There’s no denying the digital age has transformed industries and elevated the value of data analytics skills. If you’re looking for a way to make yourself more marketable in your field, obtaining a certificate in data analytics could serve as a catalyst for career advancement by equipping you with the necessary skills to excel in a data-driven environment.
At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, we’re proud to offer a graduate certificate program in business analytics, consisting of just 12 credit hours and taking a hands-on approach to help you prepare for real-world projects with confidence.
What Will You Learn in a Business Analytics Certificate Program?
What exactly can you expect to learn in a business analytics certificate program? While no two programs are precisely alike, there are a handful of specific skills a data analytics professional certificate program may focus on. This includes a variety of core business analytics skills, data visualization techniques, the use of business intelligence tools, and much more.
Core Business Analytics Skills
These days, businesses across all industries need professionals with technical knowledge and a solid understanding of basic business analytics concepts, database management, advanced queries, reporting, and everything in between. A quality data analytics certificate program, then, will focus on the core business analytics skills professionals need to effectively serve their organizations.
Data Analysis Skills
Statistical analysis, including predictive modeling and regression analysis, is increasingly employed in business to extract valuable insights from complex data sets. For instance, some of the data analysis skills covered in UTC’s graduate certificate program include:
- Statistical analysis – This involves using statistical tests to draw conclusions and make predictions.
- Programming knowledge – Programming languages provide libraries and tools designed specifically for data analysis, enabling the manipulation, analysis, and visualization of large data sets.
- Data wrangling – This includes handling missing values, removing outliers, and transforming variables to make data sets ready for analysis.
- Machine learning – Understanding machine learning algorithms is vital for predictive analysis and extracting meaningful patterns from data.
Data Visualization Skills
In addition to data analysis skills, a graduate certificate in data analytics program should cover a range of data visualization skills in detail. The ability to turn data into actionable insights through visualization (also known as data storytelling) is a must for any business analytics professional, and there are numerous popular tools and resources that cater to different business needs through unique design principles. Data analytics programs cover common data visualization strategies and tools, empowering graduates to use these resources with confidence in their own respective industries.
Utilization of Business Intelligence Tools
More businesses are also choosing to integrate business intelligence tools (such as SAS) in streamlining data processing and enhancing overall decision-making processes. These business intelligence tools, in turn, can facilitate faster business decisions with improved outcomes.
As part of a graduate certificate in business analytics, students can learn about these software and tools using real-life data projects and SAS Enterprise Miner—enjoying hands-on learning and discovering how to use the most tried-and-true techniques to solve actual business problems.
Practical Application of Business Analytics Skills in the Workplace
No matter which industry you may work (or aspire to work) in, the data analytics skills you acquire from a quality graduate certificate program could be applied just about anywhere your career may take you. From there, you can leverage your business analytics skills to make real changes within your organization.
Decision-Making
The use of business analytics skills, like data visualization tools and statistical analysis, can help you make confident, informed decisions within your company. Even if you aren’t in a position to make far-reaching decisions directly, as a business analytics professional, you’ll be able to approach business leaders and decision-makers with recommendations backed by statistical data.
Customer Insights and Personalization
In marketing agencies and other types of businesses delivering goods and services directly to customers, business analytics knowledge can be especially useful when it comes to gaining valuable customer insights. Using your business analytics skills, you can learn more about your target customers and prospective clientele; from there, you can use these insights to inform decisions regarding marketing, advertising, branding, personalization, and more. These insights can lead to more conversions, lead generation, and long-term customers.
Operational Efficiency
Many businesses also hire analytics professionals to make recommendations regarding operational efficiency, productivity, and optimizing resources. Using special data analysis tools and skills, you could help businesses make sense of large amounts of data and information. Those insights can then help you make recommendations on operational changes that could lead to better efficiency and improve a company’s bottom line.
Customer Satisfaction
Nowadays, businesses are constantly seeking ways to increase customer satisfaction. After all, happy customers tend to turn into repeat customers—and it’s a lot easier to keep an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one.
With this in mind, many businesses turn to data analytics professionals to help them gain more in-depth insights into what they are doing right from a customer satisfaction standpoint—along with areas in which they may be able to improve. From analyzing customer satisfaction surveys to repeat customer statistics and more, data analytics experts are able to look at large amounts of information and help businesses make informed changes to increase customer satisfaction.
Innovation
Although it’s easy to think of data analysis as reactive, it can also be proactive when data analysis skills are applied accordingly. More businesses are beginning to turn to business analytics professionals for help innovating or coming up with new ideas. A data analysis professional, for example, may use business intelligence tools and statistical analysis to predict the potential success of a new product or service offering. Meanwhile, data analysis insights can sometimes lead to the generation of brand-new ideas and innovations.
Risk Management and Mitigation
Last but certainly not least, businesses across all industries stand to benefit from data analysis professionals who can use their data visualization skills and other tools to tackle risk management and risk mitigation. This includes the entire process of identifying and assessing potential strategic risks to proactively work to reduce financial and legal risks for a particular business.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the practical ways in which business analysis skills can be applied across a range of industries, but it can offer a better feel for the kind of work you may be able to perform with a data analytics graduate certificate under your belt. Whether you are looking to return to school for as little time as possible or considering a full-fledged master’s degree program in the future, a data analytics graduate certificate online can be an excellent starting point to fuel your career aspirations.
How a Data Analytics Certificate Expands Career Opportunities
A certificate program in data analytics can help bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application of common business analytics skills in the workplace. At UTC, we put great effort into ensuring our courses incorporate real-life data projects, industry-standard tools and software, and collaborations with industry experts. This way, students can gain the hands-on skills and experience they need to perform well in their future roles.
Additionally, having access to industry experts and forming connections with related organizations while still in school can lead to new job opportunities plus previously unavailable networking opportunities. With this could also come job promotions, higher earning potential, and greater career prospects for graduates with these in-demand skills. At the same time, earning a 12-credit certificate means you don’t have to spend years in graduate school to level up your skills and start reaping the benefits of your newfound professional knowledge.
Consider, too, that UTC’s graduate certificate in data analytics online program is SAS-certified and co-sponsored by SAS, which is considered the gold standard of business analytics software systems. This, combined with a curriculum based on best industry practices and strong analytics programs around the country, is what sets students up for long-term success. Specific courses required as part of this graduate certificate program include:
- Databases and Data Warehouses
- Data Mining and Analytics
- Advanced Data Analytics
- Prescriptive Analytics
- Big Data Management
Learn More About UTC’s Business Analytics Certificate
At UTC, our graduate certificate in business analytics is designed to help hardworking professionals upskill and prepare for successful roles in data analytics, data visualization, risk management, and much more. The online nature of this program offers the flexibility you need to fulfill other important life obligations while continuing your studies at your own pace.
To qualify for admission into UTC’s graduate certificate program in business analytics, you should have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree from an accredited university with a 2.7 GPA (or 3.0 GPA in the program’s final 60 hours). Likewise, all students enrolling in this program must have satisfied the Business Statistics or Introductory Statistics course prerequisite or have successfully completed the program’s online statistics module.Interested in learning more about our graduate certificate in business analytics or any other certificate programs available through UTC? Get in touch to request more information. If you’re ready to get the ball rolling on your career advancement, you can start your online application today.
