For businesses today, successfully making sales no longer requires reaching out into the dark to try and find leads. Instead, your business can sell more successfully through the making of decisions that are data-driven, actionable, and have a better chance of leading to genuine revenue-boosting opportunities. Along with this, we are in the Information Age today. Data is now everywhere, and there are lots of opportunities for businesses, marketers, and salespeople to use it to their advantage.
In today’s business, data is essential, and many companies would not get very far without it. But how do you use all this data that companies are now collecting to your advantage and turn it into information that can be used to boost sales, increase customer satisfaction, and create products and services that are going to sell? Business analytics professionals work in roles where they are tasked with making sense of all this data. These professionals condense the data into metrics that can easily be understood, allowing businesses to gain valuable insights into potential future trends on which to base future decisions.
The demand for business analytics professionals is on the rise as businesses only collect more data. If you are thinking about moving into a new career, here are some of the main reasons to think about working in business analytics.
Business Success
If you want to start your own business in the future and are quite an entrepreneurial person, having a background in business analytics can be very useful. Whether you want to make a career from starting your own business or are thinking about starting a company that you can run alongside working full-time in the future, knowledge of business analytics can help you become more competitive. When you get a qualification from St Bonaventure University Online to kick-start your career in business analytics, you will gain skills that you can use to your advantage as a business owner to research your target market and make better decisions in terms of your business model, products, marketing strategies and more.
Great Rates of Pay
Another reason to consider a career in business analytics is that you can expect excellent rates of pay. Since the skill set that combines both business skills and analytical skills is very highly sought-after, you can expect a generous average salary even at the entry level. On average, business analysts enjoy an average salary that is around fifty percent higher than the earnings of most other IT professionals.
Enjoy Interesting Work
The world of data and analytics is always changing with new data being gathered on a constant basis, so the good news for people who want to build a career in this field is that there is always something new to learn and new challenges to face on a daily basis. For example, one day you might be studying online shopping trends for a business while the next you might be helping a company come up with new ways to improve employee satisfaction and performance by looking at employee data to find out what might be contributing to issues like lateness or poor attendance.
Enjoy More Career Freedom
With the demand for professionals in the business analytics field only increasing, there is the option to take your work to wherever you like in the world. You can easily change your career at any point since working in business analytics will equip you with a flexible and versatile skillset that’s in demand in every industry. Instead of sticking to the same industry throughout your career, you will have built skills that you can use in a wide range of companies that operate in a wide range of industries.
There’s High Demand
Businesses all around the world are taking advantage of the growing number of options for collecting data and the overload of data that they have access to today. So, if you are looking for a career where you know that your skills are going to be in high demand wherever you go, working in business analytics could be the ideal choice for you. Regardless of where you go, you will always find businesses that are looking out for professionals who are able to interpret the huge amounts of data that they are gathering. Once you have the right qualifications, it’s not difficult to find work wherever you go.
Demand Driven by New Technology
The high demand for business analytics professionals around the world today is only being driven further by the advancements in technology that we are seeing. Data might have always ruled the world in one way or another. However, today we are generating much more data than ever before, which is a direct result of the technology that we have available to us right now. Today, businesses can collect much larger amounts of data on topics such as marketing demographics and individual buyer preferences, allowing them to get a better knowledge of their target market and make better decisions that lead to increased sales and revenue. As technology only becomes smarter over time, businesses are able to collect more data than ever before, which has only led to a growth in the demand for business analysts.
Work in the IT Field
These days, the IT field is highly sought after since it is becoming more and more lucrative and is very well-respected. If you’d like to get into IT but computer science isn’t really your top subject, then business analytics could be an ideal alternative to consider for getting into this field. Business analysts use many of the same tools that are used by data scientists, allowing you to start a career in IT without the need to get a career in computer science or get to grips with machine learning or programming languages. Along with this, it’s often easier for business analysts in IT since there are not as many changes to the work that they do, so you may not need to work quite as hard as other IT professionals when it comes to staying current and up to date in your industry.
Make a Difference
Working as a business analyst might not be the first career to come to mind when you think about work that you can do which will help you make a difference to the world. Many people consider caring roles like nursing or teaching when it comes to making a difference, but the truth is that working as a business analyst can also put you into a career where you are in a position to make a real difference to others. For example, in this role you can identify trends that might be used to drive decisions to improve things for the people that they are affecting, Business analysts are also often hired by medical and charitable organizations that gather and interpret data to determine where improvements can be made.
How to Get into a Business Analytics Career
Like many other career paths, working in business analytics means getting the right qualifications and work experience. If you have decided that a career in business analytics is the best option for you, then the best place to begin is by getting an undergraduate degree in a relevant subject. Choose a subject that is going to be relevant to a master’s degree in business analytics or business intelligence such as statistics, computer science, IT, mathematics, or economics. Once you have graduated, or while you are getting your bachelor’s degree, you might find it helpful to gain relevant work experience through internships or work placements as this will not only strengthen your application for future work but also give you the chance to figure out how you perform in a real-world setting and what you enjoy the most.
While you can work in business analytics with an undergraduate degree, if you want to take your career further then you will need to think about further study. Master’s degree programs and professional certifications are both ideal choices for taking your career to the next level. You can find professional certifications for business analysts offered by Microsoft that can help you build credibility as a business analyst and advance your career in this industry.
If you want to get a master’s degree, then you can find programs that focus on this field in business intelligence or business analytics. For those who are business-minded, an MBA with a concentration in business analytics or business intelligence might also be an ideal choice to consider. These days, there are lots of business analytics degree programs that are available to study online, which can be an ideal choice for you if you have already started working in the industry and want to fit your continuing education around your work commitments.
Business analytics careers are only growing in demand due to the increasing collection and interpretation of data by businesses around the world. Today, people are generating endless amounts of data through the devices that they use and companies that hire business analytics professionals are taking advantage of this as much as possible.