A number of my previous blogs have discussed the importance of quantitative skills in preparing for the jobs of the 21st century. These skills are becoming increasingly critical for all types of jobs in all types of industries. Some industries (such as banking and insurance) and job categories (including accounting, finance and engineering) are almost inherently quantitative.

However, a growing number of jobs—both blue collar and white collar—in virtually every industry increasingly require quantitative skills. This is true whether you are looking for a job in:

• A marketing department, where you will be increasingly required to interpret customer preferences and trends from vast quantities of real-time point-of-sales data or Internet usage patterns;
• Government or white-collar law enforcement, such as in identifying hidden patterns to detect increasingly sophisticated fraudulent schemes;
• A research laboratory, where you are trying to discover the next blockbuster drug or design a green building; or on a
• Manufacturing plant floor, where employees must continually monitor, interpret and determine how to respond to feedback from increasingly automated, computer-controlled facilities and processes.

While all type of jobs will increasingly require quantitative skills, the highest value, most differentiated use of these skills will be in applying increasingly sophisticated analytics and techniques in a way that will bring new insight to, and in a few cases, totally transform, your particular field. (See, for example, Merv Adrian’s Business Intelligence blog for up-to-date discussions of opportunities and trend. 

Business Analytics Goes Mainstream

Business analytics offer some of the most numerous and diverse of all analytics opportunities for graduates with the requisite skills.

After all, while all companies are already swamped with data, we “ain’t seen nothing yet”. The Internet is spawning as much new data every year as the world has compiled cumulatively, from the dawn of numbers to the invention of computers. Companies are capturing instant information from virtually every consumer transaction and are in the process of “instrumenting” (using sensors to continually capture real-time information from) virtually every type of device in the physical world. Unfortunately, most of this data remains unused and even when executives want to use it, they find the data to be incomplete, inconsistent, incomprehensible or otherwise suspect.

Not surprisingly, vendors from virtually every segment of the IT industry are rushing to help—launching data warehousing solutions, information analysis applications and consulting and outsourcing service offerings.

IBM, for one, has been linking mathematicians and scientists from the company’s research organization with Business Consulting Services consultants for years in an effort to help clients address particularly gnarly problems. It dramatically expanded its own analytics software offerings through acquisitions of companies including Cognos and SSPS. In April 2009, it announced the creation of a new 4,000+ consultant service line—Business Analytics and Optimization Services. This group will use advanced, real-time analytics to help clients across 17 different industries (especially financial services, distribution, industrial, communications and public sector) help clients across 17 different industries (especially financial services, distribution, industrial, communications and public sector) address analytical needs across all business functions (marketing, finance, supply chain, HR, etc.) to drive better, more predictive business decisions and to transform business processes and business models.

IBM is hardly alone among IT vendors in dramatically expanding its business analytics offerings and capabilities. Over the last year, for example:

• Hewlett-Packard commercialized the data warehousing technologies it inherited from its acquisition of Compaq and combined it with enhanced business intelligence consulting services to create its new Business Intelligence software unit.
• IT software leaders, including SAP and Oracle, which already had significant analytics capabilities, complemented previous major analytics software acquisitions (Business Objects and Hyperion respectively) with more specialized analytics acquisitions and expanded consulting capabilities.
• Analytics specialists, such as SAS Institute and a number of smaller firms, including KXEN and Angoss, are being increasingly rumored as acquisition targets of larger firms looking to enhance their own analytics bona fides.

Meanwhile, independent systems integrators, such as Accenture, CSC, Deloitte and Capgemini, are expanding their own analytics services offerings and a growing number of corporations across all industries are developing dedicated analytics staffs and incorporating deeper analytics capabilities across current business units.

Skills Requirements

The dramatic growth in business analytics is creating all types of new career opportunities. For example, it will require highly qualified software architects and developers to create the tools to analyze vast quantities of data and the systems architects to create the increasingly cloud-based systems that will be required to process it.

More importantly, it will require huge numbers of people who understand the type of information that companies will need from the analytics applications and how to capture, present and apply this information to the needs of the business. This requires people with skills in areas including:

1. Information strategy, as to define a company’s information agenda and determine the type of data that will be required;
2. Enterprise information integration, to ensure the integrity of information used in data warehouses and analytics applications;
3. Business performance management, to determine the most effective way to present information to users;
4. Enterprise content management, to integrate data and workflow into information management strategies;
5. Advanced analytics, to ensure that information can be used in a way that will allow a company to predict and proactively address needs in real time; and
6. Business process optimization and transformation, to reinvent processes in a way that will allow the organization to quickly, effectively and efficiently respond to changes and make mid-course corrections.

Most importantly, it will require that virtually every employee, in any function and in any type of organization, must understand the value of analytics to their company, the type of information that will allow them to better perform their jobs, and how to gain access to and make the most effective use of this information.