List of best business analytics courses for beginners

Top 6 Business Analytics Courses For Beginners

November 2, 2024 Kiran Parihar

Are you tired of your boring 9-5 job where you don’t see any career growth? Do you want to build your skill set and stand out from the crowd? If the answer to these questions is “yes”, you should learn Business Analytics for an outstanding and promising career. In today’s world, it is vital to have some kind of skill to make money. If you are a business owner or if you want to start your own business, you should consider doing business analytics courses for beginners.

It is one of the most in-demand skills in today’s times. There are multiple opportunities for a business analyst in the current and future market scenarios. It is considered one of the most highly paid jobs in the world. If you don’t want to lag behind the crowd, learn this useful skill at the earliest.

So, if you are ready to dive in, let’s have a look at what Business Analytics Courses for beginners are. In this article, we are going to discuss what Business Analytics is, why you should learn this skill, and what tools you learn and use.

We are also going to present to you the various sources you can master this skill from, and you don’t need to worry if you don’t know a thing about Business Analytics because these courses will teach you from scratch.

What Exactly Are Business Analytics Courses for Beginners?

First, let’s understand what the role of a business analyst is. To be able to run a business successfully, one must fully understand how it works and what the needs of the customers are.

It is vital for an Analyst to analyze, process and predict data from all the platforms and sources in a statistical manner to be able to make an informed business decision.

Business Analytics is the analysis of data from different sources and the sorting and processing of that data in the form of statistics to gain an accurate and deep understanding of customer needs to drive a decision.

In simple terms, as a business analyst, you will solve the problems that a business faces by analyzing the data. There are different types of Business Analytics and those are Descriptive analytics, Predictive Analytics, and Prescriptive analytics. It is also important to understand what they are.

Descriptive Analytics- It is the analysis of data from the past and is used to study and understand different trends and patterns. Here, you are basically describing the historical data.

Predictive Analytics- As the name suggests, Predictive Analytics predicts future trends and patterns by using data mining, statistical modeling, and machine learning.

Prescriptive Analytics- Prescriptive Analytics shows what a business should do to grow and suggests which options are the best for the market. In this field, the data is drawn from descriptive and predictive sources to come up with the best decision.

Prerequisites to Be a Business Analyst:

Before starting Business Analytics courses for beginners, you must at least have or be interested in developing the following skills:

Communication Skills-

Communication is the key to success. You should be able to communicate well and convey your message across without hesitation. Your audience trusts you better when you have a clear vision and can make them understand your point.

Not only in the business world, but communication is also vital in any field or domain either to win a job, game, or even people’s hearts. Make you are constantly practicing and honing this skill.

Problem-Solving-

Are you a big-time problem solver? Do your friends come to you to seek help when they are struggling with life problems? Do your parents come to you when the internet stops working or maybe when they need you to fix the fan? Seems like you already have what it takes to be a problem solver. Although you should also be good with numbers.

Technical Skills-

It is one of the most valuable skills in the business world. Understanding tools and technology is crucial to be a good analyst. Without technical skills, you cannot perform well in this field.

Critical Thinking-

Are you constantly intrigued by the world and constantly asking questions? You should be able to analyze, interpret and evaluate information. If you want to do Business Analytics courses for beginners, you should be a critical thinker.

What is the Importance of Business Analysis?

With the gold mine of data, we can understand the market trends to run a successful business. Businesses grow when the foundation is strong. Foundation grows stronger when people work on a problem at the root cause and come up with reliable solutions.

In order to come up with solutions, businesses must understand buying behavior which is constantly changing as we move forward. We need to take the raw data and process it, study it, and make good use of it as businesses are very competitive, analyzing the data can help a great deal.

You also need to understand the various trends for an intelligent business as an Analyst. Let’s have a look at what those are.

Tools Used for Business Analysis

The e-commerce market is growing every day. There are a few tools that come in handy while you are on your Business Analytics journey. They are called Business Intelligence (BI) tools as these tools are business intelligence and can help you as they process and analyze data (structured and unstructured) from different systems.

Not only that, but these tools can also perform data visualization and reporting, etc. The benefits? Oh, there are plenty.

You don’t have to manually generate reports.
It is cost-effective for businesses. It can also help in increasing revenue.
They can even make predictions about the outcome based on the analyses and you’ll be able to take better business decisions.

Here Are a Few Business Intelligence Tools That You Should Familiarize Yourself With Before You Start Your Course:

SAS Business Intelligence-

SAS Business Intelligence is a popular and useful software, and it is used to analyze data and generate reports. It presents data in the form of charts, graphs, diagrams, etc.

