Data-driven businesses process an immense amount of data every day. They treat this data as a business asset and leverage it for competitive advantage. As data impacts every department of an organization, consolidation of data through unified analytics creates a positive outlook for an organization by helping tailor marketing campaigns, improve customer satisfaction index, create innovative products and services and boost supply chain operations. It is why Business Analysts are in high demand.
Businesses are leveraging company data to improve operational efficiencies and operating margins. Analytics across the board facilitates visualization, steers data-driven decision-making, and makes insights moiré usable and efficient for business managers. Modeling what-if scenarios from the data trends help understand future outcomes. With sophisticated Business Analytics software powering this space, it is also helping generate machine learning models and sophisticated algorithms to create predictive models and facilitate business decisions.
Learning Business Analytics and its various capabilities across multiple use cases have become almost necessary for IT professionals and business management students. So what are you waiting for? Register for a Business Analytics Bootcamp, learn the in-demand skills, and watch your career grow in one of the hottest domains of Business Analytics.
What is Business Analytics (BA)
Business analytics is a discipline that combines management, computer science, and problem-solving techniques in a business environment. It uses data analysis, statistical models, and other methods for a methodical exploration of an organization’s data for purposes of decision-making. Business Analytics essentially bridges the gap between business and technology by extracting insights for executive use. It implements Big Data, statistical analysis, data visualization, and modeling to bring about organizational change. By learning from the historical data, Business Analytics helps develop recommendations for solving challenges and improving the quality of products and services.
Business Analytics can include any of the following:
- Descriptive analytics, which analyzes historical data to understand how variables respond and tracks key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify the areas that need improvement;
- Predictive analytics, which provides insights on what may happen and analyzes trends and patterns within the data to anticipate future outcomes; and
- Prescriptive analytics, which analyzes past performance and historical data to make recommendations for similar challenges
How to pursue a career in Business Analytics?
The pathway to a career in Business Analytics begins with your academics. Top it with computer knowledge and technical skills, some domain knowledge, business savvy, and a summer internship, and you are all set to go.
Here is a brief outline of the step-wise process you may follow to pursue a career in Business Analytics:
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Focus on Academics
Have a strong academic background, preferably a Degree in Business Data Analysis or finance. As it is about statistical rigor, foundational learning in Mathematics or Statistics would go a long way to help you in your learning path.
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Structured Learning from Universities
Although online courses and Bootcamps are a great place to start your Business Analytics learning, it is most likely that any online course will have knowledge gaps. This is where a Master’s degree or a Ph.D. program would strengthen your academics in a structured manner.
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Online Courses and Bootcamps
You can earn a Master’s certificate through an online MS in Business Analytics degree program from popular online platforms in collaboration with world-renowned universities. However, where a Master’s program is not possible, getting hands-on with popular tools like Python, R, MS Excel, and Minitab can be part of your Business Analytics learning curve. Very often, Business Analyst roles require a high level of technical proficiency. It can be achieved through online courses. Besides, online Bootcamps can be customized to your learning abilities and needs. You have the opportunity to earn advanced certifications in Business Analytics from reputed online platforms. These courses also include operations research and project management, other than business data analysis and predictive analysis.
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Work on Projects
Practice on projects that put into practice your learning and can be used to achieve business outcomes. Check out your competition and market challenges. Determine what data you need to collect and how to clean it. Next, model and analyze the same using custom-built algorithms.
Practice with different types of data: structured and unstructured data like texts, images, audio, or video. Perform statistical analysis, and make predictions. Hone all your soft skills, including decision-making, analytical rigor, trend and anomaly spotting, communications skills, and active persuasion.
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Gain work experience
Work experience can be in the volunteering capacity or a summer internship role with a start-up or company. You get the opportunity to work on multiple Business Analytics projects with transferable skills as the job role of a Business Analyst is quite diversified. Knowledge of business domains and experience working in industries such as finance, banking, eCommerce, and telecommunications is always a bonus.
As an entry-level Business Analyst, any such experience in diverse projects can help you in your Business Analytics career path.
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Build a Business Analyst Portfolio
Display your career-ready skills by building a strong Business Analyst portfolio. Include the projects have worked on, your technical and coding skills, knowledge of tools and technologies, business acumen, and so on.
A well-executed portfolio demonstrates your skills and has the potential to impress your potential Hiring Managers and help you stand above the rest of the applicants.
Business Analytics allows you to choose from among various career paths. So you can opt to become a Data Analyst, Marketing Specialist, Business Analyst, Software Engineer, or other.
Each job role, however, calls for a specific set of skills. To become a Data Analyst, you must have strong mathematical skills and knowledge of statistical analysis. Understanding and use of databases such as SQL and Python are a plus. To be a Software Engineer, you must have experience in programming languages such as Java and C++ and skills with object-oriented programming.
As a Marketing Specialist, an ability to leverage KPIs to develop effective campaigns and manage customer relationships is critical to the job.
Summary
A career in Business Analytics offers immense benefits, such as high salaries, job security, and a range of Business Analyst jobs. Studying Business Analytics courses in 2022 can be a feather in your cap and help you build a future in the data-driven business world.
