Edward Stohr, Ph.D.

Coordinator, Masters in Business

Intelligence & Analytics Program
Howe School of Technology Management
Stevens Institute of Technology
Te question for organizations is not only
how they will wield this powerful new
information to maximize revenues, profts,
and returns. It is also a question of who
within a given frm will analyze the data,
and who will lead strategic decision-making
based on predictive insights gleaned from
big data.
Awareness of these fve trends will set apart
those working in analytics felds, as well as
those seeking to break into them:
1
The quantities and types of
data collected by organiza-
tions have exploded, enabling
and requiring ever-more skilled
strategic analysis and insight.
Te collection and analysis of unprecedented
types and quantities of data is now regular
practice in industry. Where companies could
once only sample from limited historical
datasets of their own customers generated
by in-house transaction systems they now
have access to nearly the entire spectrum of
data, including the preferences, sentiments
and social media content of entire potential
customer universes. Tere is an even more
rapid explosion of data emerging from the
internet of things mobile phones, RFID
devices and sensors attached to literally
everything, including machines, vehicles,
common household devices and even our
own bodies. Tis data comes in many forms,
not only numerical data but also text, voice
and video and images.
What to do with all this new information?
A host of new analytic tools and techniques
are continually being developed, enabling
previously unthinkable insights into
consumer sentiment and behavior. Industry
possesses the tools, the algorithms, the
storage capacity and the speed to make
5
MUST-WATCH
TRENDS IN
BIG DATA ANALYTICS
Business analytics, once known (and sometimes still known) as business
intelligence, has undergone a dramatic transformation with the recent advent
of so-called big data, dened as data so large that the traditional means of
processing, storing and analyzing it are no longer sufcient. Big data is being
used in sales, marketing, security, logistics, systems engineering, biology, drug
design and discovery, and a host of other elds to crunch numbers, discover
trends and maximize value.
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Howe School of Technology Management
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this happen. But professionals must always
remain at the leading edge of what is current
in analytics; todays tools and techniques
may not be tomorrows.
2
Facility in a multiplicity of
analysis tools and languag-
es has become essential within
most industries, rather
than optional.
Knowledge of a single analytic language
or two no longer sufces in industry; it is
essential that analytics professionals be well-
versed in a wide variety. Todays business
analysts require multiple skills, including
data management, analysis, visualization
and communications skills. Perhaps most
importantly of all, they must possess the
capacity to understanding business needs
and frame appropriate questions in this new,
data-driven world.
At my own institution, Stevens Institute of
Technology, we ofer every masters student
in BI&A add-on training at no extra
cost in a variety of these programming
languages and data management tools
including R, SAS, Python, Hadoop, Hive, Pig
and SQL. Tis additional training, we have
learned from our industry collaborators,
is considered to be absolutely essential as
a diferentiating factor when entering the
career marketplace.
It is clear that the creation and deployment
of these more sophisticated techniques and
languages has been a game-changer, and
that educational institutions will need to
evolve and adapt to, rather than resist, this
sea change.
3
Data will increasingly be
analyzed on the y, in
a stream, rather than being
collected, stored and
analyzed later.
Big data is moving incredibly quickly
today, in huge quantities. Results can now
be distributed and utilized in the market
extremely rapidly; instantaneous analysis has
real value.
Te speeds and quantities are so large that
organizations will begin to extract data from
the datastream as it is generated, analyzing
it almost instantaneously. Specialized
tools and techniques are beginning to be
developed to perform these sampling and
analysis functions, and training in these
tools is beginning to ramp up industry-
wide, although the techniques are still quite
novel. At my own institution, we recently
added a dedicated course to our masters
program in analytics specifcally addressing
datastream analytics in order to fulfll this
vital new need. We are also in the process of
developing courses that will help the student
create value out of the increasingly wide use
of mobility data.
4
Business education is
transforming before our eyes
to include analytic components.
MBA and other graduate and undergraduate
business programming will clearly need
to incorporate analytic components, and
soon. It is now both technically possible and
essential that we teach these tools, which
are now invaluable to graduates in industry.
5
