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Business Analytics: Addressing the Real Skill

Requirements of Employers

Pinar Ozturk
[email protected]

Kathleen S. Hartzel
[email protected]

Palumbo-Donahue School of Business

Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, PA 15282, USA

Abstract
The demand for business and data analysts is growing. The business school is well positioned to offer
programs to meet these needs. This paper presents the findings from a study of the existing literature
on data analytics job roles, skills required from those roles, and using that knowledge to build better
programs. Three different types of articles are included in the design: faculty writing about their
personal experiences and observations (faculty voice), data gathered from expert practitioners and other
academics (nonresident expertise) and empirical data from online job service platforms (content
analysis). The narrative review method is used to integrate these disparate sources of information and
deliver cohesive observations.

Keywords: Business analytics, Data analytics, Curriculum design, Job openings, Narrative review

1. INTRODUCTION handle the advanced demands, require

specialized analytic techniques and tools (Chen,
The need for business analysts and data scientists Chiang & Storey, 2012). The demand for these
is skyrocketing and the number of data analytics types of data analytics is also evidenced by the
jobs is predicted to grow throughout the world. increasing number of job openings posted
According to the World Economic Forum’s Centre through online placement services such as
for the New Economy and Society (weforum.org, Indeed, Monster.com and LinkedIn.
2018), the ‘data analysts and scientists’ role has
been one of the ten highest job growth areas in From an academic viewpoint, data analytics
healthcare, information and communication related fields are barely out of their infancies.
technology, financial services and professional Professionals in these fields are polymaths well
services industries between 2013 and 2017. versed in advanced, varied knowledge and skills
During that same time period, data analysts and which have historically been located in
scientists’ roles were in the top 10 growth areas universities across the schools of business,
in seven out of eight global regions. By 2022, computer science, engineering, information
89% of the organizations surveyed in the United sciences, mathematics and statistics. Data
States anticipated adopting both organizational analytics projects are by their very nature cross
and user-level data analytics technologies. Big or multi-discipline which creates a challenge for
data, which is data sets are so large and complex the academy to determine where to best locate
that traditional approaches are inadequate to data analytic degree programs within the

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institution. Universities are racing to retool and graduation?” and “what should the relative
deploy both their graduate and undergraduate emphasis be among those competencies?” In this
program offerings which are designed to address section, we review the key studies that examine
these emergent resource requirements. required competencies in the data analytics field
As scholars struggle to determine the content and that should inform data analytics curricula. Some
nuances of specific programs, and practitioners of the studies reviewed focus on existing
vie to find prospective employees with the right information systems curricula and how analytics
knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs), a number can be introduced into that discipline, while
of research methods have been employed to help others help to solidify an often-nebulous
determine the optimal competencies for a distinction among job titles, such as business
particular type of program. Three of these analyst and data scientist, and skills required for
methods are 1) drawing upon the collective voice such roles.
of the faculty (i.e. their knowledge and
experience), Table 1; 2) seeking the guidance of Faculty Voice
nonresident experts (i.e., not coworkers), Table To keep up with the explosion of data analytics
2; and 3) content analyses of actual industry across all industries, colleges and universities
needs revealed in job postings, Table 3. have started debuting dozens of data analytics
programs during the past few years. Thus, there
This paper reviews and analyzes exemplar studies has been considerable exploration and
of the three methods of determining the KSAs experimentation in creating data analytics
required of business analysts and data scientists. courses to provide the requisite students
The analysis yields a narrative review that competencies. In this vein of research, scholars
incorporates specific types of jobs, different and faculty reflect on their knowledge and
facets of analytics, and categories of knowledge experience in the data analytics ecosystem.
and skills necessary to perform the specific work Many scholars believe that the information
demanded across various job roles. The methods systems faculty should retool and transform their
of gathering and analyzing data are also curriculum into a data analytics major
compared and contrasted to determine if the (Urbaczewski & Keeling, 2019). Mortenson,
source of the information is itself biased. This Doherty, & Robinson (2019) suggest that
narrative highlights the various knowledge and business schools typically house business (data)
skill taxonomies found in the individual studies. analytics programs and courses in business
These taxonomies, developed over time, are not analytics should be directly aligned with the
necessarily contradictory, but are somewhat needs of industry. Therefore, it is advisable to
inconsistent in language, depth, and breath. The include industry experts during program design
results of the present study help address and also to require real-world projects in the
knowledge and skill gaps between what curriculum (Wymbs, 2016; Chiang, Goes, &
prospective employees may possess with the Stohr, 2012).
needs that employers have by informing the
curricular design of specific types of data New graduate-level business analytics degree
analytics programs at graduate and program offerings outweigh the introduction of
undergraduate levels. Additionally, this is a step new undergraduate majors. Focusing on
toward developing a more consistent language to graduate curriculum Chiang et al. (2012) suggest
aide in the improved identification and placement that the information systems (IS) discipline is
of new employees in varied types of analytics versed in the knowledge and skills needed to
positions. prepare both the data specialist and business
analyst and the IS discipline would be well
positioned to create curriculum that integrates
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
three essential knowledge and skill areas in
business intelligence and analytics: 1) analytical
The proliferation of the data analytics related
skills, 2) information technology knowledge and
programs is still a relatively new phenomenon. In
skills and 3) business knowledge and
the literature, there are relatively few scholars
communication skills. Wilder & Ozgur (2015)
describing their own data analytics curriculum or
expand these areas to five: 1) data management,
the curriculum of others. Curriculum
2) analytical techniques, 3) result deployment, 4)
development is a multifaceted challenge. In
project life cycle, and 5) a functional area. Skills
addition to issues of implementation, curriculum
such as results deployment, project life cycles
designers need to consider questions of purpose
and functional areas require business and
such as “what competencies (knowledge, skills
communication skills. Thus, it is critical that
and abilities) should students have at
business context remains a central component in

