 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
B. Service Sector Processes, Analytics & IT (B.1 and B.2 are compulsory; select 3 other courses)
While each service sector has its unique flavour of processes and operations, there are commonalities in most of the business processes of this sector. This course introduces the students to the service industry processes and stakeholders (both internal and external) that are working to meet customer needs. The concept of Unified Service Sector process framework, a framework to manage service sector industry operations, will be introduced and few industry specific frameworks will be examined and expanded as part of the course. Healthcare, Retail, Airport Operations and Telco are the service sector industries that are covered at varying level of detail.
The course will use lectures, class discussions, assignments and external speakers to cover the material and provide introduction to service industry business processes and data management.
This course is about data analytics techniques and data-driven business knowledge discovery. It aims to convey the principles, concepts, methods and best practices from both statistics and data mining, with the goal of discovering knowledge and actionable insights from business data. In this course, students will be exposed to a collection of data analytics techniques and gain hands-on experiences in using these techniques. Student will focus their attention on the use and valuation of these techniques and solution to discover new knowledge from data and how to make data-driven decisions in an intelligent and informed manner. You will be also trained to understand the statistics rigour and data requirements of these techniques. Techniques discussed in this course form the foundation of the subsequent courses.
The goals of this course are for students to (a) develop a strong understanding of the concepts and techniques of customer focused and data driven analytics, and supporting systems and (b) apply that understanding in creating cutting-edge business analytics applications and IT solutions for service industry companies to gain customer insights. This includes using these applications and solutions to analyse customers' attitudes, behaviour, profitability and risk. This involves topics such as i) customer focused analytical reasoning, ii) methods and applications to support analytic tasks and analytic challenges in specific industry contexts, iii) evaluating and improving the usefulness and usability of data analytics applications. Several case studies on customer focused data analytics and related IT projects are studied. Emerging "next-practices" of real time, adaptive data analytics in the context of customers are explored. Linkages across processes, data, operations, analytics, technology and architecture are highlighted.
Every service sector business is faced with operations related problems including demand forecasting, inventory management, distribution management, capacity planning, resource allocation, work scheduling, and queue & cycle time management. This course is build on the processes that are learnt in “Service Sector Processes & Data Framework”.
In this course, students will be exposed to the Data and Decision Analytics Framework which helps the analyst identify the actual cause of business operation problems by collecting, preparing, and exploring data to gain business insights, before proposing what objectives and solutions can and should be done to solve the problems. Such a framework combines identification of the root causes by data analytics, and proposing solutions supported by decision analytics.
The objectives of this course are for students to (a) develop a strong understanding of the theory, concepts and techniques of operations management and data driven analytics, and (b) apply that understanding in creating cutting-edge business analytics applications and IT solutions for service industry companies to gain operation insights and business improvements. Students will apply the Data and Decision Analytics Framework to solve several operations focused case studies. This framework is an expansion of a typical operations management solution methodology to include data analytics so as to exploit the linkages across processes, data, operations, analytics and technology, to offer businesses alternative solutions to operations problems.
The data generated by modern society is now growing faster than Moore’s law. Everyday individuals produce a large amount of data through their interactions with the real and virtual world. Behind all of these continually growing volumes of data, businesses hope to learn from them, in the shortest time possible, so as to better understand their customers and thus align their strategies to the needs of the marketplace. As the cost of generating and storing data has quickly fallen, the technology and skills to work with large amounts of data has lagged behind. This course will look at the latest best practices and technology that are emerging to enable professionals to work with large and real-time datasets as easily as they once worked with data that could be analyzed in a single system in a spreadsheet. This course will take a more in-depth look at how to use cloud computing to analyze very large dataset in a cost effective and time-sensitive manner.
The course will use lectures, class discussions, assignments and external speakers to cover the material and provide introduction to cloud computing and massive data analytics.
In today’s globally connected, online and mobile world, as companies strive to harness their customer context, they are realizing that engaging individuals on social media platforms is becoming increasingly important. Experts say that social media will soon replace current customer service channels and become the dominant means of communication between companies and their customers. The conversations collected from these platforms create a mega gold mine for business that want to understand their consumers better.
