3-Day Program

Digital Transformation

Enhance Performance Through Data & Analytics

About the program

A global arms race of data analytics is underway, impacting virtually every business in every sector. In order to survive, compete and ultimately win, organizations must transform business models dramatically – from product-centric to customer-centeric models.

Led by world-renowned faculty and industry experts, this program provides a survive-and-thrive course for executives seeking to guide their business lines through this critical digital transformation.

You will gain a thorough understanding of the key topics required plan and execute digital transformation, strategic use of analytics and data-driven decision making throughout the organization.

Topics include:

  • Principles of Digital Transformation
  • Analytics and Strategy
  • Analytical Decision Making
  • Pricing and Customer-Centric Analytics
  • Big Data and AI

Who should attend

Business leaders looking to enhance the performance of their business lines by incorporating data-driven decision making.

You might also be interested in: Queen's Strategy Program, Queen's Leadership Program

Organizational Benefits

  • Measure your organization's current state and readiness for digital transformation
  • Understand different levels of digital transformation in the organization, its main goals, stages, milestones, and KPIs
  • Support the integration of an analytics mindset within the management culture
  • Enhance customer experience, better manage risk, increase revenue, and improve productivity
  • Foster a data-driven, analytical culture for managerial decision making

Personal Benefits

  • Gain an understanding of the key principles and technologies involved in digital transformation.
  • Learn the strategic and tactical roles that analytics play in a modern, data-driven institution.
  • Understand the principles of analytics and apply these to decision-making practices
  • Use the principles of analytics to improve project and process performance
  • Create a personalized digital transformation action plan for your organization

Program content

The program leverages the educational power of multiple teaching tools, including class discussions, lectures, simulations and the exchange of ideas and perspectives with faculty and fellow participants. Additionally, every participant will make use of the Analytics Capabilities Assessment Tool (ACAT); a proprietary diagnostic to assess the current stage of their organization's digital transformation and a personalized action plan.

Principles of Digital Transformation

  • Take a holistic view of your organization and understanding the current state of digitization
  • Identifying the highest potential value gaps that exist, and understanding how to fill those gaps for maximum ROI.
  • Learn a framework and set of key principles to guide and enable enterprise level digital transformation, covering structure, processes, systems, skills, tools, and technology.

Analytical Decision Making

  • How to break down decision-making problems, including those that involve risk, using a variety of tools and frameworks.
  • Learn how to convert huge quantities of ill-structured data into manageable amounts of organized information.
  • Discuss how to handle complex decisions in the presence of uncertainty.
  • Balancing intuition and analytics to make solid decisions and influence others
  • Embracing uncertainty as an integral aspect of the business environment.

Driving Value through Customer-Centric Analytics and Precision Pricing

  • Explore the importance of considering the full spectrum of customer behaviours as a core of a customer-centric business model
  • Discuss how customer behaviours affect the optimal pricing, product offering and promotion decisions.
  • Study general strategies for business-to-business and business-to-consumer customer analytics using examples from a variety of enterprises
  • Leverage Precision Pricing and Revenue Optimization (PPRO) to determine pricing and product availability across various selling channels.

Analytics and Strategy

  • Learn to translate the insights yielded by analytics into actionable plans to realize profitability.
  • Gain strategies to implement new initiatives within a business environment that values the status-quo.
  • Adopt the leadership qualities needed to lead change and translate ideas into action.
  • Construct a strategy framework around the fundamental challenges faced by your most important customers.
  • Discuss critical implementation mechanisms including: resource allocation, creating systems that align with and amplify company culture, and day-to-day management best practices needed to maintain momentum.

Big Data and AI

  • Assess the role of analytics and AI capabilities to find insights in very large or unstructured data sets, including credit card transactions, social networks and online shopping data.
  • Survey various AI methods appropriate for different analytical objectives, including classification, neural networks, recommender systems and smart contracts.
  • Examine IT infrastructure, tools and technologies that enable maximal value of data assets.
  • Gain a foundation for using AI technology on big data to enable data-driven decision making within your organization.

Session leaders include senior professors from Smith School of Business and knowledgeable experts from industry. These outstanding teachers are constantly in touch with today's business world through real-world business experience, Board memberships and their own consulting practices.

Yuri Levin

Yuri Levin is the Stephen J.R. Smith Chair of Analytics at Smith School of Business. He is the Executive Director of Analytics and AI and the founding Director of the Scotiabank Centre for Customer Analytic. Previously, he was the founding Director of Queen’s Master of Management Analytics program.

In 2016, he was named by Poets and Quants as one of the Top 40 Professors Under 40 Worldwide. He teaches analytical decision making, strategic analytics, and pricing analytics courses in MBA, MMA, and Executive Education programmes. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Rutgers University in the US where he taught in different MBA programmes for 3 years before joining Queen's in 2002.

Yuri was the 2013 and 2014 recipient of the MBA Professor of the Year Award and the 2014 and 2015 recipient of the Master of Management Analytics Professor of the Year Award. He has developed innovative approaches and published widely in the general area of revenue management and dynamic pricing. He was a co-winner of 2013 INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Practice Prize for pricing and promotions analysis at Molson Coors Brewing Company and a co-winner of 2009 INFORMS COIN-OR Cup for applications of COIN-OR technologies in development of novel techniques for cargo capacity management and dynamic pricing. He was also the 2010 recipient of Queen's School of Business Award for Research Achievement and 2003 New Researcher Achievement Award.