Domo-

Using this tool, you can bring any data together and then make analytics to drive informed business decisions.

Power BI-

Power BI is meant for big companies as it integrates Excel, Azure, etc. with the larger Microsoft ecosystem.

Types of Business Analytics Courses for Beginners

There are two ways you can learn this course. Either you learn it online from the comfort of your home or you go to a business institution to learn from experts. These days self-paced courses are also a trend. You can follow a course at home whenever and wherever you want.

Online Courses-

If you prefer learning at home and cannot go to an institution to learn a skill, you can enroll in online courses. These courses are becoming popular day by day and almost everybody has access to the Internet today.

It makes it easier for stay-at-home mothers who want to pursue their careers and students who want to develop skills while doing their studies. They are usually cheaper than in-person courses.

You can either attend live trainer-led classes or pre-recorded video sessions. The popularity of online classes grew during the pandemic and the education industry adopted this form of training as it was the need of the hour. They are fun and easy to follow.

Self-Paced Courses-

Self-Paced video lessons are convenient for everyone from working professionals to homemakers. Without worrying too much about missing a deadline for an assignment, learners can easily adapt to this form of learning. Several platforms like Coursera, HubSpot, etc. Provide this service and they are truly a blessing to the students. Modern-day learning is made convenient and accessible to everyone through these mediums.

In-person Courses-

The very old, or let’s say traditional way of learning, going to an educational institution and learning from a teacher or a subject matter expert. This is probably the best way to learn because you are being guided by an expert.

You can clear your doubts and the experience is just different than being in a virtual class. The learning environment is well structured and there is room for interaction with the instructor and other students.

It gives them ample opportunities to communicate and share their doubts and ideas. These courses tend to be more expensive than online and self-paced courses as the students get access to industry experts.

Check here a few other best business analytics courses:

Here Are a Few Business Analytics Courses for Beginners:

1. Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions:

Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions is an online course offered by Imperial College Business School. In this course, you will learn the fundamentals of Python and drive business decisions with descriptive and predictive analyses.

It should take about 4 months to complete this course given that you are dedicating at least 4-6 hours a week to this course. There is no prior work experience or programming knowledge required to enroll in this course, which means a complete beginner can also learn from this course. The program fee is £1790.

2. Business Analytics Fundamentals by Babson College (edx):

Business Analytics Fundamentals by Babson College is an online certification course where you will learn to interpret and summarize valuable data, descriptive statistics as well as basic probability concepts. You will also learn to use Excel to generate models for revenue, cost, and profit.

The course should take around 4-6 weeks to finish if you give it at least 4-6 hours a week. However, you need to pay an amount for the full program experience.

3. ExcelR Business Analyst Certification Course:

The Business Analyst Certification Course is a 6-month program offered by ExcelR. The course covers different tools and technologies needed to learn business analytics like MySQL, Python, Excel, etc. You will also learn Database concepts, Pivot Tables, Functions, Charts and Slicers, and Data Visualization.

The course is divided into 4 modules: Data Collection, Data Preparation, Insights Generation, and Visualization with Dashboards. At the end of this 6-month-long Business Analytics course, you will get a 3 in 1 certification from IBM, ExcelR, and AI Variant.

The benefits of the program are numerous. It teaches practical skills and gets you job-ready. ExcelR is tied up with 150+ companies to provide their students with jobs at the end of the course for which they have a dedicated placement cell.

Graduates and professionals from any domain who have good analytical and logical skills can do this course. The best part is that you can do it online (live trainer-led classes) as well as in person in different locations like Mumbai and Bangalore.

The fee for classroom training is Rs 64999 and the fee for the live virtual classroom is Rs 49999. There are many other benefits and if you are interested, you should check out their website.

4. IBM Data Science Professional Certificate Course:

IBM Data Science Professional Certificate is again an online course. There are 5 courses in this specialization:

Customer Analytics- You learn about buying patterns and will use tools to understand customer behavior.
Operations Analytics- You learn to transform data to induce better business decisions.
People Analytics- You use data to manage people at work.
Accounting Analytics- You learn to use data to understand financial performances and predict future financial structures or schemes.
Business Analytics Capstone- You learn what challenges are faced by real-world businesses and apply what you have learned to solve the problems.

It is a free online course, and you can pay for the completion certificate if you want. It is self-paced, meaning you can follow it at your convenience anytime anywhere. It is completely beginner friendly and does not require any prior experience.

