Business Analytics  (often referred to as BA) is an increasingly popular major in the United States. Catching up with the mighty influence of big data and machine learning, a degree in BA is highly welcomed by students and employers alike. So, what is business analytics? What skills are required to be a business analyst? What do graduates go on to do after graduation?

Answers to the above questions are addressed as follows:

What is Business Analytics?

People studying Business Analytics are capable of taking advantage of skills and technologies to analyze business performance as a method of generating business insights within, and help discover potential strategies for dealing with business challenges both within and without.

The difference between a business analyst and traditional analyst is that the former is equipped with advanced skills for analysing enormous data, assisting companies and clients to discover the intuitive reasons and factors contributing to business behaviour. In addition, they might also be capable of yielding reasonable predictive models for making predictions of future business growth.

Since this major largely involves knowledge of data processes and analysis, together with data technology, it significantly increases its application among various fields. Students in business analytics are increasingly demanded by a large number of industries and companies. Because of its wide range of field, similar jobs are named in different forms.  The following picture is a job report from LinkedIn in 2017, where we can tell from the chart, how popular data-related jobs are currently.

Why it is a good idea to study Business Analytics in United States?

It has been a popular topic for a while that STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) majors are more welcomed in the job market for the extended time period allowed in applying for an H1B Visa upon graduation. Business Analytics, as well as all other STEM majors, are a good choice for students who want to stay and work in the US. Although it demands solid mathematics knowledge, it is not as tough as most science and engineering majors (although highly correlated in terms of study content), making it a very accesible STEM option.

Another factor contributing to its popularity, as desmonstrated in the above data,  is that there is a large demand for related skillsets by employers in the US.  An increasingly satisfying job market and field of opportunity is reason enough to consider majoring in this field. As companies become increasingly involved in online business,  the employment opportunities available to BA graduates are sure to expand.

What are the skills required to be a business analyst ?

As we mentioned above, this major is largely comprised of having data technology skills. The following skills are fundamental to business analysts:

SQL

SQL is a language used in programming and managing data held in a relational database management system. It is easy to study, use and interpret, hence is incredibly common in analytic jobs.

SQL has different systems with different terms used, but the logical structure behind it is the same. MySQL and MycrosoftSQL are the main versions used in the work-field.

Data analyzing languages such as R, SAS, SPSS, MATLAB, Python, etc.

A wide arrange of business insights are needed in most companies:

• Why did sales go down this quarter?
• Is sale of product A associated with product B?
• Will sales of both products grow if they are sold in bundles?
• Can you recommend movies to user A based on his history preferences and ratings? 

All of the above questions are -and could be- answered by compiling and  analysing company data.

In order to achieve such an outcome, learning coding languages is recommended to people who want to be an analyst.  R is a recent and  open-source data analysing language preferred by analysts. SPSS, SAS, MATLAB are more traditional, but also functional languages, in processing data.

Plus, Python, as the most popular and well-rounded coding language, is also highly recommend.  Use of Python is widespread, its relative ease of interpretation of data analytics its major draw.

Visualization tool – Tableau

What clients and managers are interested in is actually visualization- most people hate to spend time on figuring out what is behind numbers- they want them to be shown in a more clear, obvious, and fancy way, and that’s when data visualisation tools come in handy.

The hottest visualization tool nowadays is Tableau- thanks to user-friendly options in connecting with prominent data languages such as SQL, R, SAS, Excel etc.  With its strong analytic results, Tableau is able to demonstrate extraordinary interactive data performance.

Companies value its powerful functions, and use it widely in designing workbooks and reports.

The drawback of Tableau is that it is quite expensive.  An alternative, and free tool, Qlik, shows relatively strong data results as well.

Statistics

To find out what exactly a set of data says, requires business analysts to have a concrete understanding of statistics- and based on this understanding, analysts can extract large amounts of logical interpretations of data.

What do they do after graduation?

There are rewarding positions in practically every industry open to business analytic graduates, including market analyst, research analyst, operations analyst, finance analyst, data analyst, and the list goes on and on and will surely only grow in the coming years.