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All levels 5 hours of video 31 lessons Exercise files included Certificate of completion

Business Intelligence Foundations

The concepts behind the tools: KPIs that mean something, metric definitions, and reporting that drives decisions.

About this course

Tools are the easy part. The hard part is deciding what to measure, agreeing on what a number means, and building a reporting rhythm that changes what people do. This course is deliberately tool-agnostic: it works whether your organisation runs on Excel, Power BI, or something else entirely.

What you will be able to do

  • Distinguish metrics, KPIs, targets and diagnostics — and use each correctly
  • Write a metric definition that two departments can agree on
  • Design a KPI tree that links daily activity to top-level outcomes
  • Choose between leading and lagging indicators for a given decision
  • Recognise the common statistical traps in business reporting
  • Build a reporting cadence: daily operational, weekly tactical, monthly strategic
  • Present numbers to non-technical stakeholders without losing accuracy
  • Run a data quality review and know which problems to fix first

Course content

7 modules · 31 lessons · approximately 5 hours of video

Module 1 — What BI is for

Reporting versus analysis versus decision support. The questions BI answers well and the ones it does not.

Module 2 — Metrics and definitions

Writing a definition, agreeing a denominator, and the cost of two teams measuring "active customers" differently.

Module 3 — KPI design

KPI trees, leading and lagging indicators, targets, thresholds and the vanity metrics to retire.

Module 4 — Reading numbers honestly

Averages that hide the distribution, percentage changes on small bases, seasonality and survivorship.

Module 5 — Reporting cadence

What belongs in a daily operational view, a weekly review and a monthly board pack.

Module 6 — Communicating results

Structure before slides, the one-sentence takeaway, and handling the question you cannot answer.

Module 7 — Data quality

Completeness, accuracy, timeliness and consistency. A practical triage order when everything is broken.

Requirements

  • A computer with Microsoft Excel installed. Microsoft 365 is recommended; where a feature is version-dependent, the lesson states this and shows the alternative approach.
  • No software is provided with this course. Learners must hold their own licence for any Microsoft product used.
  • Roughly 5 hours of study time, which you can spread over as long as you like — access does not expire.

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