5. IMS Proschool Business Analytics Course:

IMS Proschool Business Analytics Course provides three types of training: Classroom training, Live online training, and self-paced learning. During the course, you will learn Big Data, Hadoop, Web Analytics, and Mobile BI. On successful completion of the course, you will get a Certificate in association with NSE India (NCFM).

6. Coursera Business Analytics Specialization:

Coursera Business Analytics Specialization is an online course offered by the University of Pennsylvania that offers training in data visualization and predictive modeling. This course is designed for complete beginners and no prior experience or programming background is required.

It will take around 6 months to finish this course and upon successful completion, the learners will earn a valuable and shareable certificate from Coursera in association with the Wharton University of Pennsylvania. Don’t worry if you can’t afford to pay that fee, they also provide financial assistance to their outstanding students. You can even follow the course in different languages such as English, Arabic, etc.

As a Business Analyst, you can expect to make anywhere between 5 lakhs to 10 lakhs per year. You can earn a lot more if you have got experience in the domain. There are a lot of enterprises hiring Business Analysts. To name a few, Amazon, Ey, Google, Barclays, etc. are the top hiring companies.

Although, all businesses need an analyst. If you stand out and have the skillset needed for a business to flourish, you can even be the one hiring people to run your business. Now if you’re wondering if it is easy to become a business analyst, the answer would be no. It is not easy to become a business analyst.

To be honest, none of the jobs out there are easy and to be a master in the business world, especially in today’s competitive market, is not child’s play. Having said that, you can keep working on your skills and sharpening them, understanding the trends and business needs will definitely help you in the long run.

It is important to understand that it only takes commitment and diligence to do anything you want. Being a business analyst is just one of those things. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t already studied business analytics, what is important is that you have good communication skills, critical thinking skills, organizational skills, etc.

And that is just enough for you to start pursuing Business Analytics courses for beginners. Earning a certification would be just the cherry on the cake. The Internet has made it easy for anyone and everyone to access the world from the comfort of their home.

There are a few platforms like Coursera where you can start learning and follow the course for free and will have to pay a minimal fee for the certification. They also provide financial aid if you’re unable to afford the fee.

Frequently Asked Questions About Business Analytics Courses for Beginners

Q) How and where can I start learning business analytics courses for beginners?

A) One can do research about Business Analytics and understand exactly what it is. If you are even remotely interested in starting your own business someday or want to work in the business world, you can do MBA or pursue Business Analytics courses for beginners online or offline depending on your preference.

You can try the free courses on various platforms like edX and Coursera to understand the basics at your own pace. The best part is that you don’t even need any kind of experience to learn from these sources. You can learn at any time or day.

Try to give at least 10 hours a week to the course. Once you’ve understood the fundamentals, you can either pay for a course to learn with a teacher or you can intern in a company and learn while you work to master this profitable and practical skill.

Q) What is the scope of a Business Analyst in India?

A) This is an ever-growing role and will never cease to be in demand. The role of a Business Analyst is essential for any type of business, big or small. A Business Analyst basically studies the raw data and transforms it into useful insights for better decision-making for a business. None of the businesses would survive or succeed without an Analyst to give them solutions and information about what they need to change or how they can overcome a problem.

Q) How long does it take to finish Business Analytics Courses for beginners?

A) It actually depends on your schedule and the type of training you are enrolled in. If you are doing online or self-paced business analytics courses for beginners, you can finish the course sooner or later than the estimated completion time. It is important that you dedicate at least 8-10 hours a week to this course. However, if you are taking classes in a business institution, it may take around 6 months to finish the course.

Q) How do I start business Analytics courses for beginners?

A) You can hold an undergraduate degree in any subject. You can then pursue a master’s in business analytics. You can also intern as an analyst in a company to get hands-on experience in this field. To support your learning and training, you can take up good Business Analytics courses for beginners either online or in person.

Q) What are the 2 best skills needed to be a Business Analyst?

A) Time management is one of the most important skills when it comes to being a Businessman or Businesswoman. They say time is money. How can we not make the most of it? It is important that one organizes their time well.

The second is verbal communication skills. You will be dealing with and running meetings with Stakeholders. You must be able to articulate well. If you don’t communicate well, there is always going to be chaos and confusion, and how are you going to solve bigger problems if you can’t handle the small ones?

Conclusion-

Business Analytics is a critical skill for businesses and people who want to make informed business decisions based on statistics. It is vital to understand the market trends and patterns to proceed with a decision in any business. To be able to do that, one must pursue a Specialization Course in Data Analytics either online or in classrooms. Go through the above-mentioned courses and decide which Business Analytics Courses for beginners are the most suitable for you to make an informed career decision.

Vaibhav Kakkar