Why MBA in Business Analytics is a great option to boost your career

Prof Jayanta Chakraborty & Prof Sujit Deb *

Why an MBA student should chose to specialize in Business Analytics? It's a no brainer actually. Today, there is a deluge of data that is being created on everyday basis, all thanks to the popularity of social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Instagram.

The free internet packages offered by Reliance Jio and the rock bottom prices offered by Airtel, Idea, Vodafone, BSNL and others for internet surfing is also creating voluminous data each day, every hour, every minute and every second. As per an IBM estimate, we are creating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day.

For the uninitiated, 1 Quintillion has 18 zeros behind it (1018). And most of the data is in the unstructured form, i.e, in the form of texts, pictures, audio and video. And most of the companies today are seeking to capture, store and analyze this data to understand trends, patterns and occurrences to draw out insights for decision making.

Enter the data scientist. He / She is the person who can do ETL (Extraction, Transformation and Loading), Data Warehousing, Data Mining and Data Visualization to give you the valuable insights by analyzing the structured and unstructured data. There are a plethora of tools like MS Excel, SPSS, SAS, R, IBM Cognos, Oracle Exalytics and IBM Watson who offer the analyst everything from basic spreadsheets to neuro-cognitive mapping and artificial intelligence to help in processing and analyzing the data.

Which tool is better and more effective? Well, it all depends on the complexity of the data that you are handling, the level of accuracy that you seek and the budget that you are ready to commit. IBM Watson, IBM Cognos, Oracle Exalytics and SAS can give you very sophisticated tools that can even handle Big Data; but they are all very expensive to acquire and use. Of course, for specialized Big Data, you need tools like Hadoop, Pig, Hive and MapReduce.

On the other hand, 'R' is a software package which is open source and free and also quite powerful; but then you need to have some programming knowledge to use this tool in the right manner.

Data Mining is now not an option but a compulsion for most organizations. The marketing team has to engage in social listening to understand how their brands are being perceived by the customers and which customers are likely to buy their products. The finance team needs to know whether there is any fraud being committed to siphon off the money. The human resources (HR) team needs to know which employees are dissatisfied and is likely to leave the organization in the short term.

The Data Scientist can actually create predictive models using the available data to forecast the likelihood of which occurrences are going to happen so that organizations can take preventive measures to ring-fence their business interests and protect themselves from sudden and unexpected shocks. IBM has estimated that there is currently a shortage of 1,50,000 data scientists across the world and not enough skilled manpower available to fill up the void.

There are only a handful of Institutions, Colleges and Universities who are teaching and training students to become data scientists. To become a data scientist, you need exhaustive knowledge of mathematics, statistics, quantitative modelling, economics, information technology and software programming. And you actually need to be a person with a cool brain who can process reams of data using the right tools and technologies. With these traits being rare, the demand for data scientists is growing by leaps and bounds, while the supply is falling awfully short.

An MBA in Business Analytics can prepare someone to become a data scientist who can take up the challenging task of analyzing huge volumes of data to draw up incisive inferences. The entry level jobs are available for students who can work on Advanced Excel and do slicing and dicing of data, build Pivot Tables, develop reports on H-LookUp and V-LookUp. The higher level positions are Retail Analyst, Financial Risk Analyst, Fraud Analyst and Human Capital Analyst .

This needs skill in predictive analytics using technologies like SAS, Cognos, HANA or "R". There is also a burgeoning demand for Big Data Analyst. This needs skill and knowledge in Hadoop, Pig, MapReduce and Python. The highest level one can reach in an organization with analyst skill, qualification and knowledge is that of CIO (Chief Information Officer). This is a specialized position where the incumbent plays a key role in decision making and strategy formulation using data analysis.

ICFAI University Tripura (IUT) has always taken the lead when it comes to introducing innovative courses that can create future business leaders and entrepreneurs. Along with offering traditional MBA Courses in Marketing, Finance, Human Resources and Rural Management, this year, we at IUT are offering specializations in Business Analytics, Digital Marketing, Healthcare Management, Supply Chain and Logistics, Hospitality and Tourism Management.

With technology intensive industry demanding trained manpower in Analytics, Digital Marketing and IOT(Internet-of-Things), ICFAI University Tripura has taken special initiatives to set up centres of excellence in technology at the University campus.

Our computer labs have been equipped with softwares like SAS, SPSS and 'R' to give hands on training in Analytics. IUT has done a strategic tie-up with spoken Tutorial Project, IIT Bombay to run a special program on Free Open Source Software (FOSS) to organize learning sessions on cutting edge open source software technologies. ICFAI University Tripura is the North Eastern Hub of the FOSS project of IIT Bombay.

We have also done a tie-up with Texas Instruments (TI) to train the students on IOT (Internet of Things). North East is known for academics with high level of literacy in most of the states in the region. Our mission here in Tripura and North East is to give adequate platforms and scope of learning to the students who want to learn advanced technologies and get good career opportunities.

MBA in Business Analytics and Digital Marketing are such endeavours that we have initiated which will create business and technology leaders of tomorrow and make our region proud of the smart achievers.