Emerging Trends – Business Analytics

The Need: The amount of data being generated globally increases by 40 percent a year, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, the consulting firm’s research arm. Gartner predicts that data will grow 800 percent over the next five years and 80 percent of the data will be unstructured. International Institute for Analytics predicts that “Big data analytics will top all other areas of growth in analytics during 2012 due to the rapid expansion of social, mobile, location and transaction-based data taken in by various industries. As the volume of enterprise data sky-rockets, an industry is growing up around using this flood of information to help companies operate more efficiently and sustainably.

Companies increasingly will be deploying sophisticated software as a key component of their sustainability strategy. Mu Sigma, for example, an Indian firm providing data analytics and decision support services for global enterprise, secured a $108 million investment round led by General Atlantic. My smartphone produces a huge amount of data, my car produces ridiculous amounts of really valuable data, my house is throwing off data, everything is making data,” said Erik Swan, 47, cofounder of Splunk, a San Francisco-based start-up whose software indexes vast quantities of machine-generated data into searchable links. Companies search those links, as one searches Google, to analyze customer behavior in real time.

Splunk is among a crop of enterprise software start-up companies that analyze big data and are establishing themselves in territory long controlled by giant business-technology vendors like Oracle and I. B. M. Founded in 2004, before the term “big data” had worked its way into the vocabulary of Silicon Valley, Splunk now has some 3,200 customers in more than 75 countries, including more than half the Fortune 100 companies. The Usage: Here’s an unsubstantiated anecdote: “There’s a cell service provider in Japan that collects GPS data from cell phone users. The cell provider collects the data in real time, and keeps track of which people are walking the furthest. Once a month, the cell provider gives an award to the walker who covered the greatest distance.

In a way, cell phones are working like sensors to collect and analyze streaming big data. ” “Imagine a consumer walking around downtown in a city, shopping. Now imagine letting a shopping service know where he is, plus maybe the kinds of goods he is looking for. As I walk, the GPS coordinates could stream to the shopping service, and it could point him to stores that match his interests. ” “A lot of people know how to work with data,” observed Anand Rajaraman, “but now there is a lot more data so the kinds of things you can do with it and the way you work with it can are very different. The founder of companies which have been acquired by Amazon and Walmart, Rajaraman is now senior vice president at Walmart Global e-commerce and co-founder @WalmartLabs, and a professor at Stanford. Traditional users of large amounts of Data — retail, telecom and intelligence — are already comfortable with it. The next big set of users is in mobile-social, especially incorporating geolocation. Some areas have been underserved, such as health care, which is described as the third rail because it has been too hard and too slow.

But now health care is experiencing a fundamental change similar to what retail felt when customers came in armed with smart phones and had more information than sales people. Patients are starting to acquire more information and health care providers are developing more analytics. The Education: To arrive at solutions on how to perceive, derive, collate, store, sort and use data for business decisions is Data Analytics. All areas of commerce, business, economics and sciences are using data analysis to arrive at solutions.

To do this there is a certain skill set that has to be created, the science of teaching this has grown into what academic institutions call Data Analytics or Business Intelligence programs. The institutions that have taken on the mantle of teaching data analytics are the management institutions with inputs from their engineering, mathematics and statistics departments creating interdisciplinary programs to acquire data mining and interpreting skills. Most management institutions are at the forefront on this learning derivative because business now believes that this skill will be critical to improving their penetration and profitability.

The Education programs train students on: Data Collection and Integration Processes for Enterprise Decision Making Advanced Data Analysis Database Management Web Analytics Marketing Analytics Process Optimization Text Mining The Nomenclature of Education Programs: Masters of Science in Analytics Masters of Science in Predictive Analytics Masters of Science in Business Intelligence Masters of Science in Business Analytics Masters of Science in Data Mining Certification in Data Analytics Duration of the Program: 10 months to 18 months Statistical Methods and Models Predictive Analytics Advanced Statistics Financial Analysis Predictive Modeling Data Warehousing Data Mining Techniques Mining Genomics Data Some of the Indian Institutions that are helping students gain data analytic skills are: Institutions Indian Institute of Science http://www. mgmt. iisc. ernet. in

Location Bangalore Program Name Master of Management Program Length 24 Months (Full Time) Contact Details Department of Management Studies IISC Bangalore 560 012 Phone: +91-80-2293 2567 (Office) Fax: +91-80-2360 4534 E-mail: office@mgmt. iisc. ernet. in The Administrative Officer Executive Education Programmes IIM Bangalore, Bannerghatta Road, Bangalore 560 076 Phone : +91-80-26993475 /3660/ 3264 /3742 Fax : +91-80 – 26584004 / 26584050 E-mail : openpro@iimb. ernet. n Admissions Office Indian School of Business Gachibowli, Hyderabad-500032 Phone: +91 40 2318 7474 /7484 /7494 Fax: +91 40 2300 7099 Admissions office Address: Praxis Business School, Next to Akademia International School, Bakrahat Road, P. O. Rasapunja, Kolkata – 700104 Phone: +91 98368 77599/ +9133 24980553/4 E-mail: admissions@praxis. ac. in Indian Institute of Management Bangalore http://www. iimb. ernet. in Bangalore Certificate Programme on Business Analytics and Intelligence 12 Months (Part Time) Indian School of Business http://www. isb. edu/ Hyderabad Part of the MBA program Analytics Labs (only for enrolled MBA students) 12 Months (Full Time) Praxis Business School http://praxis. ac. in (Knowledge Partners PWC and ICICI) Kolkata Post Graduate Program in Business Analytics

Some International Programs offering Business Analytics: 1. In 2007, North Carolina State University began offering the first graduate degree in Analytics. In just 10 months, students can earn a Master of Science in Analytics through the university’s Institute for Advanced Analytics. The degree program addresses data collection and integration, statistical methods and models and complex processes for enterprise decision making. 2. In 2010, DePaul University announced a Master of Science in Predictive Analytics (MSPA) through its Center for Data Mining and Predictive Analytics, a joint venture between the School of Computing and the School of Marketing.

The DePaul program covers data mining, predictive analytics and business intelligence. 3. Northwestern University will begin its first MSPA degree program in the fall of 2011. The new MSPA degree provides core basics such as data mining concepts and applications, and extends into advanced data analysis, advanced statistics, database management, financial analysis, web analytics, predictive modeling and marketing analytics. 4. Students can earn a Master of Science in Business Intelligence (MSBI) from Saint Joseph’s University. The program offers evening classes and addresses technology integration, quantitative skills and analytics within a business context. 5. The University of Denver also offers an MSBI degree rogram through the Daniels College of Business.

The program focuses on how to gather and leverage information to lead organizations and guide decisions. The cross-functional coursework covers data warehousing, marketing, finance and operations and incorporates real project work. 6. The University of Tennessee Knoxville offers a Master of Science in Business Analytics through the College of Business Administration. The program provides students with an understanding of business and helps them learn the analytical skills needed to solve business problems. Students can choose one of three areas of concentration: Applied Statistics, Process Optimization or Business Intelligence. 7. Since 2003, Central Connecticut State University has offered a Master of Science in Data Mining degree. The program helps students master the cross-industry standard process for data mining, become proficient with leading data mining software, and to understand and apply a wide variety of mathematical and statistical techniques. It also introduces students to the latest data mining techniques and applications such as text mining and mining genomics data. Student Educational Backgrounds: Any student comfortable with Mathematics and Statistics can opt for these programs. Companies In India hiring for Analytics: Target, Dell, IBM, HP (analytics), Citi, ICICI, PWC, Accenture, etc.