1 CPE This course prepares participants to begin business intelligence projects with a hands-on approach to gathering and cleaning data. After taking this course, participants will be ready to create their own databases or oversee the creation of databases for their company.
The focus in this course is on “Big Data” datasets containing anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of observations. While the tools used are applicable for smaller datasets of a few hundred data points, the focus is on larger datasets. The course also helps participants with no experience in building datasets to start from scratch.
Finally, the course is excellent for users of Salesforce, Tableau, Oracle, IBM, SAP and other BI software packages since it helps viewers see through the “black box” to the underlying mechanics of Business Intelligence practices.
***Please download and open all supporting materials before starting the course videos.***
Learning Objectives
- Explore how to critically examine databases produced by Business Intelligence (BI) software packages like those from Salesforce, Tableau, Oracle, IBM for issues or concerns
- Recognize how to gather relevant data from publicly available databases
- Explore how to merge datasets together based on unique identifiers to create a single useable database
- Identify and examine data via automated tools and processes to weed out questionable or erroneous data points
Last updated/reviewed: August 6, 2023
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Included In Certifications
This course is included in the following Certification Programs:
15 CoursesData Analytics Professional (DAP) Certification
- The Fundamentals of Business Intelligence (BI): What it Does and Why it's so Essential
- How is Industry Using Big Data? – A Case Study Reading
- Business Intelligence - Data Collection and Cleaning
- Business Intelligence - Structuring Data for Analysis
- Business Intelligence - Fundamentals of Data Analysis
- Business Intelligence - Using Big Data Analytics
- Doing Data Analytics In Excel (Hands-on module)
- Regressions in Excel (Hands-on module)
- Financial Forecasting
- Advanced Analytics – Omitted Variables
- Advanced Analytics – Fixed Effects
- Case Study in Data Analytics
- Using Regressions for Forecasting
- Financial Forecasting in Excel (Hands-on module)
- Blockchain for Business
144 Reviews (658 ratings)
Reviews
Gene Cenotto
(Sr. Accounting Analyst at WA)
Interesting Course that I will lean on as I take additional BI courses!
Paul Theaker
(Director of IT at United World Mission)
Great review of some items and nice to learn some new tips and tricks. Benford's Law was a nice nugget to discover. Sales Reps who care about good data need to watch this. Many times they do not understand how data can be skewed and they could benefit from learning how to assess the quality of the data they are looking at. Great overview for executive too.
Anonymous
(Executive Director, Corporate Controller)
This course is a good general overview of how to collect and prepare the data for analysis. The tips for scrubbing and testing the data would certainly be helpful for developing a good database. It would be great to there could be more in depth discussion of how to utilize the data from FRED after installing the Add-Ins in excel.
Brian Leip
(Asst. Controller at Kranz & Associates)
This was a well presented and interesting course, and even though I've been working with data for a while I picked up a few good tips. The Excel Add in for Federal Reserve data downloads was a huge benefit in itself. Would be nice to have an optional hands on demo of data collection and cleaning to really gain intuition for it.
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
This course is helpful to learn assessing data bases, gathering data, merging data sets, cleaning databases, and pitfalls in building datasets. since collecting, cleaning, and merging data are relevant to our day to day work, it is helpful to think about a big picture to improve our work efficiency.
Anonymous
()
Great class!
Anonymous
(VP, WFM and BusTech)
Another great refresher course presented by Michael, highlighting the essentials for collecting, scrubbing, and merging data. Perhaps the most significant key learning was leveraging FRED for macroeconomic data, and configuring the add-on within Excel. I have a new tool in my arsenal!
Anonymous
(Regulatory Reporting Quality Assurance A..)
I really enjoyed learning about the different ways to collect, merge and validate data. I thought is was very interesting and useful to know that there is an excel add-in where you can get data from the Federal Reserve (Fred) as well as data from the U.S. Census, and Google Trends.
Anonymous
(Account Payable Specialist)
The Course itself was great. Michael brought up a lot of good point on how data isn't perfect and users need to be careful with how they use it if they want meaningful results. Users need to be critical of the data they use both before and after analysis.
Luis Lucchini
(Sr. Associate at Grant Thornton Public Sector)
Great course, the documents are relevant are properly explain the material covered. I would argue that some of it is outdated and should consider tools available to be used with Excel. Some of the questions in the test need to be reviewed too.
Anonymous
(CEO/Founder)
very informative section, I had never known of the data available at the fed site, and also Benford's law was very cool. It might be useful to also discuss adding data columns or making data more consistent in order to make modeling easier.
Anonymous
(Sr. Associate)
This course discussed methods on how to test that your data isn't faulty. Learning how you should test a few things to make sure you're pulling the most accurate data is helpful in a project I'm currently working on.
