The Business Analytics major addresses a predicted 50-60% gap by 2020 in the supply of talent capable of performing deep analytics to address business problems provides data-driven insights. Four trends are fueling data growth and job demand for in-depth analytics: a shift towards data-driven organizations and data-driven decision-making (commonly reported as “Big Data" initiatives in the business press); the exponential growth of structured and unstructured data due to wide-spread usage of mobile devices, cloud computing and online social media; the shift in business computing from "transaction processing" to now include "interaction processing" whereby customer and business partner engagement are facilitated by a growing array of IT -based platforms and associated experiences possible through those platforms; and significant improvements in data software and systems.
Business and governments need sharp, savvy professionals who can help them manage a potentially overwhelming volume of data and a dizzying rate of creation and provide clarity. Harnessing this data will require individuals with specialized skills such as data scientists, data architects, data modelers, data visualizers, and data infrastructure operators. This program covers data warehousing, dimensional modeling, big-data analytics methods, and visualization tools and techniques, and it introduces topics such as data mining and predictive analytics. Graduates of this program will serve as architects, change agents and analytics tool suite operators for business and government. They will be able to analyze data and use the findings to guide organizational decision-making.
