Business and Financial Modeling
“This Business and Financial Modeling Specialization gives learners around the globe the chance to develop business ideas, improve their circumstances, and change their lives with skills taught by the world class faculty here at Wharton.”
– Geoffrey Garrett, Former Dean of The Wharton School
Wharton’s Business and Financial Modeling specialization is designed to teach you financial modeling and valuation skills that will help you make informed business and financial decisions. These foundational courses will introduce you to spreadsheet models, modeling techniques, and common applications for investment analysis, company valuation, forecasting, and more. They will provide you with the opportunity to learn core quantitative skills required to analyze data.
The Business and Financial Modeling online program will feature a Capstone project that allows participants to apply their knowledge to the real world. Learners will work with datasets from Wharton Research Data Services, or WRDS, the leading data research platform and business intelligence tool for over 30,000 corporate, academic, government and nonprofit clients in 33 countries, and will receive feedback from Wharton data experts.
When you complete this specialization, you’ll be ready to use your own data to describe realities, build scenarios, and predict performance.
Why Study Business and Financial Modeling?
Acquiring financial modeling and valuation skills has become essential for finance professionals and entrepreneurs across industries. Both big and small businesses use quantitative models to:
- Forecast and predict future business needs
- Raise debt and/or equity
- Identify financial risks and/or corporate development opportunitie
- Analyze the quality of earnings and investments
- Determine the value of businesses
- Analyze mergers and acquisitions
- Raise capital
Program Details
Start Dates:
Immediately
Duration:
3-4 weeks per course
Commitment:
5-7 hours per week
Program Format:
100% Online
Program Tuition:
$79/month
READY TO START?
Business and Financial Modeling Specialization Courses
FUNDAMENTALS OF QUANTITATIVE MODELING
$79/month
Duration: 4 weeks (1-3 hours/week)
Fundamentals of Quantitative Modeling is designed to help you understand the fundamentals of this critical, foundational, business skill. Through a series of short lectures, demonstrations, and assignments, you’ll learn the key ideas and process of quantitative modeling so that you can begin to create your own models for your own business or enterprise.
INTRODUCTION TO SPREADSHEETS AND MODELS
$79/month
Duration: 4 weeks (1-3 hours/week)
Major corporations and small businesses alike use spreadsheet models to determine where key measures of their success are now, and where they are likely to be in the future. This course is designed to teach you to harness the power of spreadsheets to map the data you have now and to predict the data you may have in the future.
MODELING RISK AND REALITIES
$79/month
Duration: 4 weeks (1-3 hours/week)
In this course, you’ll learn how to create quantitative models to reflect complex realities, and how to include in your model elements of risk and uncertainty. You’ll also learn methods for creating predictive models to identify optimal choices, and the basics of the measurement and management of risk.
DECISION-MAKING AND SCENARIOS
$79/month
Duration: 4 weeks (1-3 hours/week)
Two of Wharton’s most acclaimed professors will show you the step-by-step processes of modeling common business and financial scenarios, so you can significantly improve your ability to structure complex problems and derive useful insights about alternatives.
BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL MODELING CAPSTONE
$79/month
Duration: 4 weeks (1-3 hours/week)
The Business and Financial Modeling Capstone will give you the opportunity to construct and implement quantitative models using data from the same award-winning platform used by companies like S&P Capital IQ, CRSP, NYSE, and Thomson Reuters.
Key Certificate Program Takeaways
Participants will learn how to:
- Create quantitative models that reflect real-world elements, like risk and uncertainty
- Use models to facilitate decision-making for optimum results
- Use Excel or Sheets to build models and decision trees
Business and Financial Modeling Faculty
The online Business and Financial Modeling Certificate is led by senior Wharton professors, including Bob Holthausen, Rick Lambert, Sergei Savin, Senthil Veeraraghavan and Richard Waterman. Their work has appeared in leading journals, including Management Science, Operations Research, and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, among others.
They have also published books such as Financial Literacy for Managers: Finance and Accounting for Better Decision-Making and Corporate Valuation: Theory, Practice and Evidence.
Faculty research interests include:
- Capacity and patient flow management in healthcare operations
- Categorical data analysis
- Diffusion models for new products and services
- Cost analysis
- Effects of organizational structure on financial performance
- Empirical operations management
- Environmental statistics
- Financial reporting
- Management compensation issues
- Non-traditional adult learners
- Operations analytics
- Operations management
- Operations strategy
- Pricing and revenue management
- Revenue management
- Service operations management
Sergei Savin, PhD
Associate Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions, The Wharton School
Research Interests: Capacity and patient flow management in health care operations, diffusion models for new products and services, revenue management
Senthil Veeraraghavan, PhD
Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions, The Wharton School
Research Interests: Empirical operations management, operations analytics, operations management, operations strategy, pricing and revenue management, service operations management, supply chain management
Richard Paul Waterman
Practice Professor of Statistics, The Wharton School
Research Interests: Categorical data analysis, environmental statistics, likelihood methods
Richard Lambert, PhD
Miller-Sherrerd Professor; Professor of Accounting, The Wharton School
Research Interests: Financial reporting, cost analysis, incentive compensation plans
Robert Holthausen, PhD
The Nomura Securities Co. Professor; Professor of Accounting; Professor of Finance, The Wharton School
Research Interests: Effects of organizational structure on financial performance, management compensation issues, valuation
Don Huesman
Former Managing Director of Wharton Online
Research Interests: Higher education management, technology enabled learning environments, non-traditional adult learners