Yuri is an Associate Editor of Operations Research. He served as Chair of INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing section, Associate Editor of Management Science, and was a Guest Editor of the special issue of European Journal of Operational Research on Revenue Management and Dynamic Pricing. Yuri's research has been funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada. Yuri has consulted widely on consumer behavior modeling and optimization of pricing and developed corporate training programmes in strategic analytics, analytical decision making, and strategic pricing optimization. Clients include: ScotiaBank, TD Bank, Loblaws, LoyaltyOne, Fox News, Rio Tinto, McDonalds, Molson.

Elspeth Murray

Elspeth Murray has served as the Associate Dean - MBA and Masters Programs since 2012, and has been a professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Smith School of Business since 1996. She also holds the CIBC Fellowship in Entrepreneurship, and founded Queen's Centre for Business Venturing. Prior to joining Queen's, she worked in industry for 7 years for several firms including IBM, and Canadian Tire. As an integral part of her work in the strategy and new venture fields, Dr. Murray specializes in the management of change. In 2002, she co-authored a best-selling book, Fast Forward: Organizational Change in 100 Days, Oxford University Press, with Dr. Peter Richardson. She has recently co-developed (with Dr. David Saunders) the Analytics Climate Assessment Tool (ACAT), which is used to assess organizations technological capacity, skill sets, and analytics culture. Current research is focused on best practices in leading and managing change to create an analytics culture.

Dr. Murray teaches on many Smith MBA and Executive Education programs, and consults widely with a diversity of firms including BMW, Detour Gold, Wawanesa Insurance, Versacold Logistics and the Auditor General for Canada. She serves as a Director for several firms and is an advisor to several start-ups and CEO's. Dr. Murray received an undergraduate degree in computer science and mathematics, and an MBA, both from Queen's University. Her doctorate in Strategy and Management Information Systems was completed at the Richard Ivey School of Business.

David Saunders

David Saunders has served as Dean of Smith School of Business since July 2003. Under his strategic leadership the School has experienced dramatic growth, including the addition of new and innovative MBA, professional Masters and executive education programs. To keep pace with this growth, he oversaw significant expansions of the school’s Toronto and Kingston campuses, and the naming of the Smith School of Business after a $50 million gift from Stephen J.R. Smith.

In support of Smith's mission to develop outstanding leaders with a global perspective, Dr. Saunders has internationalized the School, adding 80 strategic partnerships around the globe. Under his leadership Smith School of Business forged exclusive relationships with IBM to create The Cube, Canada’s first demonstration centre for IBM Watson and Bluemix technologies, and with the Canadian Olympic Committee, to provide business education to Canadian Olympic athletes and national sports federations.

Dr. Saunders (with Dr. Elspeth Murray) has developed the Analytics Climate Assessment Tool (ACAT), which is used to assess organizations technological capacity, skill sets, and analytics culture to compete effectively with business analytics in the era of Big Data. ACAT guides the creation of tailored executive education programs to enhance organizations analytics culture, strategy, and leadership.

In addition to teaching numerous executive education programs, he has consulted to many diverse organizations throughout his career, including Bantrel; Oerlikon Aerospace Hydro-Québec; Teleglobe Canada; Lantic Sugar; Computer Imaging and Graphics; International Aviation Management Training Institute (IAMTI); Institute of Canadian Bankers (ICB); and Royal Victoria Hospital.

Dr. Saunders has a rich background as a researcher, and is co-author of the world's three largest selling negotiation textbooks, among numerous other books and papers. He earned a PhD in social psychology from Western University in Canada.

Stephen Thomas

Dr. Stephen W. Thomas is an adjunct professor at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON, Canada. He is also the Director of the Queen’s Master of Management Analytics program, and the inaugural Director of the Queen’s Master of Management in Artificial Intelligence program.

Steve holds PhD, MSc, and BSc degrees in Computer Science. His main research interests are analytics, machine learning, and natural language processing. His research has been published in leading journals including IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Empirical Software Engineering, and others. He is a recipient of the Scotiabank Scholar research grant.

At Smith, Steve teaches courses on natural language processing, machine learning, database design, big data, and mathematical analysis in Smith’s Commerce, MMA, MMAI, MBA, and Executive Education programs. He was named the Professor of the Year in the MMA program in 2017 and 2018. He serves on the MMA advisory board.

Steve previously ran a tech startup in the world of big data, and before that, held an industrial operations research position at Raytheon. He has consulted widely on the topics of big data, text analytics, and machine learning.

Enroll Now
Katie Parks

Speak to a member of our team.
Call 1.888.393.2338 or Chat live
Monday to Friday. 8:30 am - 4:00 pm EDT

Upcoming Sessions

    Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    SmithToronto, Suite 3020
    200 Front St West
  • Jan 21 to Jan 23

Fees

$4,950 CAD (plus applicable taxes)