Any feedback and suggestion is welcome, thank you for taking the time to review my essay in advance!!
I came into contact with business analytics for the first time when I started my role as a Financial Analyst in the Corporate Finance team at xxxx. As a Center of Excellence with advanced analytics capabilities at its core, my team creates deep visibility into financial performance with executive and line-of-business dashboards, while also utilizing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to streamline reporting and planning process. I have come to understand that it is an industry determinant that forward-looking analytics tools are fundamental to generate insights and drive better business decisions, hence my decision to embellish my skillset in this spectrum further.
My undergraduate studies in Economics has helped me develop critical thinking skills and trained me to apply the skillset to solve complex problems. As a part of the quantitatively focused curriculum, I completed an econometric project utilizing MatLab to study the impact of substance use on students' academic performance. On the other hand, an MSC degree in Accounting from xxx provided me with solid knowledge in financial principals, which serve as the core of corporate finance. I joined xxxx as a financial analyst post my graduation from xxx. My current role has presented to me tremendous learning opportunities in the data analytics field. During my time working at xxxx, I self-learned Tableau, and have gained hands-on experience of running queries in Oracle Hyperion databases and building executive reporting dashboard. I also led a business process automation project integrating tools such as SharePoint, Alteryx and Tableau. To polish project management skills, I have obtained Sigma White-belt certificate and will complete Green Belt training in coming September.
As the finance industry joins the digitization trend, my team started the digitization journey back in 2016. Despite the success of standardization of reporting at functional level, and semi-automation of reporting, we are still facing challenges such as lack of real time data availability and limited what-if analysis. Many reporting cycles are driven by technology and data-processing limitations, thus can only happen on certain schedules. Furthermore, most of our current business processes involve high degree of manual intervention. Automation requires hand-shakes between various software and databases to streamline process. My team's vision for the next 3 years includes 100% automated and artificial intelligence-based self-serving reports and real-time business insights availability. As we are stressing more on business value creation rather than simply providing historical data, corporate finance is expected to become the knowledge hub of the organization. This initiative reinforced my will to gain knowledge of business analytics.
My personal professional goal is to become a Subject Matter Expert of finance data, who can design automation of workflows, enable real-time and predictive data analysis, ultimately help business partners efficiently make strategic decisions. It is with this goal in mind that if accepted I would choose the Business Track in the xx program's offering. And to this aspiration, the xxx program at xxx has stood out for a number of reasons. Whereas the interdisciplinary nature of the program gives me a broad and practical understanding of all aspects of data analytics, including data visualization, statistics and operational research, the solid grounding in data modeling and the Applied Analytics Practicum project will enable me to apply the skillset to my current role. The statistics courses in this curriculum will provide me with a solid basis of what-if and predictive analysis. The Operational Research courses will equip me with skill to break down problem into its most basic components and employ mathematical methods to solve them. On top of that, I'd like to learn effective data visualization, to help executives make decisions in more timely manner. Lastly, I've always enjoyed online learning as it has helped me gain new knowledge in the incredible field of data science. To prepare myself for the xxx Program, I am taking SQL and Python classes on Lynda.com and target to finish by end of 2019. I am also sitting for the Tableau Desktop Associate exam in August.
I want to thank the faculty and admissions staff for taking the time to review my application, and for creating remote learning opportunity like this program.
collecting, analyzing, and interpreting big data in a business context
I came into contact with business analytics for the first time when I started my role as a Financial Analyst in the Corporate Finance team at xxxx. As a Center of Excellence with advanced analytics capabilities at its core, my team creates deep visibility into financial performance with executive and line-of-business dashboards, while also utilizing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to streamline reporting and planning process. I have come to understand that it is an industry determinant that forward-looking analytics tools are fundamental to generate insights and drive better business decisions, hence my decision to embellish my skillset in this spectrum further.
My undergraduate studies in Economics has helped me develop critical thinking skills and trained me to apply the skillset to solve complex problems. As a part of the quantitatively focused curriculum, I completed an econometric project utilizing MatLab to study the impact of substance use on students' academic performance. On the other hand, an MSC degree in Accounting from xxx provided me with solid knowledge in financial principals, which serve as the core of corporate finance. I joined xxxx as a financial analyst post my graduation from xxx. My current role has presented to me tremendous learning opportunities in the data analytics field. During my time working at xxxx, I self-learned Tableau, and have gained hands-on experience of running queries in Oracle Hyperion databases and building executive reporting dashboard. I also led a business process automation project integrating tools such as SharePoint, Alteryx and Tableau. To polish project management skills, I have obtained Sigma White-belt certificate and will complete Green Belt training in coming September.
As the finance industry joins the digitization trend, my team started the digitization journey back in 2016. Despite the success of standardization of reporting at functional level, and semi-automation of reporting, we are still facing challenges such as lack of real time data availability and limited what-if analysis. Many reporting cycles are driven by technology and data-processing limitations, thus can only happen on certain schedules. Furthermore, most of our current business processes involve high degree of manual intervention. Automation requires hand-shakes between various software and databases to streamline process. My team's vision for the next 3 years includes 100% automated and artificial intelligence-based self-serving reports and real-time business insights availability. As we are stressing more on business value creation rather than simply providing historical data, corporate finance is expected to become the knowledge hub of the organization. This initiative reinforced my will to gain knowledge of business analytics.
My personal professional goal is to become a Subject Matter Expert of finance data, who can design automation of workflows, enable real-time and predictive data analysis, ultimately help business partners efficiently make strategic decisions. It is with this goal in mind that if accepted I would choose the Business Track in the xx program's offering. And to this aspiration, the xxx program at xxx has stood out for a number of reasons. Whereas the interdisciplinary nature of the program gives me a broad and practical understanding of all aspects of data analytics, including data visualization, statistics and operational research, the solid grounding in data modeling and the Applied Analytics Practicum project will enable me to apply the skillset to my current role. The statistics courses in this curriculum will provide me with a solid basis of what-if and predictive analysis. The Operational Research courses will equip me with skill to break down problem into its most basic components and employ mathematical methods to solve them. On top of that, I'd like to learn effective data visualization, to help executives make decisions in more timely manner. Lastly, I've always enjoyed online learning as it has helped me gain new knowledge in the incredible field of data science. To prepare myself for the xxx Program, I am taking SQL and Python classes on Lynda.com and target to finish by end of 2019. I am also sitting for the Tableau Desktop Associate exam in August.
I want to thank the faculty and admissions staff for taking the time to review my application, and for creating remote learning opportunity like this program.