With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in business environments, analysts are taking on more strategic roles and perform less number crunching. With this change in mind, the role of a business analyst will likely remain a popular career path for aspiring business professionals.
Emerging graduates entering this field can expect to earn an average annual salary of $105,988, according to data from Salary.com. However, salaries vary depending on factors like certification, experience and education level. Business analysts with advanced degrees often command salary pricing power in the job market.
To gain this advantage, many rising graduates choose to pursue an advanced degree. For example, Lamar University’s online Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Business Analytics program helps students build expertise using analytical tools and techniques — a beneficial skill set, given how quickly AI is changing the business landscape.
AI’s Impact on Business Analysis
One major function of artificial intelligence is that it helps businesses dissect datasets previously considered too complex or time-consuming to manipulate. With AI, many business leaders can now make real-time, data-driven decisions, a responsibility that often falls to a business analyst.
According to Forbes, AI-driven analysis is especially critical for businesses as it helps them improve three areas crucial to the bottom line:
- Increase revenue: AI can help companies increase revenue by uncovering new business opportunities, creating more effective marketing campaigns, maintaining better track of product performance over time and more.
- Control costs: AI helps companies to examine their financial statements more closely, allowing finance professionals to create more detailed forecasts and track costs better.
- Improve the customer experience: For companies in certain industries, AI tracks customer metrics that can be a precursor to churn. For example, AI can alert a company if one of its customers suddenly stops logging into their online account. This allows the company to respond appropriately.
Overall, artificial intelligence is accelerating business analysis. In the past, a company might have had to wait weeks or even months to examine its financial statements and make determinations. Today, leaders can gather real-time insights into their finances, operations, marketing efforts or customer behaviors, mainly thanks to AI’s computing power. However, what does this mean for the analysts themselves?
AI Is Reshaping the Role of the Business Analyst
In an interview with Forbes, Michael Amori, the CEO and co-founder of the analytics firm Virtualitics, stated that the role of the business analyst is going through a dramatic change thanks to the rise of AI. In short, the role is transitioning from a manually intensive data crunching role to more of a strategic thinking role.
Per IBM, AI can help automate many manual tasks associated with business analysis, such as cleaning and prepping data, editing spreadsheets and tagging content for review. This frees analysts to spend more time interpreting these insights and thinking on a higher level, giving the analyst “superpowers,” in IBM’s words. While it’s easier than ever to identify trends in data thanks to AI, AI cannot provide high-level insight. This still requires a competent data analyst. Today, companies lean on analysts to do things like:
- Dig into the “why” behind trends and uncover what those trends mean for the company.
- Incorporate their personal experience to add more context to certain insights.
- Anticipate how the market might react to changes that a company makes.
- Conduct cost and benefits analysis for proposed projects.
Simply put, AI also allows analysts to dissect data more readily. However, this means that analysts are under more pressure to wring more takeaways out of datasets, which explains why an MBA remains so valuable in the business world.
Expanding Your Knowledge of Business Analytics and AI
Instead of understanding one specific role within a company, an MBA helps students understand how each role fits into the business’s overall success. Young professionals who supplement their business knowledge with AI skills will undoubtedly be attractive job candidates.
Lamar University’s online MBA in Business Analytics program can be completed in as few as 12 months while still teaching students a variety of skills, including decision-making abilities in strategic management, data visualization, data mining, marketing research and predictive analysis. Students learn core business concepts, such as accounting, finance and marketing. However, the program also offers elective courses in more advanced concepts, such as Business Intelligence, Data Mining and Predictive Analytics and Data Analytics in Accounting.
Learn more about Lamar University’s online Master of Business Administration in Business Analytics program.
