Business Analytics & Digital Marketing: The Next Generation's Engineering

Dr Sandeep S Shenoy
Dr Sandeep S Shenoy, HOD - Department of Commerce, Manipal Academy of Higher Education
Gone are the days where studying engineering or MBBS was the main goal in every Indian family! There is a new revolution on the move and it is towards the world of Business Ana¬lytics and Digital Marketing. With companies looking for tools to help aid in faster decision making, problem solving and marketing studies, educational institutions are now focused on equipping their students in the study of Business Analytics and Digital & Creative marketing.

Business Analytics plays a crucial role in the activities of a company. It helps a company to sort, process and study business data to provide insights. Data plays a crucial role in the world of Business Analytics. Companies rely on analytics to compare their growth with their competitor’s and to track regular progress. R programming language, Python, Tableau, SAS and Excel are few popular software that aid in Business Analytics. Although analysts have been collecting and computing data for decades, there is still a lot of unstructured data. And with an increasing rise in the consumption and usage of data, Business Analysts are in great demand. In fact, ‘Data Scientist’ is considered a lucrative career across the globe. The main role of a Business Analyst is to analyse and come up with solutions that help the company in its decision making process.

With companies looking for tools to help aid in faster decision making, problem solving and marketing studies, educational institutions are now focused on equipping their students in the study of Business Analytics and Digital & Creative marketing.

The following are some qualities that a Business Ana¬lyst must possess:

• Communication Skills: An analyst must be a good communicator to get his/her point across to the board. This will help them to ask the right questions that will facilitate their work and open new paths.

• Problem-solving Skills: He/She must be solution oriented. There will always be problems and an analyst must be prepared to solve them rather than face them with uncertainty.

• Critical Thinking: Sometimes we all need to make tough decisions. An analyst must be a critical thinker who will assess and evaluate on all levels and sometimes make critical decisions.

• Business Analysis Skills & Tool Knowledge: This is very crucial for anyone aspiring to be a Business Analyst. They must have knowledge of the tools used to analyse and the skill to understand and interpret them accordingly.

Another career that is taking flight in leaps and bounds is Digital & Creative Marketing. Companies need to market their products and reach out to customers and they do so on every platform possible. With print media almost extinct, the online world has come alive. Every company looks to market their products to gather the most attraction from its customers. It has become one of the most in-demand jobs of the century. With the entire country going digital with the Prime Minister’s Digital India campaign, it has acted as a promotion towards digital marketing opening up multiple new job opportunities. There is a major need in the industry today for Digital Marketing Managers, Content Strategists, UX designers, Social Media Marketers and even bloggers. Today we are in a position were data can be sent to the ends of the world and the customer base need not be restricted. Anybody with a camera and access to the internet can tape a video of themselves and broadcast it, which is how the currently popular term ‘Influencer’ came about.

Although different from Business Analytics, the skill set required is quite similar.

• Communication Skills: This is one of the more crucial skills for everyone involved in Digital Marketing. Communication here is not restricted to face to face interaction but over online interactions as well. It is very important for people in the field of digital marketing to put across the right message which is simple yet effective in attracting customers.

• Creative Skills: People in this stream must be creative and come up with new ideas, concepts and strategies to support the company and attract customers.

• Social Media Skills: This stream involves a lot public engaging and it is very important to use this platform responsibly. With the entire online world a big arena for public conversations, companies can use them to engage with the public and get feedback.

Overall these courses have a huge role in today’s world. They allow people to express themselves creatively and caters to almost every individual’s interest. As the decade moves towards a more online oriented lifestyle, it is time for us to keep up. Engineering and MBBS are no longer the best there is to offer. Business Analytics and Digital & Creative marketing industries are blooming with opportunities and all we have to do is grab them.

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