In our latest success story, we explore how London Business School partnered with Thinqi to design and deliver a fully online programme that equips professionals worldwide with practical analytics and Generative AI skills — achieving near-perfect pass rates and NPS scores of up to 81%.

Meeting the demands of a fast-moving world

London Business School attracts ambitious professionals from every continent — executives, consultants, analysts, and entrepreneurs who are already stretched thin. For these learners, the challenge is not motivation; it is time. Traditional classroom formats, fixed schedules, and geographic constraints make it extraordinarily difficult for working professionals to develop new skills without stepping away from their careers.

The business world was also changing fast beneath their feet. Analytics capability was no longer a specialism — it had become a baselineexpectation. And then generative AI arrived, reshaping entire industries almost overnight. Organisations that had been building data literacy programmessuddenly found they needed something more: the confidence and competence toapply AI tools responsibly and effectively to real business problems.

LBS saw the opportunity clearly. Two pressing needs —flexible, world-class learning and practical AI capability — could be addressedin a single, purpose-built programme. The question was how to deliver it at the quality and rigour LBS is known for, entirely online, to a global audience.

Designing a programme built for professionals, not classrooms

The result was Business Analytics in the Age of Generative AI (BAGAI) — a fully online distance learning programme designed from the ground up to fit around demanding careers rather than compete with them. Delivered through the Thinqi learning platform, BAGAI removes the barriers of geography, time zones, and rigid scheduling that exclude so many professionals from high-quality development.

The programme is structured around modular, chunked content that progresses from foundational analytics concepts through to advanced AI application. Learners engage with a rich blend of screencasts, videos, quizzes, and case-based assignments — giving them multiple ways to absorb and apply new knowledge. Live weekly sessions and informal jam sessions with faculty ensure that the benefits of real-time interaction are preserved, even across continents.

At the heart of the programme is something genuinely original: hands-on, faculty-led exploration of GPT-4 applied to real datasets. Professor Nicos Savva demonstrates live how ChatGPT-4 can be used to explore data, build models, and refine prompts — combining practical datasets drawn from London housing markets and whisky industry challenges with historical case studies such as Florence Nightingale and Sealy Gosset. The result is a programme that bridges theory, history, and immediate modern application in a way that few courses manage.

"Finally, a course with practical applications in real life. This course has helped me be more efficient, create new tools, and find new ideas at work."

A seamless experience from first login to final assignment

The choice of Thinqi as the delivery platform was central to making the programme work as a cohesive learning journey rather than a collection of disconnected resources. Everything learners need — live session reminders, assignments, recordings, discussion forums, and follow-up content — is housed in a single, intuitive environment. For faculty and programme managers, Thinqi's built-in content creation tools make it straightforward to design, update, and deliver rich media experiences without relying on technical specialists.

Learners noticed the difference immediately.

"The platform is very easy to use and nicely designed… everything I needed was right there."

"Dueto a hectic schedule, I had to do the entire course on my own time. The coursewas well structured, easy to navigate and understand during my self-learning sessions."

Support is layered throughout the experience. Dedicated learning managers, operating at a 1:30 ratio, guide learners through content-related queries and facilitate peer discussions. Programme managers serve as the first point of contact and are consistently praised for their responsiveness. Faculty receive effectiveness scores of between 4.8 and 4.9 out of 5. The platform ensures that recordings are always accessible, no learnermisses a session, and communication is centralised — removing the friction thatcauses drop-off in so many online programmes.

Building a genuinely global learning community

One of the programme's most distinctive achievements is the quality of peer connection it fosters across a globally dispersed cohort. Discussion forums within Thinqi enable asynchronous exchange across industries and time zones, whilst live sessions create space for real-time collaboration and debate. Learners have taken this further themselves, forming WhatsAppgroups to sustain the connections and conversations that begin within theprogramme.

"One of the highlights was the opportunity to connect and collaborate with fellow participants from diverse professional backgrounds."

This is not an incidental benefit. For professionals making a significant investment in their development, the networks formed during a programme often prove as valuable as the content itself. BAGAI has created anenvironment where that kind of connection happens naturally — which is no smallfeat in a fully online setting.

Results that speak for themselves

The outcomes across multiple cohorts are consistently strong:

Programme ratings of 4.5–4.7 out of 5 across cohorts.

Net Promoter Scores of 81%, 63.6%, and 76%.

Pass rates of approximately 99%.

16 of 18 participants in one cohort rated the platform as easy to use.

But the metric that matters most is what learners do differently when they return to work. Participants report using k-means clustering for customer segmentation, building predictive models with AI, and approaching data-driven decisions with a confidence they simply did not have before.

"This course has been a game-changer. It expertly combines core business analytics concepts with the power of generative AI, making advanced analysis accessible—even for non-technical professionals."

A partnership built on raising the bar for online learning

At Thinqi, we are proud to support institutions like London Business School — those willing to reimagine what online learning can be and deliver it to a genuinely global audience. BAGAI demonstrates that distance learning does not require compromise. With the right design, the right platform, and the right academic vision, it is possible to create experiences that rival — and in some respects surpass — what happens in a physical classroom.

The programme has already been recognised externally, winning silver at the Learning Technologies 2025 award for the Best Online Distance Learning Programme award, and the results across every cohort point to an initiative that is only getting stronger. With near-perfect pass rates, learners applying new skills immediately in the workplace, and a community that extends well beyond the final session, LBS and Thinqi have built something that genuinely advances the profession of business analytics — one online learner at a time.

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