BSc (Hons) Business and Analytics

In this module, you will learn about the role of a project and project manager in organisations and the concepts and techniques required to manage the core aspects of a project.

The main topics covered include the core knowledge areas outlined in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) published by Project Management Institute (PMI) as well as essential fundamental theories, knowledge, and techniques required to manage a project in contemporary business settings.

These topics include:
• Defining project characteristics, lifecycle, and activities.
• Understanding how projects drive change and achieve strategic goals in organisations.
• Realising the role of the project and project manager in various organisational structures and cultures.
• Managing core project aspects, such as stakeholder relationships, scope, cost, schedule, and risk.
• Distinguishing traditional, agile, and extreme project management approaches.

Drawing on contemporary project management research and business case studies, this module will develop your knowledge, skills, and confidence in managing projects and your learning with take place though lectures and practical IT workshops. Your learning will expose you to a wide range of project management examples (successful and unsuccessful) and project management approaches (classic and contemporary) to broaden your understanding of project management in a dynamic business setting. You will be given opportunities to work as a team and develop essential project management documents for a chosen project.

On completing this module, you will be able to utilise appropriate project management techniques and technical skills to effectively and efficiently manage different projects and you will be able to critically challenge the assumptions and existing practices in project management.

In this module, you will develop the knowledge and skills in applying a variety of quantitative data analysis techniques to analyse data sets, identify the patterns in the data, and predict future trends to support informed decision making in business contexts.
You will be introduced to predictive analytics using appropriate analytical tools, and your learning will cover a range of techniques to perform predictive analytics. To be more specific, this module involves the following fundamental topics and techniques:
• Relationship analysis – applying correlation, linear and logistic regression analysis (and other techniques) to characterise relationships among business variables, identify patterns in data and predict future trends.
• Forecasting models on time series data – analysing trend and other components on time-based historical data, developing an understanding of various approaches in business forecasting and exploring their use on data with the language R and other software tools such as SPSS;
• Classification and clustering – developing skills to process and analyse complex data sets by using machine learning techniques such as classification trees, clustering, etc.

Working with these analysis tools, you will learn to develop confidence in dealing with a wide range of data sets. You will become familiar with the role of predictive analytics techniques to predict what might happen in the future which would help set realistic goals, perform effective planning, and avoid risks in business settings.

This module introduces data literacy required as a key twenty-first century skill. You will investigate the characteristics of data across different domains and learn about the concepts of data visualization by understanding, questioning, and problematizing how data are generated, analyzed, and used. In this module you will develop the skills necessary to communicate analytical results to the management team. You will learn the consulting skills critical to understand business problems and to develop solutions based upon analytics. You will be able to apply its concepts and skills to visualize your own data, interpret the findings, and examine the impacts of data-driven decisions. You will gain an understanding of how data visualization and analytics contribute towards management skills and the ways in which certain techniques can enhance the effectiveness of visualisations. These topics will build and expand on some of the foundations gained via BM9503 Business Intelligence and Information Systems.

In this module you will be exposed to a range of tools and skills, including:
• Data abstraction – the types and semantics of data.
• Review of fundamental statistical tools (including descriptive statistics, data organization, summary measures)
• Approaches to the visualization of categorical, ordinal, and numerical data.
• Essential charts and graphical toolbox for data analysis
• Business strategy maps for data visualization based on Key Performance Indicators

By the end of the module,
• you will be able to use the powerful data analysis and visualization tools, Power BI and Excel Dashboard, to analyze and visualize your data.
• you will learn to develop confidence in visualising data sets based on strategic objectives of organizations.
• You will build skills which enable you to interpret data and present your findings to a range of audiences.

This module will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of how marketers can monitor and analyse the effectiveness of their marketing activity. Whilst marketers have always attempted to assess the effectiveness of their campaigns, the digital explosion now offers an almost limitless range of data through which to measure performance.

This module will consider the most suitable metrics for both online and offline marketing activity. Specifically, the module will address the following core themes:

- Overall Marketing Metrics: You will cover classic marketing metrics including return on investment and market share as a means of assessing overall marketing success. You will also consider how marketers can use external sources of market data to inform strategic marketing decisions.
- Offline Metrics: Here you will consider an array of techniques used to measure the success of traditional offline marketing channels. For example, you will utilise metrics such as brand awareness and opportunities to see (OTS) in the context of advertising and advertising value equivalent (AVE) for public relations.
- Online Metrics: You will interpret a range of online metrics used to assess digital marketing techniques. This will include an appreciation of Google Analytics and other dashboards that assess the effectiveness of email and social media marketing.
- Reporting: You will develop skills in how to interpret and present data in a way that can influence other business stakeholders.

This module is designed to develop your skills in understanding how one-to-one forms of marketing communications, across offline and online channels, can be combined into an overall campaign to generate new customers and enhance existing relationships. To do this, the module is broken into three distinct themes:

• Principles of Direct and Digital Marketing: In this part of the module you will cover the fundamental practices in the direct marketing field, which will include acquisition and retention strategies, customer profiling and segmentation, database marketing, permission marketing and personalisation, relevant legislation and campaign testing.
• Digital Media: In this section you will explore the range of communications media available, ranging from traditional offline channels (such as direct mail and telemarketing) through to the ever-growing range of digital media options (including social media, email, web design and mobile commerce).
• Campaign Planning: Here you will be introduced to the principles of campaign design, from initial context analysis and goal setting through to campaign implementation and evaluation. You will be encouraged to combine different marketing communications tools as part of an integrated campaign and consider campsign budgeting and measurement.

