An Insight into Business Analytics as an MBA specialization

Best MBA colleges in India offer a specialization in Business Analytics. In present times, it is one of the most remunerative and lucrative specializations under MBA. Business Analytics is about accessing and exploring an entity’s data with a clear vision to find out the business performance and enhance the decision-making, to create effective and efficient plans. Now, many people get baffled between the terms of Business Intelligence and Business Analytics. But there are differences between the two. Let’s find out what those are.

What is Business Intelligence (BI)?

Business Intelligence (BI) is a composition of processes, architectures, and technologies that convert raw data into useful information that facilitates managers to make efficient decisions. Business Intelligence systems process historical and current data and churn it to generate predictive scenarios in business operations. The demand for professionals with expertise in business intelligence is soaring like anything. As a result, top Business Schools across the world are offering specializations and training their graduates in BI.

What is Business Analytics (BA)?

Business Intelligence and Business Analytics are the terms that are used interchangeably but business analytics is a subset of Business Intelligence that uses analytical tools, methodologies to analyze data, recognize patterns and develop models to take decisions and actions. It is believed that Business Intelligence helps in identifying 'what' happened in the past and 'how' whereas business analytics explains the 'why' factor. Business analytics further can be broken down into descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analysis. Each of these helps in understanding the current scenario, predict future outcomes and give recommendations to handle future situations respectively. Organizations that use a data-driven approach in decision making need business analytics professionals to handle data that has accumulated over the years.

Difference between Business Analyst and Business Analytics Professional

A business analyst is a mediator between a technical team and the client which can be internal or external. The primary function of a business analyst is to ensure that the service or product created by the technical team is as per client requirements. An analyst is never expected to handle data rather focus on processes and implementation while coordinating with stakeholders. A business analytics professional on the other hand remains engaged with data and data handling techniques to generate data required to make decisions.

Business Analysts indeed analyze business situations but they use decision models, case studies, etc whereas business analytics professionals statistics, predictive analytics, logical thinking, etc, to solve business problems.

Career Prospects in Business Analytics

Organizations today are facing challenges posed by Big Data. They want to learn from their past performances and make all decisions based on data while increasing their efficiency. They want to retain and use high-quality data as a guide for future decisions. They hence rely on individuals with a professional degree in Business Analytics to help them achieve this target. Business Analytics professionals need to have strong statistical and analytical skills with a flair for mathematics. So an individual with an MBA in Business Analytics, from one of the Top Management Colleges in India, will be primarily a business administration professional but with additional expertise in data analytics. Hence such graduates are much sought after in the current scenario.