Intelligence & Analytics Program Howe School of Technology Management Stevens Institute of Technology Te question for organizations is not only how they will wield this powerful new information to maximize revenues, profts, and returns. It is also a question of who within a given frm will analyze the data, and who will lead strategic decision-making based on predictive insights gleaned from big data. Awareness of these fve trends will set apart those working in analytics felds, as well as those seeking to break into them: 1 The quantities and types of data collected by organiza- tions have exploded, enabling and requiring ever-more skilled strategic analysis and insight. Te collection and analysis of unprecedented types and quantities of data is now regular practice in industry. Where companies could once only sample from limited historical datasets of their own customers generated by in-house transaction systems they now have access to nearly the entire spectrum of data, including the preferences, sentiments and social media content of entire potential customer universes. Tere is an even more rapid explosion of data emerging from the internet of things mobile phones, RFID devices and sensors attached to literally everything, including machines, vehicles, common household devices and even our own bodies. Tis data comes in many forms, not only numerical data but also text, voice and video and images. What to do with all this new information? A host of new analytic tools and techniques are continually being developed, enabling previously unthinkable insights into consumer sentiment and behavior. Industry possesses the tools, the algorithms, the storage capacity and the speed to make 5 MUST-WATCH TRENDS IN BIG DATA ANALYTICS Business analytics, once known (and sometimes still known) as business intelligence, has undergone a dramatic transformation with the recent advent of so-called big data, dened as data so large that the traditional means of processing, storing and analyzing it are no longer sufcient. Big data is being used in sales, marketing, security, logistics, systems engineering, biology, drug design and discovery, and a host of other elds to crunch numbers, discover trends and maximize value. www.stevens.edu LEARN MORE Howe School of Technology Management www.stevens.edu/howe Graduate Studies www.stevens.edu/graduate this happen. But professionals must always remain at the leading edge of what is current in analytics; todays tools and techniques may not be tomorrows. 2 Facility in a multiplicity of analysis tools and languag- es has become essential within most industries, rather than optional. Knowledge of a single analytic language or two no longer sufces in industry; it is essential that analytics professionals be well- versed in a wide variety. Todays business analysts require multiple skills, including data management, analysis, visualization and communications skills. Perhaps most importantly of all, they must possess the capacity to understanding business needs and frame appropriate questions in this new, data-driven world. At my own institution, Stevens Institute of Technology, we ofer every masters student in BI&A add-on training at no extra cost in a variety of these programming languages and data management tools including R, SAS, Python, Hadoop, Hive, Pig and SQL. Tis additional training, we have learned from our industry collaborators, is considered to be absolutely essential as a diferentiating factor when entering the career marketplace. It is clear that the creation and deployment of these more sophisticated techniques and languages has been a game-changer, and that educational institutions will need to evolve and adapt to, rather than resist, this sea change. 3 Data will increasingly be analyzed on the y, in a stream, rather than being collected, stored and analyzed later. Big data is moving incredibly quickly today, in huge quantities. Results can now be distributed and utilized in the market extremely rapidly; instantaneous analysis has real value. Te speeds and quantities are so large that organizations will begin to extract data from the datastream as it is generated, analyzing it almost instantaneously. Specialized tools and techniques are beginning to be developed to perform these sampling and analysis functions, and training in these tools is beginning to ramp up industry- wide, although the techniques are still quite novel. At my own institution, we recently added a dedicated course to our masters program in analytics specifcally addressing datastream analytics in order to fulfll this vital new need. We are also in the process of developing courses that will help the student create value out of the increasingly wide use of mobility data. 4 Business education is transforming before our eyes to include analytic components. MBA and other graduate and undergraduate business programming will clearly need to incorporate analytic components, and soon. It is now both technically possible and essential that we teach these tools, which are now invaluable to graduates in industry. 5 MUST-WATCH TRENDS IN BIG-DATA ANALYTICS STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY HOBOKEN, NJ 2 THE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE & ANALYTICS PROGRAM AT STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Stevens Institute of Technology created the tri-state regions rst masters program in Business Intelligence & Analytics in 2011 in collaboration with industry-leading rms. Our unique 3-tier curriculum includes a required industry practicum and produces graduates with strong personal, professional and technical skills for the marketplace in the application of analytical techniques to derive predictive intelligence from large quantities of data. Our blend of coursework in data, social networks, web analytics, statistics, optimization and risk management and our focus on industry-specic applications in marketing, nance, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, IT, telecommunications, energy and engineering position our graduates optimally for career advancement and to increase operational efciency, improve performance and inuence strategy. Courses are taught in the Hanlon Financial Systems Lab, a world-class facility featuring a simulated Wall Street trading room equipped with Bloomberg terminals and leading-edge nancial analysis software. In addition to the on-campus masters in BI&A Stevens also offers an online masters degree program through our award-winning WebCampus program delivery system. To learn more, visit stevens.edu/howe/academics/ graduate/business-intelligence-analytics-bi-ms. Traditional management programs will continue to exist and serve industry, but they will now be complemented by concepts and techniques that are analytic in nature: production management coursework will routinely be supplemented with material in supply chain analytics, for example. Marketing tracks will include training in customer analytics. Finance training will ofer robust coursework in fnancial analytics. While this new world of big data will require more intensive graduate coursework of students, it is becoming clear that tremendous career opportunities await those who emerge from graduate education with the skills to build and deploy analytic tools. At Stevens, we already ofer a number of these domain-specifc analytics courses; soon, a student will be able to select from among a wide variety of concentrations including marketing analytics, supply chain analytics, fnancial analytics and human resources analytics. 5 The future belongs to the quants. Undergraduates in the hard disciplines of mathematics, statistics and the life sciences suddenly have a new and brighter future. Tey are now turning their quantitative skills into rewarding careers by gaining business analytical skills. Te job classifcation of mathematician is consistently ranked as among the top job prospects in the nation, with average salaries in the profession reaching to six fgures. Industry is hungry for analytic talent: it has been estimated by the McKinsey Global Institute that the United States alone faces a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 professionals with deep analytical skills and may face a shortage of as many as 1.5 million managers and analysts who can analyze big data and make wise strategic decisions based on the resulting predictive insights. Tose who enter graduate programs with the most advanced facilities and the most progressive curricula, integrating real- world practice with solid theoretical and technical training, will fnd themselves best positioned to add value to the enterprise upon graduation. Stevens actively works to attract quantitatively gifed students, and help them gain entre to business through a comprehensive network of industry relations, and it is clear there will be a great deal more crossover into analytic felds in this fashion going forward in business programming throughout academia.
Big data is here to stay, and the feld of business intelligence has never been hotter. As our arsenal of programming languages, algorithms and analytic techniques continues to grow with lightning speed, it is more imperative than ever that professionals keep current on whats happening now, whats on the horizon (because it will be here in an instant), and what industry needs and requires in terms of optimized analytics. 5 MUST-WATCH TRENDS IN BIG-DATA ANALYTICS STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY HOBOKEN, NJ 3 ABOUT STEVENS Stevens Institute of Technology, The Innovation University, is a premier, private research university in Hoboken, N.J. Within the universitys four schools, more than 6,100 undergraduate and graduate students collaborate with more than 350 faculty members to advance the frontiers of science and leverage technology to confront global challenges. Stevens is home to three national research centers of excellence, as well as joint research programs focused on critical industries such as healthcare, energy, nance, defense, STEM education and coastal sustainability. The university is consistently ranked among the nations elite for return on investment for students, career services programs and mid- career salaries of alumni.