It’s not often that a day-long class about data analytics is called “action packed,” but that’s exactly what one NBCUniversal employee called their experience.
For the past year, Temple University, Fox School of Business’ Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) and NBCUniversal have been partners in corporate training. Three different training sessions, taught by Temple University’s Management Information Systems faculty, were offered to NBCUniversal employees and the data collected suggests that the results are great.
Based on a survey of attendees, more than 84 percent said they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the class, “Managing in the Age of Data Analytics.”
Nearly 87 percent agreed or strongly agreed that the course was relevant to their work.
This from a group of people who’s technical and management backgrounds were varied, and whose jobs diverse.
Dr. David Schuff, Associate Professor, Management Information Systems, taught a specifically focused version of “Managing in the Age of Data Analytics.” The concept behind the class was that data is a core building block of modern organizations and that transforming data into information and knowledge enables firms to compete effectively. The workshop taught students the principles of data strategy– including best practices for acquiring, assessing, and analyzing data to solve problems encountered in the real world of businesses.
“Business Value from IT” was a one-day interactive workshop for information technology professionals who wanted to learn about the business side of companies. Topics covered, included accounting, business models, marketing, sales, and supply chain practices. It was taught by Dr. Richard Flanagan, Assistant Professor(practice), Management Information Systems– who’s run this workshop many times.
“Our Technology (a.k.a. IT) group has been undergoing quite a change over the last two years to focus less on corporate/internal initiatives and more on our customer relationships to be truly aligned with the various NBCUniversal businesses that we as an organization support.” Amouri Burger, Sr. Director, Film Technical Solutions & Business Development, NBCUniversal, said.
Burger attended a full day of “Business Value from IT” session entitled “IT Value- MBA for Techies,” in March.
“It’s easy to underestimate the potential value from a one day session but the required reading in preparation for the day along with the hands-on way of how the session was presented made this a very fruitful day.”
Burger was particularly pleased with the emphasis on business modeling and real world use cases from NBCUniversal’s own businesses which helped the group, “develop the functional skills to better understand and support our business partners.”
Brittany Wallace, Sr. Director, Digital Sales Technology, NBCUniversal, also liked the way the courses were customized for her industry. “I attended the “Managing in the Age of Data Analytics” seminar in which Temple applied key concepts from the course to real media industry business cases which made the course relevant for NBCU.” She said.
The most technical seminar, the three day long, hands on workshop, “Secure Digital Infrastructure,” taught by Dr. Li Bai, Associate Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering (primary), Management Information Systems (secondary) addressed the technical challenges and solutions for infrastructure security. Issues surrounding data protection, encryption and decryption, public and private key and digital certificates were covered.
“The partnership between NBCU and Temple to offer corporate training presents a tremendous opportunity for NBCU’s IT professionals to continue to expand their expertise through onsite graduate level instruction.” Wallace said.
Whether it was one day of “action packed” data analytics or three full days spent scrutinizing security concerns, based on the feedback the attendees all went away educated, engaged and with new skills to use at their “day job.”
Learn more at: http://ibit.temple.edu/programs/professional-training/
