Great Lakes introduces a Specialization in Business Analytics:
Great Lakes Institute of management, Chennai, has decided on introducing a new specialization in Business Analytics, in addition to the already existing specializations in HR, Marketing, Finance and IT/Ops, this year. This new specialization will be focusing on the current market needs while equipping the students with the much in demand knowledge and skill set. Now, before going into the scope of this specialization, let us first understand what basically the subject is all about.
What is BA?
Business analytics(BA) refers to the skills, technologies, applications and practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning.
It makes extensive use of data, statistical and quantitative analysis, explanatory and predictive modeling, and fact-based management to drive decision making. It is therefore closely related to management science. Analytics may be used as input for human decisions or may drive fully automated decisions. It can answer questions like why this is happening, what if these trends continue, what is likely to happen next (that is, predict), what is the best that can happen (that is, optimize), etc.
Why Business Analytics?
The modern IT environment generates massive amounts of data (Big Data), which is only continuing to grow exponentially with continued innovation revolving around digital technologies. At this rate, there will soon be a shortage of talented analysts who can help organizations work with this much big data. McKinsey Global Institute's Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity estimates that by 2018, “the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions.” Thus, an increasing demand of people who have knowledge in the domain.
A few applications areas of BA:
1)Consumer behavior, social network and sentiment analysis.
2) Recommendation systems 3)
3) Fraud and crime detection
4) Cyber security, libraries and network security 5)5)5)
5) Healthcare delivery, healthcare fraud and health sciences (e.g. genomics)
6) Market basket analysis.
7) Supply chain and finance
More on the subject:
Analytic firms have shifted their focus from serving everyone, to serving a particular industry. The idea is very simple: Learn about one specific industry and optimize the analytics offering. Also, the idea that 'You cannot analyze what you do not collect' has gained popularity. Thus, collection of rich data has become critical. It has resulted in better data collection efforts, and emphasis is rendered to generation and storage of data. The industry has realized that they need to design data analysis into their systems.
Up until now, organizations used business intelligence (BI) to get the information required from data buried into various internal systems. However, this was just information & decision makers had the reactive approach to deal with such situations. Here is where Business Analytics came into play. It is not reporting of past data or what is happening now, but giving organizations the forward look at the business.
It can answers questions like:
1) How do we get more insights about our customers?
2) What if we change the price or service of the products?
3) What will be the impact on our customers?
4) How do we target our most profitable customers? 5)
5) How do we detect frauds? 6)
6) Which of the customers are likely to leave us in future?
The FUTURE:
Business Analytics will to take information from operational and tactical decision-making input to a level where strategic decision-making feeds on analytics. Value add through analytics would not just be a discovery; it will be a function with results measured and acted upon. Integration efforts will focus on return on investment with increasing need for analytic results as a starting point towards the critical next steps of action and measurement.
Companies like Genpact, MuSigma and Accenture employ thousands of data scientists who provide analytics expertise to clients around the world. Companies like Walmart, IBM, HP, Bazaarvoice and Chevron, all of whom are heavy users of data analytics, have expressed an interest in hiring experts in this domain.
With the tip of iceberg recognized, it's the beginning of new era in business. It appears quantitative, and not just qualitative inputs will make an organization successful in the market place. Use of relevant data will tell stories of success and failures, and help identify arenas for future growth.
BA as a specialization in Great Lakes Institute of Management:
B-Schools in the west have all started offering BA as a major in the last 1 or 2 years and we are not far behind. From this year onwards, BA would be offered as one of the specializations here too. Noted Professors like Dr. Sreenu Srinivasan (Stanford), Dr. P.K. Kanan, (University of Maryland), Dr. Ram Janakiraman (Texas A & M) would be the faculty who will be teaching some of the courses in this elective.
This introduction is based on the earlier mentioned factors, as well as various other studies, which show the emergence of a new trend that justifies the high demand for analytics talent. According to one such studies (Analytics India Industry Study-2012), Indian corporate are adopting analytics pretty fast. Data analysis revealed that Bangalore led the way for other Indian cities, providing the first analytics centers. Gradually, cities, such as Delhi/Gurgaon (NCR), Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune, emerged as good breeding grounds in India for global companies to set up their analytics centers of excellence. NCR now accounts 29% of all employees working in analytics area, closely followed by Bangalore (26%) and Mumbai (21%). Current trends indicate that use of analytics has become wide spread in domains like banking, credit, insurance, retail, e-commerce, telecom, healthcare, education and sports.
It is therefore no wonder that a large number of organizations are trying to equip their employees with data analysis skills. Over the years, adoption of analytics and business intelligence and the market in India will grow at a rapid pace catering to both domestic and international markets. This very fact was recognized by us and has been one of the governing factors for the introduction of BA Specialization. Also, the fact that companies have already started Analytics as an in-house activity will only help serve students specializing in BA have an edge over others, since, quite obviously, the companies would find it easier to integrate such domain specific knowledge equipped managers in their businesses.
What the Course has to offer to the students here:
The course, as mentioned earlier, would equip the students with business ready skill sets and domain specific knowledge, which is very high in demand in the market today. It'll also help them develop the deep quantitative capabilities and technical expertise to create business and social value by extracting useful insights and applying them in a variety of career settings. In terms of gaining knowledge, the subject is both challenging, in the fact that it involves finding answers to questions like how to target the most profitable customers, what would happen if the prices or services of the products are changed, and interesting. It'll broaden their horizons and enhance their analytical skills.
From the placements point of view, as mentioned earlier, they'll be having a huge advantage over others up for a career in Analytics. Companies have already started analytics as an in-house activity and guess who would be their first choice when they come for recruitment - the ones majoring in this particular specialization, quite obviously. And the fact that it is only the beginning, and the demand would increase tremendously in future, only helps! Great Lakes, in addition to value enhancement, would provide a fine platform for these students to be able to be recognized by the industry looking for people with such domain specific knowledge and skill set.