In this module, you will experience an extensive coverage on logistics and supply networks. The module will enhance your strategic understanding about the complexities involved in supply network design and its architecture and you will learn to manage the supply networks strategically in a global and local context.

The module provides an understanding of the physical movements of goods through supply chain networks, the networks of organisations involved, and the modes of transport used. The module will explore logistical and network solutions for real business distribution problems across both inland and overseas operations and the challenges and future opportunities of logistics providers/freight operators in the balancing of sustainability priorities. The key themes include:

Network design and architecture

Warehouse trends, design, and management

Transportation systems and Intermodality

Forecasting and Inventory management

Logistics and Distribution networks

Supply network theory

Automation and warehouse management

Industry 4.0

The module also focuses on transport as a service to the public, both domestically and internationally, examining the allied industries it supports. It also provides an appreciation of the socio-political debate surrounding the sustainability of different transport modes, industry agendas and governance frameworks, whilst considering the realities of such debates when serving and operating in local and international environments.



At the end of the module, you will be able to critically assess the strategic management of particular specialist areas of business such as logistics and supply chain management and apply and critically appraise this knowledge to relevant business and management contexts. You will learn to conduct contemporary research into logistics and supply management. In doing so, you will learn to develop your interpersonal communication skills and ability to work in teams. You will develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills that contributes to your personal and professional development.

The Management Enquiry module is a student-led individual project that enables you to undertake a significant piece of assessed work commensurate with a capstone module. The module aims to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate an authentic engagement with managers and/or professionals in your discipline, and to integrate the knowledge you have developed during your programme to explore the theory in practice. The learning on this module is experiential and problem based, where the focus is upon you discovering, probing and questioning key practice-based issues. Through the module you will be offered the opportunity to develop and enhance key transferable employability skills including; time management, project management, communication (written, aural and verbal), negotiation, persuasion and influence, discovery, initiative, problem-solving and analysis.

The module has five thematic areas; explore, review, engage, reflect and connect. These form the key elements of the assessed submission.

Part A (35%, 3,500 Words)
• Explore: Interviewing a manager and/or professional in your discipline. In this interview you will either explore a key issue which you feel the discipline is facing or, alternatively, explore with the manager or professional the key issues that they feel they are facing in practice. It is expected that you will apply appropriate interview methods and provide evidence of the interview within the submitted enquiry report (e.g. within the appendices).
• Review: Critically examining the appropriate literature to support the exploration, displaying an ability to critically assess and appraise the knowledge of your discipline related to a specific key issue arising from your exploration.

Part B (65%, 6,500 Words)
• Engage: Displaying an authentic engagement with the discipline problem/issue identified in Part A, by collecting/generating and analysing further live data (beyond the initial interview) regarding the discipline problem/issue. This live data may be primary data (e.g. further interviews with, or questionnaire to, managers and/or professionals in practice) or secondary data (e.g. industry data). Application of appropriate, ethically-considered, research methods and appropriate qualitative or quantitative data analysis.
• Reflect and Connect: Demonstrating an ability to critically evaluate and reflect on the issues arising from the Management Enquiry. Demonstrating how you have connected and fed-back to the participants of the Enquiry (usually the manager and/or participants) your key findings to provide clear prioritised, well-justified, practical and actionable recommendations for change/enhancement/improvement to existing practice to show how the recommendations would potentially affect workplace professional decision making.

The dissertation module aims to equip you with the necessary intellectual and practical skills for undertaking an individual student-led, ethical investigation into an applied business (or the named degree) problem or issue. In addition, the dissertation aims to equip you with key transferable, employability skills, including: time management, project management, communication (written and verbal), negotiation, persuasion and influence, discovery, initiative, creativity and innovation in problem-solving, analysis.

The module is student-led but you are supported by, initially, weekly lectures and seminar-workshops which provide an introduction to undertaking Business-Management research followed by one-to-one or small-group supervision meetings.
The lectures and seminar-workshops will cover the following topics:
1. Developing a research aim/question (focusing and scoping the research)
2. Developing a literature review
3. Writing a research proposal
4. Researching ethically
5. Quantitative research techniques
6. Qualitative research techniques
7. Quantitative analysis techniques
8. Qualitative analysis techniques

Upon completion of the module you will be able to:
1. Conduct independent and ethical academic research involving the application and critical evaluation of appropriate theories and models,
2. Engage critically with relevant literature to establish a framework in which to analyse and synthesise the results of your primary or secondary research
3. Generate / collect relevant primary or secondary data using an appropriate and justified method
4. Analyse your data using an appropriate and justified method of analysis
5. Recognise the ethical implications of your work
6. Critically evaluate the source of your data and the method you adopted

The module aims to provide you with an opportunity to integrate the knowledge acquired during the programme and apply this to a consultancy project for a real organisation. This consultancy project provides a vehicle for participants to develop and demonstrate key employability skills, to relate theory to practice, and to undertake a significant piece of assessed work commensurate with a capstone module.

You will work on behalf of an external organisation, which has identified a business problem or question, requiring a solution, working in small group of typically 4 individuals (you will select their own team members), participating in group and individual activities. The host organisation will provide a project briefing, and review; students will be supported by appropriate academic input and guidance from Newcastle Business School in the form of a mentor and via the Business Clinic.