2023-2024

Business Analytics, Undergraduate Certificate

Department of Management, Marketing, and Information Systems

The W. A. Franke College of Business

The Business Analytics certificate is designed to prepare students to understand and take part in the data-driven business decision making process. The data-driven decision-making process has been adopted for strategic, tactical, and operational decisions made by business worldwide. Understanding how data is used to enhance business decisions increases the possibility for future student achievement in many business sectors.

  • To receive an undergraduate certificate (at least 15 units) at Northern Arizona University, you must complete a planned group of courses from one or more subject matter areas with a cumulative grade point average of at least 2.0.

    Please be aware that federal financial aid is not available for some certificates, if the certificate is pursued and completed as a stand-alone certificate (i.e., not completed concurrently with a degree program). See the "Details" tab for additional information.

In addition to University Requirements:

  • Complete individual plan requirements.

Students may be able to use some courses to meet more than one requirement. Contact your advisor for details.

Minimum Units for Completion 15
Major GPA 2.0
Highest Mathematics Required MAT 119
Additional Admission Requirements Required

Purpose Statement

This certificate is designed to enable learners to describe and participate in the process of data-driven decision making. This includes asking good-quality questions, describing what data is needed and where to find it, storing and accessing data in a consolidated format, selecting an appropriate modeling approach, analyzing the problem or opportunity, communicating the results of the analysis, and utilizing the analysis results to inform stakeholders and support data-driven decisions. Learners will have the opportunity to enhance their quantitative and communication skills.

Student Learning Outcomes

  • Demonstrate knowledge of business analytics in the business world.
    • Describe the value of and the need for business analytics.
    • Describe current examples and competitive advantages that businesses are achieving through business analytics.
    • Demonstrate an increased understanding of how data is currently used for business decision making, and how it might be used in the future.
  • Gain experience in supporting data-based decision making.
    • Demonstrate their ability to determine the usefulness of various data sets.
    • Demonstrate their ability to transform raw data into more meaningful forms.
    • Describe data storage techniques and business warehousing.
    • Configure data storage and business warehousing systems.
    • Perform descriptive analytics on data including data visualization to contribute to decision-making.
    • Perform data mining to answer questions and identify previously undiscovered data patterns, problems, or opportunities to inform decision-making.
    • Perform predictive analytics such as classification and Monte Carlo simulation to inform decision making.
    • Tell a correct and effective data story.
  • Learn fundamental and useful skills for their business analytics toolkit.
    • Enhance their critical thinking skills though the process of investigating data to identify previously undiscovered trends or opportunities.
    • Effectively communicate which, why, and how specific analytical tools and methods were used to arrive at a conclusion.
    • Select the appropriate tools to use for various analytical techniques.
    • Identify spreadsheet best practices.
    • Appropriately apply spreadsheet best practices and Excel functions such as VLookup, SumProduct, Data Tables.
    • Use business analytics software such as RapidMiner, Tableau, @Risk.

Additional Admission Requirements

  • Individual program admission requirements over and above admission to NAU are required.

    • This certificate is available only for those students with the Business Professional Program Milestone.
Certificate Requirements

  • Take the following 15 units with a minimum 2.0 GPA:


    You must have completed all of the coursework used to fulfill these requirements within the last 10 years.

  • This certificate may only be pursued and completed concurrently with a degree program. This certificate is not available as a stand-alone certificate.

Additional Information

  • Be aware that some courses may have prerequisites that you must also successfully complete. For prerequisite information, click on the course or see your advisor.

  • The FCB does not accept upper-division transfer credits from programs not accredited by the AACSB (such as the University of Phoenix or the Bachelor of Business Administration program at NAU).

    You must complete 50 percent, or 9 units, of certificate coursework that are not used in your major, minor, or other certificates, and you must complete at least 60 percent of certificate coursework at Northern Arizona University.