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the curriculum of analytics programs located in programs fill the knowledge and skill
the business school (Urbaczewski & Keeling, requirements of industry. At one university, 166
2019). students in a professional master’s program in
business analytics, were required to complete a
Business concepts are not a foundational tenet in survey describing the type of activities and tools
all analytic programs. For example, Kang, used during their internship experience. Data
Holden, & Yu (2015) introduced four Pillar of analysis, data cleaning and visualization were the
Analytics on which The Rochester Institute of top three activities reported by 85%, 75% and
Technology’s Master of Science in Information 75% of the students respectively. These results
Sciences and Technologies (IST) was built. Pillar led the authors to conclude that most business
one is Data Preprocessing, Storage & Retrieval. analytics programs do not focus enough on those
Courses in this pillar focus on unstructured data. three areas (Hefley, Parker, & Chatterjee, 2019).
Pillar two is Analytical Models and Algorithms This report provides another example of the
where courses focus on extracting knowledge importance of industries’ influence on curriculum
using analytic techniques. Pillar three is Data design.
Exploration where students hone their analytical,
data organization and visualization skills. The The second study used publicly facing websites to
final pillar is Data Product where courses require analyze the curriculum of 15 graduate programs
students to work in teams and draw upon in business analytics. Their sample showed an
previous course content in developing a well- increased focus on basic statistics, like predictive
thought-out project. modeling. This increased focus on statistics
seemed to be at the expense of organizational
In undergraduate-level programs, scholars claim and managerial concepts, for example project
the focus of business analyst development should management (Johnson, Albizri & Jain, 2020).
be both on applying analytic techniques and
communicating the implications of those results The bulk of nonresident expertise studies, as
to management. Subsequently, with the described below, focused on undergraduate-level
emphasis on business and communication, the programs. Using course syllabi from various
analytical training and technical depth of the universities, Aasheim, Williams, Rutner, &
business analyst is less than required of a data Gardiner (2014) observed a pattern where
scientist (Wilder & Ozgur, 2015). Wilder & Ozgur business school analytics programs are called
(2015) also discuss the role of ‘data specialist’. “business analytics” or “data analytics” and
They view the technical depth of the data computer science related departments use the
specialist somewhere between that of the data “data science” moniker. A second related study
analyst and data scientist and describe the data noted similarities between the two program types
specialist as responsible for storage, access, and which include: 1) greater math and statistics
analysis of data. Whereas, they suggest the coverage than typically required for students in
business analyst (p. 181): “need(s) to be able to each school, 2) more emphasis on data
identify and exploit opportunities. They need management, 3) courses in data mining,
sufficient functional expertise to frame business visualization, modeling and analytical techniques,
problems and interpret the results. Business and unfortunately 4) a lack of data ethics and
analysts do not need to be experts in the various governance. They also observed differences
analytical tools but they need to have confidence between the business school’s data analytics and
in these tools. They simply need to ask the right computer science data science programs which
questions and form the right hypotheses.” included: 1) more math, statistics, and
programing in the data science programs than
data analytics, 2) some of the business schools
Nonresident Expertise used case studies, computer science did not, 3)
In order to understand the optimal knowledge visualization’s goal was communication in the
and skill set for data analytics programs, authors data analytics programs, but in data science the
have also examined business analytics and/or focus was on different types of visualization, 4)
data science curricula, and solicited input of data analytics concentrated on the evaluation of
industry and academic experts’ through tools and techniques while data science was
interviews, surveys, and Delphi studies. Some of concerned with the programming required to
the studies employed multi-method analyses to implement tools and techniques, and lastly 5)
explain and validate their results. where data analytics focused on using data
Two of the included studies focus on graduate- mining techniques, data science was geared
level programs. The first aimed to validate if toward learning data mining algorithms
curricular choices made by data analytics related (Aasheim, Williams, Ruther, & Gardiner, 2015).

