The Business Intelligence (BI) Academy provides university of Alabama students with transferable skills to succeed in industry. It aids the university’s larger research community in articulating insights through effective data visualization techniques.
BI leverages software tools and techniques to transform data into actionable insights that inform strategic and tactical business decisions. The typical BI life cycle incorporates four main phases: Data Collection, Analytics, Reporting, and Visualization. The first three phases have already established themselves as fundamental competencies of the IBA. The BI Academy seeks to address the final phase of the BI life cycle by deploying a specialized training program that aims to develop all strands of proficiency relating to fluency in information visualization. This will include fostering conceptual understanding, strategic competence, and adaptive reasoning.
The academy offers the following salient value propositions:
Over the past academic year, we conducted a proof of concept exercise to examine the viability of the initiative and verify its practical potential. Two second-year MBA students participated in the proof of concept exercise. In addition to participating in ideation exercises, the students met weekly with Dr. Naidoo to review materials in preparation for certification for an industry-standard data visualization software application.
