Data Analytics & Business Intelligence

Week 1: Data Preparation & Excel for Analytics

Establishes core skills in data cleaning, analysis, and preliminary visualization.

Data fundamentals

• Types of data: structured, semi-structured, unstructured

• Data quality dimensions & common data issues

• Data analytics lifecycle & business context

Excel for data preparation

• Essential functions: SUM, AVERAGE, COUNTIF/SUMIF

• Lookup functions: VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, INDEX–MATCH

• Text & date functions for cleansing (TEXT, SUBSTITUTE, LEFT/RIGHT, TRIM)

Analytical tools

• PivotTables & PivotCharts

• Slicers, timelines, conditional formatting

• Data validation & error handling

Advanced Excel

• Dynamic arrays: UNIQUE, FILTER, SORT, SORTBY

• Power Query for ETL workflows

• What-If Analysis: Goal Seek, Data Tables

Week 2: SQL for Data Querying & Warehousing

Builds relational database proficiency for efficient data extraction and aggregation.

SQL fundamentals

• SELECT with WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, ORDER BY, LIMIT

• Aggregate functions: COUNT, SUM, AVG, MIN/MAX

Joins & data manipulation

• INNER, LEFT, RIGHT JOINs

• Subqueries & nested queries

• INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE operations

Advanced SQL

• String & date functions

• Indexes & performance basics

• CTEs & window functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK)

Business use cases

• Sales, finance & operational analytics queries

Week 3: Power BI Foundations & Data Modeling

Introduces business intelligence workflows for data ingestion and interactive reporting.

Environment setup

• Power BI Desktop & Service

• Data source connections (Excel, SQL)

• Gateway configuration (overview)

Power Query ETL

• Data profiling & transformations

• Merge & append queries

• Custom columns & parameters

Visualization basics

• Core charts: bar, line, area, pie

• Tables, matrices, slicers & filters

• Drill-down & drill-through

Data modeling

• Star schema design

• Relationships & cardinality

• Intro to DAX calculated columns

Week 4: Advanced BI, DAX & Performance

Elevates to enterprise-grade modeling, analytics, and optimization.

DAX mastery

• Measures vs calculated columns

• CALCULATE & filter context

• Time intelligence: YTD, YoY, MTD

• Iterators: SUMX, AVERAGEX

Advanced modeling

• Snowflake schema

• Import vs DirectQuery

• Row-level security (RLS)

• Incremental refresh

AI & performance

• Forecasting & anomaly detection

• Key Influencers & Decomposition Tree

• Q&A natural language

• Performance Analyzer & query folding

Week 5: Business Insights, Storytelling & Capstone

Concludes with decision-focused analytics and deployment readiness.

Business storytelling

• Translating data into insights

• KPI design & executive dashboards

• Data-driven decision frameworks

Dashboard design

• UX principles for dashboards

• Color, layout & accessibility

• Executive vs operational reports

Deployment & governance

• Publishing to Power BI Service

• Sharing, workspaces & security

• Data refresh scheduling

Capstone project

• End-to-end BI project

• Business problem → data → dashboard → insights

• Presentation & documentation

Tools & Technologies Covered

• MS Excel & Power Query

• SQL (MySQL / PostgreSQL)

• Power BI Desktop & Service

• DAX

• Business KPI frameworks

Learning Outcomes

• Clean and prepare real-world data

• Write efficient SQL queries for analytics

• Build interactive BI dashboards

• Apply advanced DAX & modeling techniques

• Deliver business-ready insights

NB: Time and slot will vary according to availability of mentor, minimum mentee count, and company policies.