IBM Launches MBA Program For Business Analytics

IBM and Galgotias University (GU), Delhi NCR in a landmark initiative in India, launched a futuristic full time MBA Program in Business Analytics to help organisations build better skilled resources in areas of managerial decision making and strategy. The curriculum of the program has been developed jointly for better industry alignment and will be delivered by both GU faculty and experts from IBM.

The new MBA Program aims to create managers and leaders who understand the implications of humongous volume of data generated by the enterprises today. With the rise of multimedia including social media this has become an integral need from corporate leaders. With the MBA Program in analytics the students will be able to help their employers gain better customer insights, manage risk, and financial metrics more effectively, and help strive for unique market differentiation. The program covers all the relevant general management topics and includes the courses on Descriptive and Predictive Analytics, Data Mining, Big Data and Financial Planning. In later semesters the focus is on Business Analytics in various industries like Retail, Manufacturing, BFSI and more.

According to the 2012 IBM CMO study, while nearly three-quarters use customer analytics to mine data about nearly two-thirds believe they will need to change the mix of skills within the marketing function and enhance its analytics capabilities. CEOs are investing in analytical capabilities that promise to yield customer insights. More than 70 percent of CEOs have said that they are looking to get a better grasp of customer needs and generate improved organisational responsiveness to customer insights, reveals the 2012 IBM CEO Study.

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IBM has been working extensively with many reputed Engineering and Business schools in India to build talent pool of skilled intellectual workforce, a requirement of many corporates today. Under the Career Education for Business Transformation (CEBT) program, IBM has opened seven IBM Business Analytics Labs so far at various premier B-Schools like IIM, Symbiosis, IFIM, Galgotias and more. Under the Career Education Program (CEP) launched in 2012, IBM partnered with 10 Engineering Colleges to help students prepare better for the IT Industry.

“This is the very first time in India that IBM has partnered with a University to work on the Management Studies program. Given the large amounts of new data created every single minute, analytics skills are no longer just a requirement for the IT professional, they are becoming increasingly important for businesses as well,” says Sudhir Sastry, Software Group Technical Sales Leader, IBM India / SA. “We are so pleased to be working with Galgotias University to help them explore new and innovative ways to bridge business and technical skills together.”

Data Analytics was once considered the purview of math, science and information technology specialists. Now barraged with data from Web and other sources, companies want employees who can both sift through the information and help solve business problems or strategise. According to a study from McKinsey & Co, there will be a shortage of talent necessary for organisations to take advantage of Big Data. By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of Big Data to make effective decisions.

Dr. Balaji, Pro VC and Dean (School of Management), Galgotias University, said “The full time MBA program in Business Analytics in collaboration with IBM, will be transformational for students through the use of active learning and business problem solving exercises enabled by a cutting edge curriculum on IBM technology platform.”

Under the Career Education for Business Transformation (CEBT) program students go through an innovative curriculum including Business Analytics, Services Science Management & Engineering (SSME), Social Business, Cloud Computing and more. It is designed to give them skills needed to excel in ever changing business scenarios where data plays a vital role in staying ahead of competition. Carefully structured, using real life business scenarios, enterprise class tools and industry best practices, it enables students to plug the gaps in areas of Tactical, Strategic and Operational Management that the organisations are looking to fill.

The Career Education Program (CEP) program pans various semesters starting in the 2nd year. In the final year students can choose an IT capability (e.g. Enterprise App Dev, Embedded Systems Design, Enterprise Mobility, Software Quality, Business Intelligence, amongst others) that they want to specialise in and also work on a live challenge as a project for experiential learning.

There are more than 6,000 students taking benefit of this program and are being trained using IBM Software under this model today.

In addition, the Rational SEED program has more than 1,100 Engineering colleges (UG & PG) that have enrolled to develop software architecture and engineering skills for their faculty. Another version of the program (SEED for Quality) was also launched in 2012 focusing on Software Quality and Automated Testing (More than 50 Colleges have taken the Program in 2012).