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A review of program course descriptions showed data analytics and data science. Subsequently,
that the relationship between the traditional IS there seemed to be no consistency across
curriculum and business analytics curriculum programs in terms of “their approach, program
within the business school can be difficult to name, courses, required content or any other
discern. Ceccucci, Jones, Toskin, Hamden, & aspect of the program” (p.77).
Leonard (2020) identified 34 AACSB accredited
business schools that offered both IS and Burns and Sherman (2019) purported the value
business analytics undergraduate degrees. For of business analytics as a minor for the
each school, they compared the list of required undergraduate business student. They perused
courses in the IS program to the required catalog descriptions of courses found in the
business analytics courses and found a 36% curriculum of business analytics minors from 60
overlap in the content at the course level. schools. Basic statistics was the most common
requisite and predictive and descriptive analytics
Similarly, Mills, Chudoba, & Olsen (2016) were the most identified topics across the
examined the undergraduate programs 118 programs. They presented an exemplar
AACSB-accredited schools. They found that curriculum for a business analytics minor
instead of creating a new business analytics comprised of three prerequisite courses (basic
program, 35% of the schools added one new statics, principles of IS, and excel), three required
analytics course to their existing IS major, 15% courses (business analytics 1, business analytics
added two courses, 7% added three courses and 2 and management science) and two electives
3% added four courses between 2011 and 2016. housed within a business discipline.
To provide more clarity about the nature of the
new courses, they also categorized all the new Content Analysis
data analytics-related courses into one of the four At aggregate levels, online job advertisements
Pillars defined by Kang et al. (2015). Pillar 2 can be valuable indicators and reveal shifting
(data exploration) and Pillar 4 (data products) labor demands as they occur. This can provide
had the greatest number of new courses. Pillar 1 policy-makers, curriculum developers and
(data preprocessing, storage, and retrieval) and scholars additional data points to assess the
Pillar 3 (data exploration) also experienced dynamics of labor markets. In addition, for
growth in the number of courses offered, but to a millions of workers, online job ads provide the
lesser extent. first point of contact to potential employers. As a
result, job postings and the competencies listed
The Delphi technique was used as part of a multi- can significantly affect the makeup of the
method study by Cegielski & Jones-Farmer responding applicant pool.
(2016). The 27 expert participants were asked
“What knowledge, skills, and abilities should be Real-time labor demand data is useful for
taught in business schools to prepare students for understanding the analytics ecosystem. A
entry-level careers in business analytics?” The number of studies have used data analytics
method yielded 15 KSA categories. The related job advertisements retrieved from online
categories determined by the expert panel, along platforms to identify the optimal knowledge and
with categories emerging from a content analysis skill set for data analytics positions. This research
of 186 online job posting, were used to develop a stream is important due to its use of job ads as a
Likert scale questionnaire which also asked source of empirical input as well as a validation of
respondents about the KSAs sought in a new hire. curricular choices when designing a relevant data
The 160 survey responses by members of analytics curriculum.
business analytics forums revealed overall
agreement among the three methods. BI and big data skills were the focus of the
Debortolli, Müller, & vom Brocke’s (2014) content
Stephens and McGowan (2018) examined the analysis of 1,807 job advertisements found on
websites of undergraduate business schools to Monster.com during 2013 and 2014. They
benchmark options for their own university’s created hierarchical, tree-structured taxonomies
major and minor in business analytics. They of the desired skills for BI and big data jobs.
identified four challenges when interpreting their These taxonomies revealed that for successful
findings. First, the disciplinary home of business initiatives, individuals having business skills were
analytics is not clear. Second, no standardized as important as having technical skills in both BI
curriculum model exists. Third, no governing and big data jobs. BI skills were in higher
body is responsible for creating a standardized demand and more focused on commercial
curricular model. Finally, business analytics is not products and vendors than the skills associated
clearly distinguishable from other areas such as

