Are You Smart Enough for Your Company?

PHILADELPHIA (November 28, 2007) — Wall Street investors are weighing company growth on more than financials these days. An organization's intellectual capital, amassed through strategic data mining, is where companies are investing their resources and the demand for employees with the skills to interpret this data has never been higher.

In recent weeks companies like SAP and IBM have invested billions of dollars to acquire business intelligence technology. However, Richard Herschel, Ph.D., believes that technology alone is not enough. "It's critical for employers to hire individuals with the quantitative and technical skills to make sense of data within the context of the specific organization," he said.

Herschel is chair of Saint Joseph's University's department of decision and system sciences. Beginning in January 2008, Saint Joseph's will be the first program in the region to offer employees a competitive edge over their peers through a graduate program aimed at honing these analytical skills.

"The great thing about business intelligence is that it's not industry-specific," said Herschel. "For years companies have been collecting all of this data. They're now realizing that they can do something with this information concerning customers, suppliers, and competitors, and also make more tactical and strategic business decisions," he explained.

Herschel pointed to Wal-Mart, Netflix and Amazon.com as examples of companies that rely on business intelligence for strategic marketing. Holiday shoppers on Amazon.com will recognize business intelligence at work when they make a purchase over the next few weeks. "When you proceed to checkout, Amazon lets you know that customers who bought this, also bought x, y and z…that's a brilliant marketing strategy," he remarked.

The 10-course, 30-credit online master of science in business intelligence for financial services provides advanced and integrated business education. The program is designed to equip students with the ability to develop business models for forecasting and business analysis; technical competence in decision and system technologies; and functional area expertise integrated with decision and systems technologies.

For more information or to register visit https://www.sju.edu/majors-programs/graduate-business/master-degrees/bus....