MUST-WATCH
TRENDS IN
BIG-DATA ANALYTICS
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY HOBOKEN, NJ 2
THE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
& ANALYTICS PROGRAM
AT STEVENS INSTITUTE
OF TECHNOLOGY
Stevens Institute of Technology created the
tri-state regions rst masters program in
Business Intelligence & Analytics in 2011
in collaboration with industry-leading rms.
Our unique 3-tier curriculum includes a
required industry practicum and produces
graduates with strong personal, professional
and technical skills for the marketplace in the
application of analytical techniques to derive
predictive intelligence from large quantities of
data. Our blend of coursework in data, social
networks, web analytics, statistics, optimization
and risk management and our focus on
industry-specic applications in marketing,
nance, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, IT,
telecommunications, energy and engineering
position our graduates optimally for career
advancement and to increase operational
efciency, improve performance and inuence
strategy. Courses are taught in the Hanlon
Financial Systems Lab, a world-class facility
featuring a simulated Wall Street trading
room equipped with Bloomberg terminals and
leading-edge nancial analysis software.
In addition to the on-campus masters in
BI&A Stevens also offers an online masters
degree program through our award-winning
WebCampus program delivery system. To
learn more, visit stevens.edu/howe/academics/
graduate/business-intelligence-analytics-bi-ms.
Traditional management programs will
continue to exist and serve industry, but
they will now be complemented by concepts
and techniques that are analytic in nature:
production management coursework will
routinely be supplemented with material
in supply chain analytics, for example.
Marketing tracks will include training
in customer analytics. Finance training
will ofer robust coursework in fnancial
analytics.
While this new world of big data will
require more intensive graduate coursework
of students, it is becoming clear that
tremendous career opportunities await those
who emerge from graduate education with
the skills to build and deploy analytic tools.
At Stevens, we already ofer a number of
these domain-specifc analytics courses;
soon, a student will be able to select from
among a wide variety of concentrations
including marketing analytics, supply chain
analytics, fnancial analytics and human
resources analytics.
5
The future belongs to
the quants.
Undergraduates in the hard disciplines of
mathematics, statistics and the life sciences
suddenly have a new and brighter future.
Tey are now turning their quantitative skills
into rewarding careers by gaining business
analytical skills.
Te job classifcation of mathematician is
consistently ranked as among the top job
prospects in the nation, with average salaries
in the profession reaching to six fgures.
Industry is hungry for analytic talent: it has
been estimated by the McKinsey Global
Institute that the United States alone faces a
shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 professionals
with deep analytical skills and may face a
shortage of as many as 1.5 million managers
and analysts who can analyze big data and
make wise strategic decisions based on the
resulting predictive insights.
Tose who enter graduate programs with
the most advanced facilities and the most
progressive curricula, integrating real-
world practice with solid theoretical and
technical training, will fnd themselves best
positioned to add value to the enterprise
upon graduation. Stevens actively works to
attract quantitatively gifed students, and
help them gain entre to business through
a comprehensive network of industry
relations, and it is clear there will be a great
deal more crossover into analytic felds
in this fashion going forward in business
programming throughout academia.

Big data is here to stay, and the feld of
business intelligence has never been hotter.
As our arsenal of programming languages,
algorithms and analytic techniques continues
to grow with lightning speed, it is more
imperative than ever that professionals keep
current on whats happening now, whats
on the horizon (because it will be here in
an instant), and what industry needs and
requires in terms of optimized analytics.
5
MUST-WATCH
TRENDS IN
BIG-DATA ANALYTICS
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY HOBOKEN, NJ 3
ABOUT STEVENS
Stevens Institute of Technology, The
Innovation University, is a premier,
private research university in Hoboken, N.J.
Within the universitys four schools, more
than 6,100 undergraduate and graduate
students collaborate with more than 350
faculty members to advance the frontiers
of science and leverage technology to
confront global challenges. Stevens is
home to three national research centers
of excellence, as well as joint research
programs focused on critical industries such
as healthcare, energy, nance, defense,
STEM education and coastal sustainability.
The university is consistently ranked among
the nations elite for return on investment
for students, career services programs
and mid- career salaries of alumni.