As a kid I dreaded math homework. I’d often approach my Dad for help and his response was always “let me take a look at it for a few minutes”. I’d sigh, knowing that this wouldn’t be a short assignment. That’s what happens when your father studied economics in college simply because he thought it was “fun”. He’d brush up on my math homework and then proceed to delve into math theory. I didn’t care about the “why” behind the numbers, I just wanted to know how to the solve the problem. But he taught me a valuable lesson (one of many). In order to understand how to do something, you must first understand the why.
This is certainly true when looking at business analytics. In conversations with companies across many industries there’s consistency in the struggle to find good analytical resources. A demand in the marketing space right now is finding those individuals who cannot only evaluate the marketing and sales data, but also make business recommendations based on that output.