This course will explore emerging methods and applications for understanding the behaviour of people in the context of their interactions with friends and others. It will also explore developments in observing the context of behaviour using digital traces from real-time geo-spatial data from personal mobile devices, and in observing behaviour across multiple delivery channels. Upon understanding profile and behavior of the customers, businesses can then predict how preferences are changing, what they want, so as to provide the relevant offer, content and experience to them at the relevant time with the relevant incentive. This will help businesses to increase revenue, customer loyalty and satisfaction, and overall positive contributions. The course will provide examples of how social and contextual analytics are being integrated into Customer-Focused analytics, Operational-Focused analytics, as well as other areas of analytics.
This course will expose students to a variety of real-world business cases, a collection of data analytics tools and best practices from both statistics and data mining through hands-on exercises. Students will learn how to 1) identify analytics problems from each given business case, 2) use data analytics tools and identify types of analysis to be performed, and 3) close the loop (the process of taking the analysis results and interpreting it contextually, per each given business case).
Bringing real-world complex problems with multiple data analytics perspective together with a sponsoring company (e.g. Accenture, IBM or Oracle) into the class room. The class room environment aims to emulate the exact case with excessive data and ill-defined problem scope. Students will have a chance to hear from the company sponsor to learn about the problem and objective and to propose new initiatives which can help to solve the problem and achieve the desired business objectives.
C. IT and Project Management
This course will empower the students to use innovation methodologies for identifying innovation opportunities and make them aware of the resulting intellectual property rights related issues.
Distinctive features of the course's pedagogy include: (i)Active learning through individual exploration, discovery and sharing (ii) Harnessing group intelligence through peer-led presentations and discussions (iii) Written assignments that require analysis and synthesis, not just knowledge transfer. (iv) Instructor as "coach on the sidelines" as opposed to "sage on the stage."
Upon completion of the course, students will have gained knowledge related to Innovation Management. Students will also develop their learning-to-learn and collaboration skills, as well as their presentation and writing skills. They will be able to : (a) identify new innovations relevant to their companies (b) prioritize investments into innovation opportunities and evaluate their relative value to their business divisions. (c) translate selected innovation opportunities into project proposals that will fit the IT governance frameworks of their companies (d) identify the needs and means of intellectual property protection for the innovations (e) position business IT proposals for successful adoption by their companies.
This is a half module delivered once a week over 7 weeks.
Very often, managers need to quickly make important decisions related to managing IT investments, assets, operations and projects. Understanding how to analyze trade-offs between alternatives is difficult to do without a good model. This course focuses on using Microsoft Excel as a spreadsheet tool to build such decision models and to perform business analysis. Students will be able to analyze trade-offs and understand the sensitivity impact of uncertainties and risk. The key emphasis of this course is on developing the art and intuition of modeling, more so than just learning about the long list of available models, in the context of managing IT resources and operations.
IT projects never go according to plan and project managers must exercise good judgment and effective management skill to ensure success. Students will learn of the many decisions and tradeoffs that project managers make daily, namely managing schedules, team dynamics, resource scheduling, quality issues, schedule delays, cost overruns, to name a few. Students will be introduced to best practices promoted by Project Management Institute (PMI) and documented in "A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge" (PMBOK® Guide).
Case studies of real world IT projects, computer-based simulation games and role playing negotiation exercises will be used in class to help students understand and practice project management skills of managing conflicts, responding to unexpected project problems and negotiating a win-win contract agreements between client and vendor.
IT projects inevitably involve vendors, and increasingly IT operations and IT infrastructures are outsourced to third-party service providers. The ability to manage vendors and negotiate favorable contract terms are essential skills for project managers. Determining when to use and how to select a vendor effectively can make or break even the most carefully planned projects. Students will learn and practise activities that are essential to effective vendor management.
