CAP-Essentials Certification

Coming Spring 2025

CAP-E: The New Standard in Foundational Analytics Certification!  

Unified analytics framework for all employees  

The CAP-Essentials (CAP-E) certification represents the cornerstone of analytics competency, validating the crucial building blocks and foundation of analytics knowledge and business understanding required for successful analytics projects. Show employers you have more than just technical skills, you can align analytics projects with smarter business decisions. Showcase your analytics expertise with a digital badge. 

Who Should seek CAP-Essentials Certification? 

• Students and early-career professionals who want to show they understand more than just technical tools. Validates your grasp of the complete analytics process and your ability to meaningfully contribute to business solutions.  

• Stakeholders and contributors impacted by analytics solutions. Ensures foundational knowledge and organizational alignment on an industry-standard analytics framework.  

What to expect on the exam? 

The exam covers the 7 domains of the INFORMS Analytics Framework. Refer to the CAP-E Exam Blueprint for the detailed list of tasks and responsibilities validated on the exam. 

• Business Problem Framing 

• Analytics Problem Framing 

• Data 

• Methodology Selection 

• Model Building 

• Deployment 

• Lifecycle Management 

Exam questions cover key concept definitions, basic understanding of descriptive and diagnostic analytics, familiarity with analytics terminology, and identification of business problems. 

Who can take the exam? 

The exam is open to anyone who wishes to validate their mastery of essential analytics knowledge. There are no formal education or experience requirements. 

Essential analytics proficiency requires more than spreadsheet analysis and visualization dashboards. It requires statistics, advanced math concepts and understanding the “why” behind the data. 

This certification is for you if you understand: 

• Basic probability 

• Descriptive statistics 

• Proper use of visualization for descriptive statistics 

• Measures of centrality and dispersion 

• Common chart types 

• Regression modeling and basic spreadsheet modeling 

• Models like simulation and optimization 

• What a database is and how it is structured 

• Basic experimental design 

• Basic programming with data manipulation verbs 

• Varying data types 

• Business problem types and identification 

• How to work effectively with stakeholders 

• How to explain an analysis to others 

• Common biases and ethical issues in data sets and algorithms

CAP-Essentials (CAP-E) Beta Exam Resources