Micro-Specialization in Business Analytics

Business Analytics has been and will continue to be a vital part of corporate strategy to enhance company performance and students exhibiting skills in the discipline will have an added edge to help them achieve greater success in their career.

In order to enhance skillsets in the same, VGSoM, IIT Kharagpur offers a micro specialization in Business Analytics as part of its MBA program that students can opt for at no extra cost. In order to greater understand the benefits proffered by the course, we have had extended discussions with Abid Ilahi and Ayush Mathur, two of VGSoM’s second year students who have availed the opportunity.

We began the discussion by going over some general impressions of the course, including its requirements and pre-requisites.

The course requires students to take up 4 additional subjects to earn enough credits for the degree which include two core subjects Advanced Business Analytics (Semester 2) and Time Series Econometrics (Semester 3) along with 2 additional electives that can be taken up at semester 3 (Supply chain analytics, Marketing Analytics) and 4 respectively (Product Analytics, HR Analytics and Advanced marketing analytics) thereby giving students an understanding of the applications of Analytics in multiple MBA domains. Additionally, there are also two project components in semester 3 and 4. The minimum credits needed to earn the micro-specialization is 12. Students who clear this course successfully are awarded a minor degree of specialization in Business Analytics in addition to the regular MBA degree and the grades obtained within the specialization do not affect the main MBA program.

Both Abid and Ayush (who does not have an IT background himself) have emphasized that students can apply for the course and see success even without a foundation in Computer Science and a strong interest toward the subject, along with an understanding of the applied logic as well as problem solving is sufficient. ?

Ayush also praised the project component of the program, stating that apart from the projects made for each of the undertaken subjects, the additional project components undertaken through the mentorship of VGSoM’s professors allowed them to greatly elevate their practical expertise. He is currently working on a model to optimize the scheduling of trains between Howrah and Kharagpur and mentioned that students can utilize this opportunity to take up projects in the domains they are interested in, many times beyond the scope of what is taught within the curriculum such as projects in Finance.

Finally, coming to the point of the discussion we were most curious about, just how feasible is it to manage these additional courses while managing an already packed schedule. Abid responded that going the extra mile certainly helps and is more often than not manageable with some planning though some pressure can be felt especially during examinations when students opting for the course need to appear for additional subjects. Ayush was also quick to point out the opportunity cost of missing out on the course, as done externally a full-fledged course on Business Analytics can be extremely expensive and does not come with the mentorship of experienced faculty as well as the quality of syllabus guaranteed by VGSoM, IIT Kharagpur.

Both of them do recommend the course highly, particularly for aspiring Business Professionals. Abid concluded by joking, “No matter whether you’re in consulting, HR, Operations or Finance. You’re always in Analytics.”??