Analytical Insights: A Guide to Business Analytics as a Career Path

Data. One, simple, four-letter word – yet, remarkably deep for those that pursue careers in the business analytics space. On a daily basis, it’s estimated that across humankind, roughly 2.5 million terabytes of data are generated across a variety of digital and analog inputs.

With that much data, there’s an increasing demand for individuals that can understand the data at hand, and find insights that they can communicate to business leaders across a variety of industries. Business analysts are sure to be in high demand in the years ahead, particularly in sectors where large volumes of data are being generated.

Let’s discover how an RMIT business analytics course can empower you to jump into your next business analytics role, and how you can make a difference in tomorrow’s rapidly developing data environment.

Business Analytics – Mission Critical

Businesses require leaders to be agile – adapting and responding to needs as they arise. The field of analytics is a prime example of that – business analysts need to be able to respond to the issues that a business may face, and develop strategies and solutions to improve outcomes.

As the world becomes more dependent on data, the analyst role is becoming more mission-critical than ever. With the power of data in your hands, and the capacity to provide ways to respond to the issues facing businesses today, a career in business analytics can be highly rewarding, as well as incredibly motivating.

Influencing Decision-Making With Analytics

As you learn about business analytics, you’ll begin to gain insights into how it can be used in the workplace, from a mix of contemporary and historic examples. One such example of how business analytics has had an influence on the modern workforce is the role that it has had on Microsoft’s engineering capacity.

At the tech titan, collaboration is a key element of making things work well. In 2015, Microsoft wanted to understand what they could do to improve collaboration within the business, to drive face-to-face that would boost employee performance and improve outcomes.

The solution was rather counterintuitive – by reducing the number of Engineering offices from five to four, and reallocating staff so that there were fewer engineers in each building, employees found themselves more motivated to go out and interact with their peers.

In an article for the Harvard Business Review, Microsoft’s Workplace Analytics team describes how a simple change had a variety of effects. By reducing the number of buildings, engineers had to travel less often to meet with their peers – in some cases, they were now in the same building. For a company where collaboration is key, this was highly beneficial, as it reduced the amount of time that employees spent travelling between offices on company time.

This translated to the equivalent of 100 hours saved each week on travel, as well as an additional cost saving of approximately $520,000 annually. Business analysts identified a potential measure that could make a difference, actioned it, and as a result, Microsoft is better for it.

Career Options for Business Analytics Specialists

Fortunately, no matter what your particular interests are, there’s the potential to leap into a business analytics role in nearly any specialty. Analysts, in particular, have the capacity to jump into all parts of the data journey – such as a role reviewing data that comes into the business.

Going further afield, there is a range of specialisations available for business analysts. Whether you’re looking to delve into business strategy and take on a role as a strategic analyst, or looking to dive further into the data and work as a machine learning analyst, there are a vast variety of career options available for the budding business analyst.

The Future of Analytics

Where will analytics go in the decades ahead? Technology is always an ongoing process – the recent leaps in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have demonstrated that data can be used to do a lot of things that could be beneficial (or perhaps detrimental) to a business.

It’ll be fascinating to see where analytics leaps next. Perhaps the analysts of tomorrow will be using data points from the internet of things (IoT) to identify optimal customer service routing in apps, or bringing forward ideas that can be tested and tracked to reduce the risk of product failure.

No matter the problem, business analytics will undoubtedly have a role in it – it’s truly fascinating to see where it will go next. So, if you’re looking to make a leap into a business analytics role, there’s simply no better time than now to get in touch and start your journey to a business analytics qualification.

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