Michael Allgood
(Associate at Grant Thornton)
The course highlights some key strategies to "clean" your data. Before this course, I did not know the importance of cleaning data. I now feel that I can take these strategies and directly improve my analysis.
Anonymous
(solo)
Great course.
One observation:
Question 4 on the final exam was poorly worded. Choices A,B,C all said "usually the Best..." but then D was all of the above. All cannot be the best. Makes no sense.
Anonymous
(Controller)
I liked the real world examples he used. I also liked the pitfalls to look out for so that you do not make decisions based on a faulty dataset. Many people do not question data integrity enough.
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
Michael was excellent in his delivery on a rather complex subject, and made it easy to follow along. This helped me realize how important data collection and cleaning really is to companies.
Anonymous
(Senior Auditor)
I liked the organization of information in the course, and the steps provided to collect and prepare data for analysis. Recommendations were given for how yo tackle different scenarios.
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
I used to be a statistics TA, and the material is not always easy to each. However, the instructor broke down the introduction to data, sampling, and potential errors very well.
Anonymous
(Consultant)
Questions in exam did not relate to materials. You will need to take the other modules in the certification program to get the answers to this exam questions for this course.
Andrew Colaizzi
(Tax Associate at Grant Thornton)
This was better than the first lesson. I liked the topic that talked about limiting the extremes in a data set. Sometimes, as in life, we get too focused on the outliers.
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
The course explained the importance of learning about using appropriate data to achieve predictable results and how to obtain data that will satisfy those conditions.
Joann Kinsey
(Senior Associate at Grant Thornton)
Thank you for this course. It was knowledgeable and helpful for me to learn about the process of data accessing. Learned a great deal that I did not previously know.
Anonymous
(Senior Business Consultant)
It was interesting to learn that an Excel add-in is available for accessing US Federal Reserve data. I'll be investigating this possibility for Canadian data.
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
This course was useful in learning the value a creating databases. Knowing how to check for errors and what types of questions can be answered was also useful
Anonymous
(Internal Audit Manager)
I liked learning about the FRED tool and I think this course overall offers some very sound advice on the basics of data. Would definitely recommend it.
Anonymous
(Not Provided)
Some interesting topics were insufficiently covered by this course. E.g. biased data and other ethic problems related to gathering and cleaning data.
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
Another great course. Very direct and to the point; lays out topics at the beginning and then sticks to the agenda without any extraneous information.
Tal Crook
(RAS Associate at RSM)
I enjoy the use of steps that you need to take in order to create and/or purchase data. It's not as easy as people think. It was well covered here
Anonymous
(Tax Intern)
This course served as an effective introduction to data gathering and merging techniques. I enjoyed learning about Benford's law and Winsorizing.
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
I appreciated the instructor taking the time to define words and then work them into his lesson. It increased the quality of the lesson.
Anonymous
(Finance)
Content is well organized and a few examples of data sources are provided. Note: Not all questions in the exam related to the content.
Lawrence Hirsch
(Controller at Builders design)
Neat Class. i loved this course as I learned new technical terms and methodologies. Easy to follow presenter.
Thank you,
Larry
Anonymous
(Consultant - Process Specialist)
In an age where information is too many, this topic is very timely to assess how to ensure that information gathered is relevant.
Anonymous
(International Tax Sr. Associate)
This course was useful in learning the value of creating and using data bases. It helped show the importance of good clean data.
SAMUEL BARNETT
(SENIOR ASSOCIATE at GRANT THORNTON LLP)
This was a quality course related to Data Collection and cleaning 0- I thought that the information provided was very relevant.
Anonymous
(Associate)
Very good background! Very good breakout of the steps that need to be taken to collect, clean, merge, and analyze final data.
Aaron Walters
(Associate at Grant Thornton)
Course was helpful in taking some issues in gathering data explored in a statistics class and putting it in plain English.
Anonymous
(Tax Senior Associate)
great course!!!!!!! going to show my grandkids this course one day so they can learn all this rockin information too!!!!!
Anonymous
(Accountant)
There were some good tips in the course. I hope the next levels provide some additional detail in addition to these tips.
Anonymous
(Tax Manager)
I found the theoretical information interesting; however, struggled to pick up the excel examples in the webcast format.
Nicholas Ross
(Tax Associate at Grant Thornton)
The material here was presented in a clear and concise manner that made it very easy to grasp the introduced concepts.
Eric Oosta
(Senior Associate at Grant Thornton LLP)
Well done Pretty good course on data cleaning. Provided a solid overview. Test questions could be a bit more refined.
Keith Baker
(Data Analyst at Charter Communications)
this is a good overview of dealing with data and some things to look for when compiling and analyzing the data sets
Anonymous
(Sr. Associate)
Well thought out and presented. Nice 30,000 foot view on what data is and how to work with it. No complaints here!
Anonymous
(Assistant Internal Audit Manager)
This course is helpful for beginners on assessing databases, gathering data, merging datasets, cleaning databases.