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with big data. Big data skills were more analytical high. Finally, the engineer role was most
and software development oriented. associated with architecture skills and to a lesser
extent cloud, systems management and
Also during 2013 and 2014, an automatic distributed computing.
detection and clustering analysis of 924 data
analyst job listings from LinkedIn, Indeed and December 2016 through February 2017, Verma,
Monster.com, was used to identify five job Yurov, Lane, & Yurova (2019) scraped 1,235 job
responsibilities and four skill requirements for advertisements for 1) business analyst, 2) BI
data analysts (Luo, 2018). Job responsibilities analyst, 3) data analyst and 4) data scientist from
included: 1) data management, 2) data analysis, Indeed. For each of the job roles, they identified
3) insight generation, 4) project management the five most frequently referenced skill
and 5) functional responsibility. Whereas skill categories found in the job ads. Across all four
requirements included: 1) academic job types, decision making skills were most
qualifications, 2) soft skills, 3) technical skills and frequently mentioned skill set. Organization skills
4) software tools. This study found that when (e.g. teamwork and management) was always in
seeking the technical skills associated with data the found in top three types of required skills.
management and analysis, the demand for soft Statistical skills was conspicuously missing from
skills decreased. Conversely when seeking the business analyst ideal profile, but it was the
candidates for a position of functional data scientist’s second most frequently
responsibility, the need for technical skills mentioned skill set. Programming skills was only
declined. mentioned in the data scientist’s top five. Note
that both the business analyst and data scientist,
Cegielski & Jones-Farmer (2016) focused on alone, had domain skills (i.e., the business
entry-level business analytics positions and context) among their top five most required skill
pulled 186 job ads from LinkedIn, Career-Builder sets. This study demonstrated the overlapping
and Monster.com in 2014. Their KSA framework skill sets of job roles while emphasizing the varied
had three major categories 1) business, 2) intensity of skill requirements within job roles.
analytical and 3) technical skills. They further
divided the technical KSAs into applications, Radovilsky, Hegde, Acharya & Uma (2018)
languages and infrastructure. collected 1,050 job postings from either LinkedIn,
Indeed, Glassdoor, Monster.com and
In 2015, Gardiner, Aasheim, Rutner, & Williams Careerbuilder.com during 2017. Their objective
(2018) harvested 1,216 job advertisements was to add more clarity to the distinction between
containing ‘big data’ in the job title from Indeed. a data scientist and a business data analyst. This
Using automatic topic detection and expert study generated lists of the 20 most frequently
verification, 218 job skill related terms were mentioned words associated with data scientist
identified. These were clustered by experts into and big data analyst job ads and categorized
24 KSAs. Business and soft skills, such as them into four knowledge domains: technical,
communication, domain, leadership, personal analytical, business, and communication.
skill attributes and team, prominently resided
among the technical skill categories. Thirteen Mortenson, et al. (2019) looked at master’s level
percent of the 218 job skill terms fell within one analytics programs in the UK to determine what
of the aforementioned soft skill categories. The other disciplines were most closely aligned with
importance of data analytics roles requiring analytics offering. Using both job advertisements
strong business acumen is also indicated in the (n=8,846) and course descriptions (n=234), they
analysis of 2,786 job listings scraped from applied clustering analyses to develop a model to
Dice.com during 2015 (De Mauro, Greco, predict courses for specific analytic-type
Grimaldi, & Ritala, 2018). In this study, a skills programs. The first type of master’s program
matrix was utilized to map the relevancy of each aligned with machine learning and was primarily
skill set to one of the business analyst, data housed in computer science related programs.
scientist, developer or engineer job categories. The second type of program most closely aligned
The business analyst role was most tightly with operations research and was found in
associated with project management and business programs.
business impact skills. The data scientist’s
strongest skill set was typically analytics, but Johnson, et al. (2020) scraped 5,257 business
business impact and database management also analyst related entry-level job postings from
ranked highly. The developer had the greatest Indeed.com in 2018. The results from the web
association with coding, but cloud, systems scraping were subsequently validated by
management, and distributed computing ranked surveying experts and focus groups. Their result

