The phrase ‘business intelligence’ conjures up a set of glamourous images: fast cars, clandestine missions, tuxedos, and shaken martinis. You might be thinking that the field has to do with corporate espionage and subterfuge but unfortunately, the truth is that business intelligence is a subject concerned with data.
This doesn’t mean it isn’t exciting! Business intelligence is a fast-growing and hugely in-demand specialization, with real opportunities to influence the world as a whole embedded into its many roles.
People working in business intelligence are essentially weaponizing data for the benefit of their organization. Building and visualizing datasets is a revolutionary way of ensuring that business strategy is sound. The ever-increasing importance of the World Wide Web has only made business intelligence more important. There is a crisis of data creation and accumulation caused by the masses of interactions people have on the internet every day. It is up to business intelligence professionals to build a picture from the often confusing mass of data available and to seek out new ways of utilizing their findings.
Business schools have started offering business intelligence concentrations attached to their MBA and Executive MBA courses. Click here for a guide from a top online university to their version of the course. As institutions all over the world seek out more and more business intelligence specialists, the demand for these courses will likely increase. Picking the right MBA concentration is essential and business intelligence is a great way to go if you have a strategic eye and a talent for number crunching.
Here are some benefits to specializing in business intelligence.
Data Is King
According to Forbes, human beings create a whopping 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every single day. This goes some way to explaining why data analysis is essential for modern businesses. More than ever, businesses have an insight into the habits and desires of their clients, partners, and customers.
It isn’t just in the world of business that this data is important. In governance, healthcare, design, and resource management, big data has been utilized to streamline and improve services.
Massive companies are scrambling to find innovative ways in which to utilize this vast and seemingly endless resource. It isn’t as easy as it seems. Most traditionally trained business executives are unaware of the specialist skills needed for efficient and meaningful data analysis.
Specialists Are Always In Demand
Data analysis and business intelligence are complex. They involve a certain quantity of unique skills, both creatively and numerically. Because of the huge quantity of data that there is to analyze, business intelligence needs to be conducted with very specific aims and limits.
Specialists that have trained for an MBA concentration in business intelligence are in huge demand. Organizations often do not have the recourses or time to retrain their senior staff in modern business intelligence. As a specialist, you will be in high demand as you bring modern analytical tools to bear when the company plans its business strategy.
A good business intelligence specialist is an asset that a modern company cannot do without. Efficient planning and structuring cannot take place without an analysis of data. You’ll be in the inner circle – a key advisor.
Business Intelligence Is A Growing Field
The pre-eminence of the internet has facilitated the continued growth of the business intelligence field. The analysis of data is crucial to every part of an organization, and business intelligence is being used in a broader collection of roles. Within business intelligence, you’ll need to micro-specialize. Do you want to analyze customer data? Build new data modeling methods? Code software?
The field is spreading throughout the business world. Becoming an expert could lead you anywhere. As a growing field, the rewards for people with these great skills are increasing as companies scramble to employ specialists that can help them get the analytical edge over their rivals.
Hone Your Strategic Mind
All senior business people need to have a mind for strategy, and business intelligence specialists are no exception. Although you will be working on the minutiae of data set collection and analysis, you’ll need to take a step back every once in a while to make observations about the meaning of your findings.
When that eureka moment hits, the feeling can be euphoric. Data analysis and business intelligence can reveal fascinating discoveries about the directions a market is going in. Business intelligence can guide business strategy, and it does so, more and more frequently.
If you choose to take an MBA with a business intelligence concentration, you’ll soon find that the workings of modern business strategy development models could not exist without sound business intelligence. The modern business intelligence role is indispensable, which means that you are likely to be essential to your company’s operations.
You Can’t Improve What You Can’t Measure
The concept of ‘continuous improvement’ dominates business strategy. It was first conceived in Japan, where car manufacturers attempted to consistently improve their products and business models during runs of production. This meant that they would theoretically always be able to outrun their more static rivals. In the 1970s, Japanese car manufacturers adopted this strategy to completely outpace their American manufacturing rivals.
It is far easier to constantly improve if you have a constant stream of insights into how the market is behaving. This is where business intelligence comes in. A business intelligence specialist is in charge of constantly analyzing data to provide the most up to date information about the market.
This has started an arms race of sorts. Analytic tools and models are in competition – which method provides the quickest, most representative, and most up to date information? As a specialist, you will need to keep ahead of data modeling and analysis trends to offer your organization the best options for continuous improvement.
