Course will address the needs of students considering starting their own business or purchasing and managing a business or franchise. Areas to be covered during the class are as follows: Idea generation ? differentiate or die; discuss the importance of ?differentiation? and why most new businesses underestimate this critical concept. Choosing the appropriate business structure: Limited Liability Company, Subchapter C Corporation, Subchapter S Corporation. Developing the business plan: gathering and preparing the proper information to attract financing. Funding your business: identifying sources of funding such as Venture Capital, Private Equity, partners, lenders. Human resources: hiring your first employee, evaluating potential sales people, choosing incentive programs. Successful marketing strategies: numerous examples of creative and effective marketing decisions propelling companies forward. Successful sales strategies: numerous examples of tactics designed to get consumers to buy. Exit strategies: selling to private firms, going public, maintaining partial ownership while remaining in management.

This course will provide a conceptual framework for accounting for the combination of firms into a single economic entity. Topics include business combination consolidation problems, and accounting for international operations by examining translation of foreign currency financial statements and accounting for foreign currency transactions. Also examines fund and not-for-profit accounting.

This course provides an introduction to business intelligence and analytics, including the processes, methodologies, infrastructure, and current practices used to transform business data into useful information and support business decision-making. Business Intelligence requires foundation knowledge in data models and data retrieval, thus this course will review logical data models for both relational database systems and data warehouses. Students will learn to extract and manipulate data from these systems using Structured Query Language (SQL). This course also covers visualization, reporting, and dashboard design with experiential learning using leading industry applications.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the area of corporate finance and investments. Students will learn about the basic concerns and responsibilities of financial managers, and gain an appreciation of the methods of analysis employed by them. Students will learn both theory and practice of corporate finance and investments.

This course is designed to be highly integrative in that students use knowledge and tools from all functional areas of business to develop a "whole organization" perspective. In addition, they integrate by examining these functions within the context of business and societal environments, such as the competitive, political/legal, socio-cultural, technological, and economic. Furthermore, they integrate and further develop general education knowledge and skills, such as written and oral communications in each course assignment. Finally, the course includes a highly sophisticated online Capstone Simulation "game" whereby students (in teams of four) put their knowledge and skills obtained in all UMass courses and even life experiences into practice by operating a company over an 8-year period and competing with other firms (other teams of students). Students conduct professional business meetings, make professional presentations, and prepare strategic plans for their "simulated" companies. Satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BBA-Acctg, BBA-Finan, BBA-OpInfo, BBA-Mgt, and BBA-Mktg majors.

Description not available at this time

This graduate course provides comprehensive coverage of project management, focusing on the methods and competencies needed to effectively manage projects. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to understand different project management techniques, terminology and trends; define project success measures and methods; improve quality, cost and efficiency with the project management process; and gain basic competency using project management software.

Examines information technology from a business enterprise perspective. Topics include: the components and development of business information technology systems, their use in enhancing and facilitating management practices and decision making and their impact on management decisions.

Provides an overview of different perspectives and approaches to leadership practice and related organizational behavior topics. Relying on a participative multi-learning approach, the course goes beyond traditional leadership practices to examine empowering leadership approaches for addressing contemporary organizational behavior challenges such as leading teams. The overall objective is to increase students' understanding of and ability to apply contemporary leadership and organizational behavior knowledge in work situations.