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confirmed the need for graduate-level programs, Identifying and Selecting Studies
SQL, Python and R were key tools, graduates The narrative review process starts by identifying
should have some knowledge of big data studies. To identify these studies, we used Google
platforms, and both analytical and soft skills were Scholar and the online databases accessible via
required. our university. Using the search feature, we fixed
the criteria of the research to include 1) exact
Persaud (2020) used Le Deist & Winterton’s phrase = “data analytics”, 2) at least one of terms
(2005) Holistic Model of Competence to frame the = “job postings” or “job ad” and/or curriculum.
competencies required of big data analytics The keyword combination of data analytics and
professionals. The Holistic Model of Competence job postings/ads returned 469 results (conducted
identified three distinct types of competencies: June 21,2020). An author of this study manually
cognitive, functional and social. At the nexus of evaluated each of the items and eliminated all
these is meta-competence, which represents the items that 1) were not journal articles, 2) did not
KSAs needed to address messy, complex contain online job posting data, and 3) were not
challenges. Using text mining on 3,009 job accessible in English. Most of the 469 items that
postings for data analytics related positions from were identified in the initial search focused on
Indeed, LinkedIn, Monster.com, Procom and also other research questions such as non-data
the related academic program materials from 61 analytic jobs, data analytic powered
Canadian universities and colleges, he identified recommendation systems, using data analytics to
four broad KSA categories. Technical KSAs, facilitate minority hiring and to eliminate AI
which fall into the cognitive and functional introduced bias for candidates from
competences were 1) data analytics and 2) underrepresented populations, social networking
computing. The social and meta competences effects on hiring patterns and building intelligent
were 3) business and 4) soft skills. recruiting tools. To increase confidence in the
identification of relevance studies, each paper’s
A study that compared the analytics skills listed literature review and bibliography were examined
in 3,511 U.S.-based job advertisements from for candidates for inclusion. The final list was
Monster.com and Indeed.com posted between pared down to 12 journal articles containing the
October 2018 and January 2019 with skills taught results of a content analysis of data analytic-
at 1,079 courses across the 49 graduate related job postings.
programs concluded that graduate business
schools are placing too much importance on The keyword combination of data analytics and
highly technical topics that would be better placed curriculum returned over 15,000 results. In order
in data science programs (Seal, Leon, Pryzasnyski to select exemplary work from the result list, we
& Lontok, 2020). selected most commonly cited studies and
applied the same elimination criteria as above
3. METHODOLOGY (journal article accessible in English). We then
examined the references of remaining studies and
Narrative review is one of many ways to pared down our list to 15 articles that discuss data
summarize, integrate and interpret selected sets analytics curriculum development. We then used
of scholarly works in various fields. Narrative the bibliography of cited articles to identify other
reviews present verbal descriptions of past papers that contributed to the development of the
studies focusing on frameworks and theories, studies using actual job posting data.
and/or research outcomes (King & He, 2015).
While no commonly accepted or standardized Coding and Analyzing Studies
procedure for conducting a narrative review This step is focused on the extraction of the
exists, with regard to data analysis, narrative information from each study selected. To
summary refers to the informal techniques used accomplish this task, we use an excel table with
to synthesize prior study findings, often including the coded study criteria such as publication date,
some type of commentary or interpretation authors, data source and dataset size. When
(Dixon-Woods, Agarwal, Jones, Young, & Sutton coding the studies, we first classified them into
2015). In its simplest form, the narrative review three principal categories representing different
attempts to identify what has been written on a methodologies used: 1) conceptual studies
topic (Pare, Trudel, Jaana, & Kitsiou, 2015) with drawing upon the collective voice of the faculty
the goal of coming to some conclusions through (i.e. their knowledge and experience), 2)
classifications of the research methods and curriculum studies seeking the guidance of
categorizations of results. practitioner experts, and 3) content analyses of
actual industry needs revealed in job
advertisements.

