Business Analytics

Business analytics is a quantitative approach to business, driven by the intelligent use of data and mathematical models.  Practitioners leverage methods from statistics and operations research to form insights and make decisions that improve business performance.

Business analytics is crucial to a broad range of industries.  Banks need to perform credit risk analysis and analyze streaming transactions in real time to quickly identify potential fraud. Utility companies need to analyze energy usage data to gain a better understanding of demand patterns. Retailers need to perform markdown optimizations, firm-wide liquidity management, and understand the social sentiment around their products and markets to develop more effective campaigns and promotions.  Business Analytics helps such organizations uncover insights from big data, build models that relate actions to consequences, and perform optimization and simulation analyses that lead to quality decisions and better outcomes in shorter times.

The job opportunities for graduates with data analytical skills have never been more numerous.  According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business-analyst jobs are predicted to increase by 22 percent by 2020.  A recent study by McKinsey & Company shows that the United States could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 professionals with deep analytical skills by 2018. The proposed business analytics concentration is designed to cater to this need by equipping our undergraduates with the skills needed to crunch huge data sets into meaningful information to further facilitate smart business decision-making.

Quantitative analyst 

Many business functions, such as marketing, logistics, and operations management, are becoming more data intensive and mathematically sophisticated.  The Business Analytics curriculum will equip students with the quantitative tools to become capable business analysts.

Business manager 

As the business environment becomes increasingly data-driven, the next generation of business managers will require not only leadership skills, but also analytical skills to succeed.  The manager with training in Business Analytics will approach decision making from an optimization perspective and will be an intelligent consumer of data analyses.

Analytics Bridge 

The Business Analytics concentration emphasizes effective communication of technical information, particularly to non-technical audiences.  This training will prepare students to be the bridge between an organization’s upper management levels and its analytics team or to be the liaison to outside analytics consultants.

Visit the University catalog for a list of courses and descriptions.