Anonymous
(Tax Senior Associate)
Great introductory course covering data gathering, merging large data sets, and data cleaning.
Anonymous
(Director, Governance)
Good content as I am trying to better understand the BI process and this was a deeper dive then the prior course.
Anonymous
(SALT Manager)
I enjoyed the course from an intellectual standpoint, but unclear if I'll be able to apply it to my profession.
Anonymous
()
This is a good basic overview of databases and collecting data. It doesn't go crazy in depth, but is an intro.
Margaret Winn
(Accounting Professional at .)
It introduced me to statistical analysis CONCEPTS that I think I missed in my statistics classes in college…
Anonymous
(Associate)
This course was very useful. It was a good follow up to the Business Intelligence: What is it and why course.
Anonymous
(owner)
Again. I personally cannot learn this kind of subject from a lecture. I would have to go through an example.
Excellent course - I very much enjoyed the material and found it to be particularly insightful and rewarding.
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
Interesting course with a lot of specific examples which help to illustrate the practicality of the subject.
Lea Cagulada
(Auditor at World Fuel Services)
Business Intelligence - Data Collection and Cleaning gives you a good grasp of gathering data and processing.
Josh Ling
(Associate at Grant Thornton)
This was helpful for the real world. I enjoyed how I learned things that could help me be better at my job.
Ashley Riley
(Staff Accountant at Healthcare Highways)
A lot of useful information given in this course. I will retake this course to catch what I may have missed.
Alejandra Chacon
(Snr.Assistant Controller at Oracle + NetSuite)
Very good course as a guidanfe and intro to Business Intelligence, i got a lot of tips vey ussefull for me.
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
Thank you so much for this great learning experience. I look forward to continueing with the CDAP program.
Anonymous
()
Merging and cleaning database info very helpful and never knew about Feds info add-ins that was a surprise!
Anonymous
(Associate)
I think the questions given were applicable to the training and although tricky I considered them useful.
Anonymous
(Managing Director)
Breaking up the information into easy to digest modules is a great way to really digest this information
Wayne Burns
(CFO at Lone Tree Inc)
excellent insight into the steps required to address bi. excellent presentation of the course materials
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
It met all the stated objectives. I thought it was more interesting than the previous two sections.
Anonymous
(Accountant)
A great course! I strongly recommend to anyone interested in learning more about gathering data.
Anonymous
(Director, Research)
Awesome course that touches on everything without spending too much time on any given sub-topic.
Anonymous
(Senior Associate - NTSS)
I felt the valid test data question was confusing, but other than that, it was a good course!
Supporting material followed nicely with the videos. Explanations were easy to comprehend.
Anonymous
(Tax Associae)
this course is very informative, i look forward to implementing in my every day practice.
Anonymous
(Tax Senior)
This course helped me prepare for a training. I really feel like I got a good foundation.
Michael McGee
( at Fairfield University)
Slides were extremely helpful to review, concepts laid out very plainly but informatively
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
This was a really dry course, more relatable examples would have held my attention longer
Grant Brannum
(Agent at Treasury)
Pretty good presentation with some good information on the subject of BI Data Collection.
Andrew Smith
(Assistant Controller at Rothschild &Co US Inc.)
Loved learning about Benford's law. I also did not know a stock ticker was not unique!
Kris Weigand
(Tax Associate at Grant Thornton)
this was a very engaging webcast and I think I will be able to use this going forward
Anonymous
(Associate)
Course was informative and easy to navigate. I would recommend it to a colleague.
Lawrence DeParis
(Founder & CEO at C-Level Solutions LLC)
Very insightful, clearly explained and presented in a highly professional manner.
Anonymous
(Audit Services Manager)
Great information and very informative. Great information and very informative.
Anonymous
(Associate I)
Provided useful information on a gathering perspective of data. Nice refresher.
Anonymous
(Tax Senior Associate)
Helped lay out different tools and approaches to collecting and cleaning data.
Vincent Rella
( at Fairfield University)
Informative course, real examples separate from slides help drive concepts.
Alex Bonn
(Student at Fairfield University)
Great instructor, Learned a lot and would suggest this to a college student.
Anonymous
(Associate)
good course well done good job 50 characters. windsorizing is a funny name
Mitchell Trenz
(Associate at Grant Thornton Public Sector)
i thought that it was good. i don't have real thoughts, i'm just learning.
Anonymous
(Senior Associate)
Good course and easy to follow. Excellent. Would recommend to a friend.
Ryan Zsebik
( at Fairfield University)
Helpful for understanding datasets and making sure your data is not fake
Forrest Savage
( at Fairfield University)
Thorough explanations and good insight into techniques for merging data
Anonymous
(Senior Tax Associate)
very good training! I gained a lot of insight in taking this course!!!!