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Tables 1, 2 and 3 presented in Appendix A to use the “data analytics” or “business analytics”
summarize the articles included in our review. moniker, computer science schools preferred
Table 1 shows the conceptual studies “data science” as a label (Aasheim et al., 2014;
representing faculty voice. Faculty experience, Aasheim et al., 2015). Business analyst is
discussions and literature review were the basis typically the least technical job role (Verma et.al.,
for these papers. Table 2 shows the studies that 2019). And business analysts, compared to more
examined business analytics and/or data science technical “data scientist” roles, tend to have more
curricula, and solicited input of industry and functional responsibility, project management
academic experts. These studies present primary experience and insight into the business impact
and/or secondary data. Table 3 presents studies of analytics driven decision making (Luo, 2016).
that gathered new, original data collected through A skill like project management, is more
web scraping and content analysis of online job important to the business analyst because
advertisements. projects are used to execute strategy (De Mauro
et al., 2018). Business skills, especially
4. RESULTS understanding the potential business impact of
decisions based on analytical reports, are
Although the data analytics field has been one of important to both business analysts and data
the highest growing job areas during the last scientists. With that said, several studies
decade and many universities are designing and emphasized the importance of business skills, not
retooling their programs and curricula to include only for business/data analyst roles, but also for
data analytics skills, there is to-date no the data scientist and other related positions.
systematic review of recent job advertisement
studies with the focus of integrating data Fourth, the most desirable skills for entry-level
analytics skills into curricula. In reviewing past analytics positions were found to include data
studies, we make five observations. analytics, modeling, and business strategy in the
hard skills category; analytical, problem-solving
First, the dearth of earlier studies emphasizes and written communication in the soft skills
that the field is relatively new and growing in category; and SQL, Python and Java in the
importance. Second, most studies emphasized software skills category (Stanton & Stanton,
that there were a large number of different job 2019). In addition, junior level employees tended
titles for data analytics related roles (e.g. 55 jobs to have more technical skill requirements,
titles in Stanton & Stanton, 2015). The most whereas senior-level employees needed more
frequently occurring listings were for data business skills to formulate and execute strategy
scientists, data analysts, and business analysts (Chang et al., 2018).
(e.g. Debortolli et al., 2014; De Mauro et al.,
2018, Verma et al., 2019; Persaud, 2020). Fifth, big data and big data analytics were among
of the most frequently discussed areas in the
Third, the descriptions of the required skills and papers reviewed and many papers included “big
responsibilities of these roles were often found to data” as their own search criteria when searching
be similar and were most commonly grouped into for previous literature or related job
three major categories: business /analytics / advertisements (e.g. Debortoli et al., 2014;
technical (e.g. Radovilsky et al., 2018; Chang et Gardiner et al., 2018; De Mauro et al., 2018;
al., 2018) or hard/soft/software (e.g. Luo, 2016; Persaud, 2020).
Stanton & Stanton, 2020). These similarities
between the job roles necessitate faculty invest And finally, each type of study could be subject to
in defining the mission, goals, objectives and its own unique bias. For example, the voice of
scope of their specialized programs. Part of this the faculty may be constrained by faculty
effort is understanding the how one academic expertise and training. Non-resident experts may
unit’s offering is different than another’s. be influenced by their peers in focus groups and
Although there seems to be a great deal of advisory meetings. The quality of empirical data
overlap in topics among both graduate and from web scraping is only as good as the job
undergraduate programs, found in units such as requirements are accurately described. In other
computer science, mathematics, information words, are the necessary requirements in the text
science and the business school, each program or could the real requirements be idealized and
has unique strengths that differentiate it from rarely met?
other disciplines. It is the breadth and depth of
topic coverage, varying often by discipline, that
distinguishes one program from another. For
example, it was shown that business schools tend