Standardising business processes, advances in information and communication technologies, and the continuous improvement of the capabilities of IT service providers around the world, among other factors, have led to an intense impetus to "strategise" IT sourcing. In this course we will investigate how enterprise IT services are (out/in) sourced in the financial services industry. We will also draw relevant examples and lessons learnt from other industries.
Students will develop an understanding of the core issues involved in a variety of sourcing strategies (out/in/co-sourcing), the industry best practices in managing IT sourcing (through case-studies and guest lectures), and the emerging governance schemes for IT sourcing. The other side of sourcing will be analysed, that is, the vendor's perspectives on managing sourcing relationships and how they deliver their promise of low-cost and high-quality services. Students will have the opportunity to practise forming sourcing decisions - writing Request For Proposals (RFPs), bidding on RFPs, designing contracts, and the like.
D. General Management
This course provides students with a basic understanding of accounting as "the language of business". It introduces students to the basic concepts, principles, procedures and approaches underlying the accounting process. In addition, coverage of accounting cycle will show how business transactions impact financial statements, and ultimately the analysis of financial information for decision-making.
This is a half module delivered once a week over 7 weeks.
This course helps students understand why management accounting is important for daily business decision, and how managers can use management accounting to plan, evaluate and control operations of organisations. It also aims to provide appropriate management accounting knowledge for IT and operations specialists in the financial and service sectors.
Students are required to link class learning to their work experience and share it with their cohort. Through interactive contributions from all participants, all students should increase their understanding and exposure of management accounting practices and their potential impacts on individual and company performances.
This is a half module delivered once a week over 7 weeks.
This course is designed to help students understand how the development of strategies and the organizational changes and leadership necessary to create competitive success. A key aspect of strategic success is execution, without which ideas remain only ideas and not vehicles for value creation. The topics of execution by way of the organization, management and change leadership will be discussed in detail. Lectures, case studies, readings, simulations, tools and their practical use, as well as class participation will be the primary vehicle to create the appropriate learning environment. The outcome of this course will be an effective theoretical and practical understanding by the students of strategic analysis, formulation, execution, and the role and practice of leadership, management and organization.
Students will be exposed to key financial concepts and tools commonly used by managers in making sound financial decisions. These include ratio analysis, time value of money, risk-return trade-off analysis, capital budgeting, stocks, bonds, and option pricing. In addition, the course also covers the terminology, characteristics and features of various financial instruments transacted in the financial services industry. This helps the students interact effectively with the finance professionals in the different product areas.
The aim of this module is to allow students to understand the importance of soft skills that must go hand in hand with technical competencies. Given the reality of globalization, this course attempts to highlight key areas that embraces the dynamics of self-management and working with others. Hence, the coverage spans over a broad range of topics designed to meet the HRM needs at the workplace. The course aims to enhance the building of knowledge and relevant soft skills through seminars and the use of case studies, articles and self-assessment tools in order to develop personal and professional skills in working with others. The course is also intended to be interactive so as to foster a learning environment that facilitates creative thinking in the process of peer learning.
This is a half module delivered once a week over 7 weeks.
(D.1B and C.2 are compulsory, choose 2.5 other courses across series C or D.)
E. Capstone Project - equivalent to 2 courses
- Project Definition, development and critique workshops
- Industry expert seminars and company site visits
E. 2 Project Delivery
Students must complete a Capstone Project sponsored by an industry partner as partial fulfillment of the MITB (Financial Services) Programme. The project will enable the students to apply and integrate what they have learnt and give them an opportunity to delve in greater depth, into one or more of the topics covered in the courses.
Students work on the projects individually, in collaboration with a sponsoring company, under the supervision of an SMU appointed advisor. In cases where the project scope is large enough to allow for the involvement of more than one student, two may work on the project provided each student makes a distinct contribution towards the project. Each student is expected to commit at least 182 hours on the project, including meeting time with the company and SMU advisors.
Students may be expected to work on-site at the sponsoring company if necessary, to understand the business domain, problem definition and even to gain access to systems, documents and resources available at the company. Students may be paid a sum of money by the sponsoring company at the discretion of the company.