysis and visualisation techniques and must include both descriptive and predictive analytics in the project. Each group will produce a business intelligence dashboard and story using Tableau to inform strategic decision-making for the organisation(s).


• Each group will present verbally their dashboard and story to a panel, applying the learnings from the module to justify their decisions and proposals.

• During the first tutorial, the assessments and the feedback process is explained


• Group and individual feedback are provided during and after the computer laboratory sessions. As the sessions and activities are built around topic-specific exercises in a group setting, students do not only benefit from lecturer feedback but also receive peer evaluations


• Groups will be given feedback on the progress of their project during the laboratory sessions and tutorials


• Once marking is completed, groups will be provided with feedback, which contains detailed generic feedback as well as a breakdown of marks. This enables groups to assess their own performance compared to their peers.

Module aims

• This module aims to introduce storytelling through visual analytics processes applied to different types of data within the services sector (hospitality, tourism, transport, and events). You will be prepared to lead in the digital age using data-driven decision-making and problem-solving analysis through a business intelligence platform and storytelling design.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to provide you with an overview of business intelligence and data analytics, covering the key areas of data-driven decisions, business process improvement, and business problem-solving. The foundations of business analytics will be supplemented with practical applications using a business intelligence platform to input and analyse data and generate and interpret insights for managerial decision-making. The module will focus on providing you with a combination of the necessary conceptual knowledge and practical skills to make critical and strategic business decisions in a global context, with an emphasis on business sustainability in the services sector (hospitality, tourism, transport, and events).

The learning and teaching methods include: 

• Foundational lectures with supporting materials on big data, business analytics, data visualisation, business intelligence, data storytelling, and decision-making in the context of services, including hospitality, tourism, transport, and events


• In-class exercises, practical examples and case studies, and tutorials in a computer lab to apply knowledge and analytical skills to real-world issues and datasets


• A project in which students extract patterns from big data and interpret the results to generate business solutions through a business intelligence dashboard


• Data analytics coaching sessions


• Supporting guest lecture sessions


• Formative feedback sessions


• Independent learning through reading, practising with the software, collaborative activities, and research associated with the assessments

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: MANM516

Other information

The School of Hospitality and Tourism Management is committed to developing postgraduates with strengths in Employability, Digital Capabilities, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Sustainability, and Resourcefulness and Resilience. By taking this programme students will develop strong knowledge, skills, and capabilities in the following areas:

• Employability: The assessments in this module require students to extract business insights from big datasets and to create a dashboard, using Tableau, to present the managerial implications of these insights. These business analytics and data-driven decision-making skills will prepare students to be successful managers in the digital age.
• Digital Capabilities: This module focuses on developing students’ capabilities in analysing data and capturing business insights for managerial decision-making. Students will develop their skills in using descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics and data visualisation. They will learn how to use a software to create a business analytics dashboard. Students will use the virtual learning environment (VLE), SurreyLearn, and video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams to facilitate learning. Module assessments require students to work collaboratively with peers to analyse datasets using a software, Tableau, and to create a dashboard to present insights from the datasets. 
• Global and Cultural Capabilities: Students will learn how to interpret the results of business analytics and their implications to service business in a global context by extracting, comparing, and contrasting individual and group behaviours, as well as sectoral, national, and regional differences captured from big datasets.
• Sustainability: Students will learn how to reflect on how to interpret business intelligence to support sustainability in the services industry.
• Resourcefulness and Resilience: Students will be required to use a range of sources to identify relevant datasets, conduct independent research, network with relevant companies/organisations, and work collaboratively with peers to extract patterns and critical insights from datasets. Finding solutions through unstructured problems is the key learning aspect of this module that will develop students' resourcefulness and resilience.

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2023/4 academic year.