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4. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK Ceccucci, W., Jones, K., Toskin, K., Hamden, C.
T., & Leonard, L. (2020). Undergraduate
We believe this is the first time a narrative review Business Analytics and the overlap with
method has been used to identify, analyze and Information Systems Programs.
synthesize key published articles representing the INFORMATION SYSTEMS EDUCATION
1) wisdom of academics (faculty voice), 2) expert JOURNAL, 18(4), 4.
practitioner and academic input (nonresident
Cegielski, C. G., & Jones‐Farmer, L. A. (2016).
expertise) and 3) empirical data from online job
Knowledge, skills, and abilities for entry‐level
service platforms. This effort provides a multi-
business analytics positions: A multi‐method
perspective view of the best practices in the
study. Decision Sciences Journal of
identification of the KSAs of perspective job roles
Innovative Education, 14(1), 91-118.
and applying this insight into the development of
new data analytics curriculum. With this Chen, C., & Jiang, H. (2020). Important Skills for
knowledge, business school faculty will be better Data Scientists in China: Two Delphi
informed and able to develop distinctive Studies. Journal of Computer Information
programs that capitalize on their unique Systems, 60(3), 287-296
strengths, while simultaneous meeting or
exceeding the expectations of their students. Chen, H., Chiang, R. H., & Storey, V. C. (2012).
Business intelligence and analytics: From big
A limitation of this type of study is that it is data to big impact. MIS quarterly, 1165-
difficult to match specific low-level skill 1188.
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Appendix
TABLE 1: VOICE OF THE FACULTY ARTICLES
Major Categories Curriculum /
Article Analysis type Keywords
/ Concepts Takeaways
GRADUATE
Chiang, Goes speculate on the
demand for BI&A data mining; text 1) analytic skills;
& Stohr in business analysis; IS 2) IT knowledge & ▪ challenges for BI&A
(2012) schools; education; big data, skills; programs;
grad program, 1)industry BI&A; data 3) business knowledge ▪ role of IS curriculum
not only business direction; warehousing & communication skills
school 2) MS offerings
four pillars:
Kang, et al information sciences 1) data preprocessing,
(2015) & technologies; storage & retrieval ▪ courses needed to
conceptual support pillars
grad program, curriculum, data 2) data exploration
framework
not only business analytics, database, 3) analytical models &
school web technologies algorithms
4) data product
Johnson,
Albizri and Analytics education; ▪ focus on basic analytic
Curriculum
Jain (2020) business analytics; skills (descriptive and
analysis
Grad program, curriculum design predictive analytics)
business
UG
▪ appropriate skill level and
1) project life cycle breadth of knowledge
Wilder & purposed
business analytics; 2) data management ▪ for students with average
Ozgur (2015) undergraduate
UG curriculum; 3) analytics techniques to above-average
UG program, business analytics
business analyst 4) result deployment analytical skills
business school curriculum
5) functional area ▪ guidelines to ensure
success

data analytics; ▪ driven by business input

Wymbs
recommenda- innovation process, & academic leadership
(2016) tions for curriculum design incorporating innovation
UG program, curriculum design and development; theory & practice
business school business relevance concepts

BOTH
Urbaczewski
academic degree; IS
& Keeling ▪ invited paper
transitioning from environment; IS ed;
(2019) ▪ reflecting the last decade
MIS to analytics computing education;
UG & grad in the field & the next
programs business analytics; IS
programs, decade to come
ed research
business school

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TABLE 2: NONRESIDENT EXPERTISE ARTICLES

Analysis type Major Categories Curriculum /
Article Keywords
Sample Size / Concepts Takeaways
GRADUATE
Internship
experience data science; data 1) activities
survey; analytics; work 2) coding ▪ focus more on data
Hefley, et al.
practices; 3) S/W packages analysis, data cleaning,
(2019) 166 business environments; entry- 4) s/w tools and visualization
analytics graduate level workers 5) platforms
students
Johnson,
Albizri and Analytics education; ▪ focus on basic analytic
Curriculum
Jain (2020) business analytics; skills (descriptive and
analysis
Grad program, curriculum design predictive analytics)
business
UG
IS skills; IT skills;
1) interpersonal
skills survey skill set; knowledge ▪ here is no significant
2) personal
requirements; difference between
Aasheim et 3) technical
IT managers IS professionals; faculty’s and IT
al. (2014) (350); IT faculty IT professionals;
4) organizational &
managers’ perceptions
managerial
(78) curriculum of average importance.
5) experience & GPA
development
▪ DS requires more math,
course description data analytics; job data science
statistics, programming
content analysis skills; emerging programs;
(Aasheim et ▪ DS requires learning
technologies; data analytics
al., 2015) 13 data analytics program programs
data mining algorithms
▪ DA requires using data
UG programs improvement
mining techniques
Delphi method /
business analytics; 1) business
Cegielski & skills survey
big data; Delphi 2) analytical ▪ 15 KSA categories
Jones-Farmer method; content 3) technical (apps,
27 experts /
(2016) analysis; languages, ▪ all methods agreed
160 practitioners
qualitative methods infrastructure)

