Choosing to study for a degree is a big decision. Even more so if you left school a while ago and are already working in your chosen field. Deciding which degree to study can be even more difficult. If you are already employed, or you run your own business, you might decide to return to education to further your career, advance specific skills, or improve areas where you feel weak. Many entrepreneurs decide to complement and advance their success by studying an online degree while they work.
Courses like MBAs are popular and have obvious benefits. But another popular option for entrepreneurs and business leaders is a degree in business analytics. Here are some of the benefits that you might want to consider before making your choice.
What is Business Analytics?
Business analytics is the process of deriving information from data. Many modern companies hire a business analyst to help them process the wealth of data that’s available nowadays, and present the information that’s useful to the growth and development of the business. Analytics can be used to make decisions and predictions; analyse performance; grow website traffic, conversions, and sales; work more productively, and both make and save money.
What Will You Learn if You Study Business Analytics?
When you study business analytics, you’ll become data literate. You’ll learn to understand the data presented to you, draw conclusions and predictions from it, and perhaps more importantly, you’ll be able to disregard any data that you don’t need.
If you study a degree in business analytics, you’ll study elements such as:
- Data for decision making
- Data mining
- Web analytics
- Business analytics in practice
- Decision models
- Consultancy
- Performance and descriptive analytics
- Using software for analytics
You’ll Learn to Love (or Embrace Your Love) of Numbers
If you love numbers, then a business analytics degree is for you. If you’ve always loved numbers, and your favourite parts of the business have always been looking at data, using your maths skills, and extracting information, this degree will give you a chance to further your skills and embrace your passion.
On the other hand, if you’ve never felt as comfortable as you’d like with numbers, but you’d love to be able to gain more confidence in this area, this degree could give you a new perspective on data and its benefits to you.
You’ll Finally Understand Data
Numbers and data aren’t the same things. Numbers often stand alone or work together. For lovers of numbers, and maths, it’s clear. Numbers give us, certainly, evidence-based equations, and typically, undoubtedly answers.
Data can be a bit less clear. Often, data is a whole host of numbers, which don’t seem to have any reason or common denominator. Data can be overwhelming, and many of us find the idea of sifting through tons of raw data to extract conclusions, which could be helpful to us, almost impossible.
Data is really what makes the world go round, and certainly, what the growth of businesses relies on.
When you study for a master’s in business analytics from Aston University, you get to grips with data. You learn how to extract the information that you need, how to make sense of it, and how to know what to disregard. Studying for a master’s in business analytics can save you time when it comes to studying data and take away any overwhelm that you might fear. It could even reduce your need to employ a data analyst.
You’ll Learn How to Make More Informed Decisions
Being able to extract and understand data gives you the ability to make important decisions, both based on previous data, and also using A/B testing to experiment, access, and understand, before committing to a choice. Accurate data analysis can help you to make the right decisions from the off, saving your business huge amounts of money by avoiding mistakes.
It Could Help Your Business to Grow…
Being able to make the right decisions and avoiding mistakes doesn’t just save your business money; it can also save you time. Both of these outcomes help you to grow. Effective business analytics can be the difference between consistent growth and struggling to get going.
…Or Give You a Chance to Take on Leadership Roles
Of course, business analytics isn’t just for business owners and entrepreneurs. It can give anyone the skills that they need to work as a full-time business analyst or take on leadership roles in different fields. Data is incredibly important in all industries, so this is a very flexible qualification that could give you a wide range of options, both now and in the future.
You’ll Improve Productivity
Business analytics isn’t just about sales data. You’ll also gain a greater understanding of exactly how business works, where time and money is spent, and areas where you can improve. This can give you a fantastic chance to streamline your processes and improve productivity.
You Might Be Able to Predict the Future
By definition, analytics is looking back at the past. But this is often the best way to predict things that might happen in the future. By using data, digging into analytics, comparing periods and other elements, we can predict what might happen in the future. Being able to make these predictions, helps us to maximise profits and spot potential problems in time to find a solution to make a change.
You’ll Improve Your Problem-Solving Skills
Problem-solving is a key skill in many different fields and positions. It’s something that can help in all walks of life. Analytics can give you the information that you need to navigate problems and make the correct decision on how to move on in the future.
Your Communication Will Improve
Information is the key to good communication. With the right data – which you have a firm understanding of – you can effectively present arguments and give other members of your team the information that they need.
Data is a huge part of the modern world, and it’s becoming more so every day. A firm understanding of analytics and data is a crucial skill for anyone looking to build or grow a business or take on any kind of leadership or consultant role.
