Data Analytics for CPAs: Introduction and Descriptive Analytics

Overview

In this course, we’ll dive into the world of analytics, equipping you with the skills to assess your clients’ analytics maturity and leverage techniques for accurate forecasting. You’ll also learn how to spot opportunities where optimization techniques can enhance financial decision-making. We’ll cover the essentials, from understanding analytics fundamentals to exploring descriptive analytics methods like text mining, multidimensional clustering and statistical outlier detection. This course is part of a training series that introduces CPAs and financial professionals to descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics, covering analytics benchmarking, forecasting methods and optimization for decision-making in capital investment and inventory management.

Highlights

• What is analytics? • Analytics Maturity Benchmarking: how CPAs can benchmark their clients’ analytics maturity • Three types of analytics: descriptive, predictive, prescriptive • Descriptive analytics: text mining, multidimensional clustering, maybe statistical outlier detection

Objectives

• Determine the level of analytics maturity of a client organization • Recognize how to make and evaluate a forecast using analytics techniques • Identify when optimization techniques can improve financial decision-making