A new course at the UCD Graduate Business School aims to give graduates the skills needed to help organisations make the right strategic decisions all the time

SUCCESS IN modern business is increasingly about making the right decision at the right time. Is the market ready for a new product? Does it even want it? What does the market want? These are all questions which may have a critical impact on the success or failure of a business.

For example, Coca-Cola famously opted to change from its traditional, tried, trusted and successful recipe more than 20 years ago for no other good reason than an inner belief that people might prefer a new and different flavour.

The belief, or hunch, was disastrously in error and the company quickly had to abandon the new flavour and revert to the old as cola drinkers flocked to the products of its competitors.

This near catastrophe may have been avoided had the company employed business analytics in its decision making processes. Business analytics is a branch of applied mathematics that uses quantitative techniques to optimise decision-making in business. The UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School is now introducing an MSc programme in the subject, which will teach participants how to implement quantitative techniques in a business problem-solving and project management environment. It will also help develop participants' computer software skills and understanding of the theory and practice of allied information systems, to make them useful in consultancy and business.

The new programme, which will run from September of this year, is an innovative new initiative by UCD which is a response to developments in the US and elsewhere. "We are introducing this course because of market demand for it, and this is the best reason for introducing any new programme," explains Prof Cathal Brugha, director of the Centre for Management Science and Systems at UCD and academic director of the masters in business analytics programme.

"The demand from industry is already there for the programme, but potential students aren't necessarily aware of it as yet," he continues. "In the US, industry has actually approached the universities asking them to offer courses in this area. This is because of a mismatch between the products being offered by business and the demands of customers. But now with so much more data available to businesses on areas like sales and customer profiles, much better decisions can be made on product offerings."

Up to now, however, it wasn't always possible to make these better decisions due to a number of factors, including a lack of computer power. More crucially, the modelling and analytical skills weren't available either. But now with courses such as the one being established by Prof Brugha, these skills are becoming more widely available.

He explains some of the principles of business analytics in a sporting context. "The first book on business analytics came from Harvard and it applied to sport," he says.

"It looked at baseball and found that a certain star player might be very good for seven innings and then fall apart."

This would indicate that this player should be taken off after seven innings, but this might not be possible because he is a major star. However, business analytics sorts out the facts and realities from the intuitions of the management and aids objective decision making.

This is not as far-fetched as it may first sound. Already, managers in the English football Premier League use a software tool known as Prozone to analyse the performance of their teams and individual team members after each match. It is used to identify the underlying reasons for defeat and victory and to assist in the elimination of the former and the consistent repetition of the latter.

These tools are remarkably sophisticated and can analyse the performance of individual players on a minute-by-minute basis during matches.

So, for example, they can show when a player's performance dipped and therefore when they should have been substituted.

"If a player is substituted too late in a match, the team has had to suffer all that time with a player dead on his feet and the consequences in terms of missed passes and so on," Prof Brugha explains.

It works in a similar fashion when it is applied to business. It deconstructs the elements and factors that contributed to success and uses the information to inform future decisions.

A unique aspect of the programme is that UCD is partnering with business in sectors such as consulting and engineering with a view to them placing employees on the programme.

"This will help both of us," he says. "We will get access to real data to work on from those companies, while they will get to work with people who are strong on theory. They will also get an employee who can put business analytics into practice in their organisations when they have completed the programme."

The MSc in Business Analytics is suitable for graduates from a wide variety of disciplines who would like to use their aptitude for mathematics or computerised problem solving to address business problems. The one-year full-time and two-year, part-time programme can lead to careers in software design, management consultancy, systems analysis, financial analysis, operations research, information technology and logistics management. Because of the strong mathematical focus of the course, many graduates move into careers in investment banking.

The programme is included in the Higher Education Authority Graduate Skills Conversion Programme, which covers most of the fees on the course.

For further information, see: www.smurfitschool.ie/specialistmasters/ technology/mscinbusinessanalytics/