Harness the power of Business Analytics with this online program by BITS Pilani

Since the beginning of the 21st century, digitisation has impacted the way we carry out many of our core activities, right from business to entertainment, causing an explosion in the availability of data across sectors and geographies.

With businesses scouting for new avenues of growth over the years, they’ve realised that insights gathered from analysing this data will be an indispensable part of their growth journey. And powering the gathering of these insights is Business Analytics — the skillful use of deep analytical skills, data visualisation tools, business knowledge and critical problem-solving expertise to efficiently and effectively make sound, data-driven decisions that give businesses a competitive edge.

According to a report by MicroStrategy, a significant number of companies are using Business Analytics to boost process and cost efficiency, drive strategy, monitor change and improve their financial performance. In fact, close to 70 percent of these companies stated that they will increase their investments in data and analytics in the coming years.

The growth lever of the future

Business Analytics can be leveraged to identify trends and patterns from historical data, forecast future outcomes and trends, and test various alternatives to help choose outcomes that yield the best results. From manufacturing to the services sector, and from HR to marketing verticals, professionals are leveraging Business Analytics to enhance their efficiency to usher in a new era of growth. Here's how:

Improving decision-making: From tweaking marketing campaigns to maximising their engagement, to optimising a company’s product mix and its various features based on customer feedback, Business Analytics can help steer organisations towards the best possible decisions at a faster pace.

For example: Based on customer data, the American retail behemoth, Target, tweaked its product recommendations, sales banners and other forms of outreach to a high level of customisation and successfully drove sales growth.

Boosting productivity: Business Analytics can help amplify the effectiveness of internal functions. It can also help with decluttering any bottlenecks or inefficiencies, which saves time, costs and other resources. Take Amazon for example. In order to fulfill orders as quickly as possible, the ecommerce behemoth takes advantage of its massive data systems to choose the warehouse that is nearest to the vendor and the customer. As a result, shipping costs fall down by 10 to 40 percent. Additionally, it also leverages Business Analytics to optimise the product groupings to further slash shipping costs.

Staying on top of market trends: Business Analytics can be used to give key insights on consumer behaviour and market trends of the future. Such insights can be used to gain the first-mover’s advantage across untapped markets, or help better prepare themselves to pivot to the next growth opportunity. In fact, Netflix, one the most popular Over The Top (OTT) platforms, used the insights it gathered from its customer data and viewing patterns to invest in original series that become trend makers and continue to drive subscription rates across the world.

Tracking important targets: With Business Analytics, one can easily track the current and past performance against key performance indicators (KPIs). This visualisation of an organisation's goals and objectives can help them stay on track or go back to the drawing board to boost efficiencies in the required areas.

Professionals who regularly analyse a business through its internal databases cultivate the discipline of asking the right questions, and structuring them in a manner that can be answered with precision and accuracy, which is often the beginning of immense growth opportunities for an organisation. In short: Business Analytics allows professionals to more fully capitalise on their domain expertise, which gives them a unique competitive edge.

Am I eligible to ride the Business Analytics wave?

There is no question that more and more businesses are going to leverage the power of analytics to achieve the next level of growth. According to an IDC report, the revenue from the Business Analytics market is expected to shoot up to $274 billion by 2022. In fact, LinkedIn listed Business Analysis as one of the skills companies need most in 2019.

While the term Business Analytics seems to suggest that it would be the exclusive domain of those with advanced knowledge of mathematics and statistics, it is far from it. Professionals that work in a diverse array of verticals, including marketing, finance, HR, supply chain, and operations verticals, among others, are leveraging Business Analytics across their respective verticals to drive a new wave of growth.

Those who are interested in learning how to use new tools, and have strong analytical and critical thinking skills that they would like to use to uncover insights from data can develop the skills to enter the Business Analytics arena.

To help early and mid-level professionals harness the power of Analytics and accelerate career growth within their respective verticals, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani offers a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Analytics for working professionals. During the programme, participants will build expertise in Statistical Methods, Advanced Analytics, and Data Visualisation, while still carrying on with their careers.

Applicants also have the opportunity to choose electives that cater to a vast variety of industry verticals and functions such as finance, project management, HR, marketing, and supply chain and retail. These electives will provide them with the relevant tools and skill sets they would need to deepen their domain expertise to tackle real-world problems and take their verticals to the next level of growth.

To learn more about the BITS Pilani Post Graduate Diploma in Business Analytics, click here