Business Analytics
Concentration
Overview
Modern enterprises work with millions of pieces of data – about past and current customers, prospects, suppliers, inventories, operations, and internal processes. They utilize this data to make better decisions – about retaining existing customers and generating new ones, about improving the sourcing of their commodities and goods, locating their personnel, managing inventory to meet actual market demands, and about making their operations more efficient to reduce costs. The discipline of business analytics enables companies to translate data into intelligence and drive decisions – for example, segmenting customers by age, demographics, interests may help to anticipate desired products and services and bring them to market before these customers even start thinking about purchasing them. The Big Data and analytics market is projected to grow to $203 billion by 2020. According to the World Economic Forum, the digital universe is estimated to reach 44 zettabytes – “40 times more bytes than there are stars in the observable universe.”
The program is designed to produce graduates for new and emerging careers within this market. Students will learn the fundamentals of marketing analytics, data science and management, business statistics, applied regression, data mining, forecasting and modeling, and business strategy.
According to BLS data, the median wage for management analysts was $83,610 in 2018 and these jobs are projected to grow 14% – much faster than average – during 2018-28. The median wage for financial analysts in 2018 was $85,660, and job growth was projected at 6%. The median wage for financial managers was $127,990 in 2018 and these jobs are projected to grow 16% in the next decade.