Master's programme in Controlling & Business Intelligence
What works in corporate training I also pass on to future controllers. In the part-time Master's programme “Controlling & Business Intelligence” at FH Wiener Neustadt I teach two courses: Controlling & BI Tools and Business Reporting & Dashboarding – practical, with real-world questions and with AI as an integral part.
Thomas Patloch, MA HSG, is Senior Data & Business Intelligence Manager at A1 Telekom Austria AG. Before that he worked for many years as a management consultant for finance and controlling, and he studied at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) with a focus on finance and controlling.
At FH Wiener Neustadt he teaches Controlling & BI Tools in the first semester and Business Reporting & Dashboarding in the second. One focus is the use of AI in controlling: students build their own management dashboards with AI assistants and present them at the end in a dashboarding competition. As an author he writes about reporting, dashboarding and BI software, including in the journal CFO aktuell.
The toolkit for modern controlling: Excel for controllers (consolidation, functions, pivot tables, slicers), cost accounting analyses, perception-optimised report design and best-practice charts. Then an introduction to Power BI with analytical data modelling (star and snowflake schema) and DAX measures.
From dataset to management dashboard: visualisation with Power BI, interactivity, storytelling and layout. Plus how AI is changing reporting: in a dashboard challenge, student groups use AI to build a management dashboard for a fictitious Viennese hotel – with live data, forecast and plan-vs-actual comparison.
For students: You can reach the exercises and live polls directly via the QR code on the slides during class.