The MSc Business Analytics is a professionally accredited, one-year specialist programme for graduates with a bachelor's degree with a substantial quantitative component, and highly qualified graduates from other backgrounds with demonstrable advanced quantitative skills. It will suit graduates or early career professionals who wish to pursue a career in business analytics across sectors such as digital marketing, human resources, logistics, retail, finance, banking, insurance, healthcare, and agriculture.

The programme accreditation is awarded by the Institute of Analytics (IoA), which is the professional body for analytics and data science professionals across the world. Their mission aligns with our vision of developing and promoting the highest professional and ethical standards in the realm of data analytics. By becoming IoA Corporate Partners, we demonstrate our commitment to staying up to date in the fast-evolving field of analytics and data science. This in turn, will help to boost your employability, ensuring you are well-equipped to navigate the fast-changing landscape of analytics.

As well as benefiting from the accreditation, the MSc Business Analytics has been created in partnership with industry professionals from IBM, LV and UCL/IBM Industry Exchange Network. It provides students with the opportunity to work on business analytics projects and offer data-driven solutions to a real-life managerial decision-making problem or challenge, where possible, in partnership with IBM and other private, charity, and public sector organisations.

Students will gain a critical understanding of organisational, societal, and ethical issues in the use of Business Analytics. These issues are crucial for many organisations that seek to provide data-driven services while trying to balance innovation and competitiveness with public trust and corporate social responsibility. Examples of projects include optimisation of resource allocation, people analytics to support hiring decisions, sales forecasting, performance measurement and evaluation, customer segmentation, and sentiment analysis to improve a business strategic direction.

At the end of the programme, students will have learned:

• technical skills in data preparation (such as identification, extraction, and cleaning of data);
• the use of statistical and machine learning techniques to perform data mining and predictive analytics;
• the formulation and execution of statistical and mathematical models to optimise challenging business decisions;
• the visualisation, interpretation, and reporting/communication of results from statistical analysis.

Students will learn how to perform ad-hoc data analytics in Python and through specialised software and decision support platforms such as Lingo. They will also be offered guidance on how to successfully receive professional accreditation from the UK’s Operational Research (OR) Society as well as other affiliated organisations such as the Alliance of Data Science Professionals.

You will be taught by leading academics whose research tackles the major issues in business analytics. 88% of our Business and Management research is rated as world-leading or internationally excellent (REF 2021), reflecting its impact on shaping policy and practice. Bristol is a vibrant, ambitious, and entrepreneurial city and home to SETSquared, the world's top university business incubator (UBI Global).