In January 2014, NUS ISS will be launching the Master of Technology degree in Enterprise Business Analytics (MTech EBAC) to meet the pressing demand for business analytics professionals in Singapore and around the world.
Business analytics is the use of statistical and predictive techniques to gain insight from data. It has broad applications in customer retention and acquisition, risk analysis and up-sell and cross-sell programmes. It is key in business profitability trend analysis and in making the right decisions on marketing and business strategies. Adopting analytics is a proven way to gain business advantage and Gartner predicts that business analytics will become an increasingly important and ubiquitous tool for organisations.
But despite that proven value, it has been tough for local and regional organisations, private and public, to embrace business analytics due to a significant shortage of trained talent in this new area.
The McKinsey Global Institute forecasts a 50 to 60 percent gap between the supply and demand of people with deep analytical talent; 140,000 to 190,000 unfilled positions of data analytics experts in the U.S. by 2018.
As mentioned by Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam in his Singapore Budget speech 2013, data analytics is one industry cluster which Singapore is development. Singapore aims to develop a pool of 2,500 analytics professionals over the next five years to support this new area.
Dr Leong Mun Kew, Deputy Director, ISS said: “The Master of Technology in Enterprise Business Analytics is designed to help fill this shortfall of data scientists in Singapore and the region. We expect to draw entry-level business analytics practitioners who desire to move up to a specialist-level position, as well as professionals in related fields who want to acquire business analytics skills to enhance their current role or to switch to a data scientist position. The MTech is a passport and a springboard to a new career in enterprise business analytics.
The programme features four core analytics modules to meet the needs for trained data scientists. They are: Foundations of Business Analytics, Data Analytics, Advanced Analytics and Decision Making and Optimisation. In addition, students must choose at least four analytics electives. To help the students relate to what they have been taught in theory, they will have to carry out a project as a team to put to practice the tools, techniques and methods that they had learnt, in real-world situations. The projects will usually take the form of a consulting engagement for a sponsoring organisation.
Ms Janet Ang, Managing Director, IBM Singapore said: "Gaining business insight through Big Data and analytics is critical and the demand for talent to help companies succeed in this increasingly digital and data-driven world will only continue. In Singapore, data analytics has also been identified as an important growth sector. As such, we are encouraged to see ISS contribute to building capabilities that will equip Singapore with a future-ready workforce that is able to leverage data as the new natural resource with the Master of Technology in Enterprise Business Analytics.”
The MTech EBAC is the third Master of Technology degree offered by ISS, in partnership with the Faculty of Engineering of NUS. The institute currently offers the MTech in Software Engineering and the MTech in Knowledge Engineering, in collaboration with both the School of Computing and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering of NUS. Introduced in 1996, both programmes are well established and popular.
All three degrees are available on either a part-time or full-time basis. You can download the brochures here and read the Straits Times article.
For more information about the ISS MTech EBAC, email us at isspostgrad@nus.com.sg or call 6516-2064. For upcoming Preview Talks, visit here.
This article is first published in NUS-ISS quarterly e-newsletter, Issue 3 (Jul-Sep 2013).