What jobs can you get with an analytics degree?
Analytics professionals are amongst the most highly sought after professionals in both Australia and the world at large. Although the value of analytics is long-recognised, the digital transformation of the economy has made it a crucial tool for organisations everywhere.
Today’s analysts work in a wide variety of fields, each of which emphasises different aspects of the analytics process. Here are just a few of the paths that an analytics career can take you.
Management analytics & consulting
Management analysts use analytics to make business management processes more efficient. They often focus on improving processes within a specific division; however, they may also impact overall corporate strategy by providing high-level insights into how a company’s various components are performing.
One of this field’s more interesting subdisciplines is learning analytics. Modern management approaches emphasise continuous improvement, which requires managers and employees to participate in ongoing professional development. Learning analysts enhance this process by identifying which areas would most benefit from improvement, and by analysing the impact of professional learning activities on real-world corporate performance.
Program/fiscal analyst
Program analysts analyse the financial performance of business operations. They are heavily focused on RoI (“return on investment”), which is evaluated by measuring the benefits that a program produces against the resources that were invested into it. Things classified as “benefits” may include revenue growth, media coverage, or any other metric that can be used as a key performance indicator (KPI).
The program analyst role is heavily emphasised in digital marketing, which relies on algorithms to automate the purchase of digital advertising space (a process called programmatic marketing). The ability to make data-driven decisions on where and how to spend marketing resources has become so important that many marketing analysts will eventually transition into management positions.
One of the most common types of program analysts is the visual analyst—data visualisation specialists who understand how to communicate insights to key decision makers. Visualisation specialists may also be responsible for developing self-serve analytics dashboards that provide non-analysts with the ability to make use of basic visual analytics tools.
Operations and logistics analyst
The job of the operations and logistics analyst is to ensure their employer gets the resources they need, when they need them, as efficiently as possible. To do so, they must first build a dataset that describes the relationships between the various elements of the logistics process, and then use analytics on that dataset to discover opportunities to improve the process.
The three main responsibilities of the operations and logistics analyst are to:
● Improve efficiency – the cost-effectiveness of the operation
● Improve responsiveness – the ability to execute an operation in a timely manner
● Improve robustness – the ability to execute an operation even if an unexpected disruption occurs
Many logistics analysts work in supply chain management. Supply chain innovations, such as the Toyota Production System, have had major impacts on the global economy, and today’s logistics firms rely heavily on data analytics to move products in a fast and reliable manner.
Analysts in this field make use of large, multivariate datasets, and integrate data from multiple sources. For example, transport logisticians frequently use non-standard data types, such as geographic data (geomatics), and may also use non-standard data stores (e.g., graph databases) to execute queries. Many analysts in this field also make heavy use of predictive analytics to minimise the risk of operational disruptions.
Population research/market research
Population analysts work to understand how a given population (e.g., a person, company, or industry) is positioned within a larger context. For example, a population health analyst might look at data related to a public health initiative to investigate whether some demographics are receiving more benefit from it than others.
Market research analysts are a type of population analyst that investigate whether a particular market is strong enough to support their client’s business. This requires them to evaluate factors such as economic conditions, consumer sentiment, and the strength of the client’s competition.
A strong grasp of domain-specific knowledge is important for population analysis. A market analyst cannot accurately evaluate the viability of a client’s business without possessing a solid understanding of their industry, as this is necessary to determine if the client’s market position is strong enough to succeed against its rivals.
Decision support analyst
“Decision support analyst” is a generic term for any analyst who uses probability-driven analytics to determine how best to achieve a positive outcome for their client or employer. Decision support analysts include actuaries, who use analytics to calculate the risks associated with insuring a person or business in order to determine how much their premiums should cost.
Modern decision-support analysts work in finance, gambling, sports, and every other field in which analysts can use data to predict an outcome. Sports teams, for example, rely on analytics to determine the impact that drafting someone would likely have on team performance, or to evaluate whether or not a specific strategy is likely to be effective during a game. This field is heavily model-based, de-emphasises exploratory analysis, and is heavily reliant on the use of KPIs to drive predictive analytics.
Decision support analysts often work in competitive industries where multiple companies have access to the same pool of public data, which means that the analytics team that provides the best performing models will offer a significant advantage to their firms. Analysts in this field may need to be able to work quickly so that their firm can respond to the insights offered by new public data before its competitors can.
Analytics professionals possess a skill set that gives them the ability to pursue careers in a variety of different industries, each with a unique workflow and emphasis. If the flexibility offered by such a career sounds attractive to you, the University of New South Wales’ online Master of Analytics program provides the practical instruction necessary to get started in the field.
Designed to accommodate the needs of working professionals, the Master of Analytics degree is well-suited for anyone looking to make a career transition without leaving the workforce. The program consistently emphasises the real-world business applications of the skills you’ll learn, and is provided by the only Australian university to be internationally top-ranked in management, finance, and economics.
To further explore the opportunities that our 100 per cent online Master of Analytics has to offer, get in touch with our enrolment team on 1300 974 990.
