Data analytics is growing in popularity as a Master of Business Administration (MBA) concentration. The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (TAMU-CC) online MBA program with a Concentration in Business Analytics provides a core foundation in managerial and executive business acumen, supplemented with a thorough understanding of the role of technology and data in business intelligence. The concentration courses in this program cover topics including database management, processes and applications for data-driven insights and decision-making, data warehousing, information systems management and data mining for business intelligence.
Data Analytics Is Essential to Business
Data analysis is a crucial process for every business, across industries. It is what enables companies to comprehensively understand industry trends and problems while pinpointing specific opportunities. Analytics helps to organize, interpret and structure pure facts and figures into useful contextual information. Doing so can help with solving problems, developing reliable projections and deriving actionable insights to inform business strategies. The result: more efficient operations, stronger revenues and profits and happier customers.
There are four main types of data analytics:
- Descriptive analytics quantitatively describes features in sets of data. Descriptive analytics helps people see trends and basic relationships in data.
- Diagnostic analytics expands on descriptive analytics to draw out why trends and relationships exist in data, examining potential correlations and causes.
- Predictive analytics uses a wide array of statistical techniques and AI-driven technologies including predictive modeling, machine learning and data mining to make predictions about the future.
- Prescriptive analytics involves the application of math and advanced computational sciences to suggest decisions that take advantage of predictive analytics and information gleaned from descriptive and diagnostic analytics.
Intelligent Technologies Provide More Opportunities for Growth
Most businesses have undergone a digital transformation in recent years, improving their data analytics capabilities through software and hardware. Plus, circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic sped up the adoption and integration of digital technologies with analytics capabilities.
Data analytics software and the vendors that sell these tools enable companies to identify opportunities for capturing, managing and leveraging data to improve business outcomes. Cloud-based software makes it possible for companies to start with smaller investments in data analytics personnel and resources, then easily scale their investments up with new capabilities and features as they grow.
These software vendors produce economies of scale that make it possible for smaller companies to perform sophisticated analyses that were not economically feasible just a few short years ago. As a result, the competitive landscape has changed across industries. The competition is nearly always armed with data, which requires businesses to up their capabilities in order to thrive or even just survive.
The ways companies use data technologies and analytics evolved significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a large portion of the workforce shifted to remote work models, businesses had to embrace a more holistic integration of cloud-based services and virtual office environments. This enabled business continuity and collaboration even within the limitations of decentralized teams. Plus, the power of modern business intelligence tools now allows decentralized business users to access and make use of analytics tools like data visualization and edge analytics in remote environments.
Raw Data + Skilled Data Analysts = New Business Opportunities
Consider some of the companies you may know best and how their use of data has transformed their business models. Nike collects customer data through the company’s apps and uses analytics to transform that data into optimized, personalized and customized customer experiences for each target audience or individual.
As another example, Apple is now much more than a technology hardware provider. When its venerable iPhone business reached a plateau, the company used analytics to diversify into services and content distribution. Of course, the company’s hardware products like the iPhone, Mac, iPad and iWatch — in conjunction with Apple’s advanced operating system software — have provided ideal platforms for the collection and analysis of customer data.
How did these businesses identify new opportunities? Data analytics experts organized and structured data to enable the extraction of key insights. Their insights led to decisive actions that positively impacted consumer behaviors in each case.
Data analytics professionals are in high demand, and corporations have been working with universities to develop and improve data analytics programs to meet this demand. In Texas and the South/Southwest regions, TAMU-CC’s specialized data analytics MBA is one of the leading online programs available to aspiring data professionals.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the data scientist occupation is one of the fastest growing occupations in the United States, with 36% growth projected between 2021 and 2031. If you are seeking upward mobility in an area with great demand and growth potential, focusing your MBA studies on data analytics is one of the best investments you can make in your career.
Learn more about TAMU-CC’s online MBA with a Concentration in Business Analytics program.