Anonymous
(Tax Senior Associate)
I think it would have been helpful to walk through an example in excel.
Anonymous
(Tax associate)
Great course and helped teach the ways to best go about gathering data
Anonymous
(Associate)
The course broke down each concept into easily understandable topics.
Anonymous
(Lumen Audit Associate)
Pretty high level, don't understand why this field has to be so long.
Anonymous
(Accountant)
Good course. Wish the answers to the quiz were available afterwards.
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
This course provided great examples of data collection techniques.
Excellent course, very interesting topic and applicable knowledge.
Michael Spielberger
(Tax Associate at Grant Thornton)
this course was a great learning experience for tax professionals
Anonymous
(Student)
learned ideas about excel that I did not know before, well done!
Victor Fuentes
(Manager at RSM)
Another good course to begin understanding Business Intelligence
Anonymous
(Controller)
Excellent insights into data collecting, merging, and verifying.
Anonymous
(Senior Associate)
Good presentation on the basics of data gathering and merging.
Nick Merrill
(Associate at Grant Thornton)
Good techniques for testing data are introduced in this course.
Jake Grubbs
(Senior Associate at Grant Thornton)
Good introduction and overview of data collection and cleaning.
Anonymous
(Compliance)
Good Training. Good tips to gather data and take good decisions
Anonymous
(Senior Tax Associate)
Good overview of some ways to gather data and how to sort it.
Anonymous
(CFO)
Great overview for collecting, cleaning and merging data.
Nick Zuzula
(Senior Associate at Grant Thornton)
Great course with great information on how to manage data.
David Skipper
(Senior Associate at Grant Thornton Public Sector)
great course on cleaning and gathering data. Learned a lot!
Peter Kotsifas
(VP, Finance at Mondo)
Solid intro course - I'd be interested in the next level!
Tim Thomas
( at Tim Thomas CPA LLC)
Federal Reserve Bank data was useful information to have.
Julie Bates
(NTSS Experienced Manager at Grant Thornton LLP)
The course made complex concepts very easy to understand.
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
Pretty interesting, especially the stuff on benfords law
Anonymous
(State Report)
Great course, I really enjoyed, the instructor is great
Ramakrishna Nalluri
(Senior Financial Analyst at LifeWorks Inc)
Learned concepts on data base issues. Neat presentation
Spencer Anderson
(Senior Tax Associate at Grant Thornton)
some interesting facts here. also learned a few things
Chris Grimes
(Rules Master at Cisco)
Really good overview of data gathering and collection.
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
Everything about this course was absolutely fantastic.
Dominic Nguyen
(Senior Tax Associate at Grant Thornton LLP)
The materials were easy to follow. Nice tone of voice.
Philip Wilson
(Data Scientist at Grant Thornton)
the topics surrounding data integrity were interesting
Anonymous
(Tax Associate)
The course's pacing was appropriate and informative.
Anonymous
(Internal Audit Director)
Thank you very much for the excellent presentation!
Michael Maffucci
(student at Fairfield University)
I liked this course. Intersting subject matter.
Anonymous
(Not Provided)
changed my mindset as to the importance of BI
Anonymous
()
Very interesting information, good course
Anonymous
()
Useful material, well structured course
Anonymous
(student)
This material knocked my socks off!!!
Martin Williams
(Finance Manager at think global Milengo GmbH)
Very clear, concise and informative.
I enjoyed the powerpoint very much
Matt Osmundsen
(Category Finance Director at Energizer Holdings, Inc.)
Great course! Very informative.
Anonymous
(Accountant)
enjoyable and informative
Henry Guo
(Analyst at Fairfield University)
Informative lesson
Candace Oliver
(Independent Consultant at C Oliver)
insightful class
John Daniels
(Sutdent at Fairfield University)
Excellent Course
Joseph Murphy
(None at Fairfield University)
liked the course
Anonymous
(Director of Rooms)
Great overview
Anonymous
()
Great course.
Anonymous
()
Great Lesson
Fred Neftin
(student at Fairfield University)
great course
Anonymous
()
Good course.
Anonymous
()
Great video!
Brendan Lynch
(Research Intern at InSite Search A Division of Chaves &..)
Good course
Anonymous
()
Very clear
Anonymous
(Financial Analyst)
Informative
Mei Ren
(Regional Director at AECOM)
Very good
Hale Summers
( at Fairfield)
Great
Prerequisites
Course Complexity: Intermediate
No Advanced Preparation or Prerequisites are needed for this course. However, it is recommended to take the other courses in the series prior to completing this one.
Education Provider Information
Company:
Illumeo, Inc., 75 East Santa Clara St., Suite 1215, San Jose, CA
95113
Contact:
For more information regarding this course, including complaint and
cancellation policies, please contact our offices at (408) 400- 3993 or send an e-mail to
.
Michael McDonaldPresident
About Illumeo
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