How new-age courses helping business analytics aspirants

The EdTech boom is at its peak right now. With multiple market players offering multiple professional upskilling and continuing education programmes, we are now at a point where we have realised skills matter equally, if not more, than academic background. Plus, with the increasing adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in organisations, specifically tools like ChatGPT, we are relooking at ways to upskill ourselves to work in tandem with emerging technologies and leverage them to achieve our goals.

Of the several in-demand job roles stemming from new-age technologies, Business Analytics has been crucial for brands to develop the intelligence required for informed decision-making.

Thanks to the forecasting, data mining, visualizing, and optimization aspects associated with Business Analytics, it is one of the most valuable divisions in organizations today. Enterprises are increasingly looking at skilled Business Analytics professionals, who can work on and leverage data to uncover insights and information otherwise difficult to access easily for business growth and operational efficiency.

A job of such intensity requires aspirants to develop industry-relevant skill sets, tool sets, and competencies related to data mining and analytics, and this is where professional certifications can help. Several platforms are nailing it when it comes to their pedagogy, partnering institutions, faculty and hands-on modules.

Let’s quickly look at how these programmes are helping the Business Analytics aspirantsof tomorrow develop the much-needed competencies to make them future-proof as professionals.

3 ways business analytics programmes are helping apirants develop the right competencies

Capstone projects & real-world assignments

Like any form of art like painting, writing, and playing an instrument, Business Analytics requires hands-on exposure and practical application of theoretical concepts. The more an aspirant works on real-world case studies and works on passion projects, the more intricacies, barriers and nuances they are exposed to pertaining to their work.

The Business Analytics programs today have solid capstone projects and experiential learning modules incorporated in them to ensure learners apply what they learn even before they get into their job. This helps them develop the right mindset and attitude on what to expect from their role. From visualization to reporting, diverse aspects of tasks are covered as part of these projects. Besides, the programmes also feature the most in-demand tools such as tableau, R, Python, Hadoop, Spark and more for aspirants to get hands-on with during their learning process. Such access to commonly used tools allows them to seamlessly work on them after they are recruited. Exposure to foundational frameworks & methodologies

Business Analytics is very systematic. It’s an amalgamation of knowledge, practical exposure, techniques, and tools. The modern-day programmes lay emphasis on core foundational concepts and frameworks that organizations around the world deploy and implement as part of their workflows.

This could be, for instance, the 5D Framework or others that learners need to be aware of when they aim to become a Business Analytics professional. With these concepts featured in the course curriculum of new-age programmes, aspirants not only get to become familiar with these frameworks but have a practical sense of how they could implement them contextually for diverse projects as well.

Evolving curriculum & industry connects

The Business Analytics space is dynamic. It’s evolving at a rapid space and subsequently requires professionals to stay updated of the advancements to stay relevant. It’s not a secret that there exists a significant gap between what students learn in their colleges and what is expected of them when they join a workforce.

However, these professional certification programmes keep expanding and modifying their curriculum to incorporate major changes in the industry or introduce industry connect modules through guest lectures and faculty catchups to ensure learners are aware of the evolution and accordingly develop required skill sets. According to the KASH model, this constant learning becomes a Habit at a mindset level, perpetually modifying a learner’s approach to staying relevant.

Final thoughts

Business Analytics is becoming a culturalpart of organizations, where decision-making teams don’t place bets on gut instincts anymore but make confident decisions based on visualized data. The role of a Business Analytics professional is crucial for an organization and so are the programs that turn learners into professionals.

(The auhtor is a Chief Learning Officer, UNext Learning)