Universal Data Skills

Background and description

This course has the potential to revolutionise the way data is used in your organisation. Far too often, data used at a senior level is geared up for reporting purposes, often aimed at a regulatory body. This can mean that the data needed to improve the organisation is not being collected or used.

Universal Data Skills works at both a strategic and tactical level. How to use data to set and measure the progress of strategy sits alongside what type of graph is best used to display this. It is this blend of good theory and practical application put together in a straightforward framework that makes Universal Data Skills unique.


Duration and who should attend

Duration

3-days

Who should attend?

Senior managers and Directors
Anyone involved in setting strategy
Anyone involved in performance measurement at a departmental or organisational level
Analysts and statisticians

This course is ideal for graduates of Universal Improvement Skills and the Strategic Improvement Programme. We strongly recommend participants should have attended one of these beforehand.


Style and structure of the course

This is not a course about data. It is a course about using data to improve your organisation.

This is a highly practical course and you will be able to apply it immediately in the workplace. There are plenty of exercises and time for you to apply the learning to your own real-life situations and data with our help.

We will ask participants to send us some real data before the course and we will apply Statistical Process Control principles to this to display it and see what it is telling us.


What participants will learn

How data fits with the other elements of organisational improvement
How to align data collected throughout the organisation with corporate strategy
How to decide what data to collect at a departmental and corporate level
How to decide what data to collect about your customers and what to do with it to keep them happy
How to use data to identify projects
How to measure the results of projects including meaningful before and after comparisons
How to measure and monitor your routine operation so you always know how your key processes are doing
How to keep your regulatory bodies happy and not confuse the data you collect for statutory reporting purposes with the data you use to improve your organisation
How your 'common sense' approach to using data may be ruining your organisation
How variation affects your processes and how to go about reducing this to guarantee predictability and reliability
How to save time and money by cutting out unnecessary production of data
Better use of graphs - how to select and use the best tool to present your data including:
Bar Charts
Stacked Bar Charts
Pareto Charts
Run Charts
Cumulative Run Charts
Year on-Year Run Charts
Histograms
Viewcharts
How to analyse data - looking for meaning and drawing conclusions, learning to hear what the data is telling you
Questions to ask when presented with data
Statistical Process Control - what it is, why it's useful, why no-one uses it properly and why you should


Download

Click here for the Universal Data Skills Briefing Note.