big data; data

curriculum review
analytics; Pillars of Analytics ▪ 60% of AACSB IS
Mills et al.
visualization; (Kang, Holden, and programs added data
(2016) 118 AACSB UG IS
business intelligence; Yu, 2015) science-related courses
programs
model curricula between 2011 & 2016
▪ no discipline owns BA
Stephens &
business analytics; ▪ no model curriculum
McGowan literature review,
▪ no organization
business intelligence;
(2018) curriculum
data analytics; data responsible for
UG program, analysis
science curriculum model
business school ▪ lacks a clear boundary
▪ prerequisites: basic
Burns & stats, principles of IS;
business analytics
Sherman curriculum knowledge and skills’
1) prerequisite topics Excel
(2019) 2) required topics ▪ required: BA 1; BA 2;
analysis business analytics
UG minor, 3) elective topics management sciences
minor curriculum
business school ▪ electives (discipline
specific)
course description
content analysis 1) analytical skills
Ceccucci et data analytics;
2) IT knowledge & ▪ 36% of BA programs
al. (2020) 34 business
business intelligence;
skills and IT programs
UG program, business analytics
schools with IS & 3) business knowledge overlap
business school program
analytics & communication skills
programs

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TABLE 3: JOB ADVERTISEMENTS – CONTENT ANALYSIS ARTICLES

Scrapping
Authors Date Categories Interesting Points
Job Title
▪ BIA skills (more focused on
2013-2014 business (domain & management)
Debortolli, et commercial products & vendors)
IT (concepts and methods &
al. (2014) BIA, BDA products)
▪ BDA skills (S/W development,
statistical oriented, HR intensive)
job responsibilities (data mgt, data
2013-2014 analysis, insight, proj mgt, ▪ technical skills of data management
Luo, 2018 functional) and analysis were negatively
DA skill requirements (academic, soft, associated with soft skills
technical, S/W)
Cegielski & 2014 business ▪ validated by a survey of 160
Jones-Farmer analytical practitioners
(2016) BA technical ▪ indicated priority skills
2015
Gardiner, et 24 KSA categories
▪ 13% of skill terms are soft skills
al. (2018) *BD*
218 skills
2015 4 job categories
9 skill sets (cloud, coding, DB mgt,
De Mauro, et ▪ business impact - strongly associated
BA, DS, architecture, sys mgt, distributed
al. (2018) developer, computer, analytics, business
with both BA and DS roles
engineer impact)
2016 – 2017 ▪ decision making - most the
Verma, et al, frequently mentioned skill set
17 skill categories
(2019) BA, BIA, DA, ▪ statistical - not a top 5 for BA
DS ▪ domain - a top 5 for DS and BA
technical
2017 ▪ collaborate - the only soft skill in the
Radovilsky, analytical
DS’s most frequently mentioned word
et al. (2018) DS, BDA
business
list
communication
▪ suggestions: real-world,
Stanton & hard skills
2019 certifications, when & how to use
Stanton DS, DA, BA
soft skills
techniques, coding, soft skills, state-
(2020) software skills
of-the-art tools
▪ type 1- aligned with ML - primarily in
type 1 degree – data science / big
Montenson, comp sci
data
et al. (2019) type 2 degree – business analytics
▪ type 2 closed aligned with OR in
business
Johnson, 2018
tools ▪ advanced degrees are preferred
Albizri and big data infrastructure ▪ SQL, R, and Python are sought after
BA (entry
Jain (2020) level, not
technical concepts ▪ Inference, sampling and non-
soft skills sampling errors
mgmt)
2020
data analytics
▪ data scientists alone - not sufficient
Persaud computing
BA, DS, DA, to give companies a real competitive
(2020) data
business
advantage
soft skills
consultant

Seal, et al., 2018-2019 soft skills ▪ business schools spend too much
(2020) BA analytic/technical skills time on deeply technical topics

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