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Courses on data management becoming critical
To explain why businesses should be paying attention to big data solutions, a Johns Hopkins Carey Business School professor points to Sears and Amazon.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos started his company as a website that sold books, but constantly innovated. Sears, a dominant retailer, did not pivot and use emerging technologies, and Amazon became an e-commerce giant, said Jim Kyung-Soo Liew, assistant professor in finance at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and co-founder of SoKat.co.
“If executives are not thinking about the big data problem, it’s highly unlikely that they are positioning their strategies correctly for their company’s future,” Liew said. “Organizations have to constantly anticipate what’s over the horizon, because their competitors are.”
Today, computer hardware is faster, companies have stockpiles of data at their fingertips and will only be gathering more, and open source artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms allow for very rapid technological innovation.
That is why Johns Hopkins and Loyola University Maryland Sellinger School of Business both offer executive education training courses designed to keep executives and professionals up-to-speed on big data and AI.
Liew teaches the course “Big Data and Artificial Intelligence: Extracting Business Value,” which provides a non-technical introduction to big data and AI and will be offered again next spring. It helps senior and midlevel managers identify and understand when they’re encountering a big data problem and solutions and suggestions to recognize and maximize the value of data.
Liew said the three-day course allows executives to interact with others and share experiences.
“You learn some of the best practices that are coming out of the ivory tower when it comes to applying AI tools on big data — how to manage it, how to process it, and how to use it to drive up ROI,” he said. “Because what good is storing data if you don’t know how to extract value from it?”
Hands-on help to learn cutting-edge technology
At Loyola, a series of executive education courses in data analytics is offered because professionals who want to excel today in many different industries need to know big data.
Paul Tallon, professor of information systems, gave an example of accountants who want to be successful have to go beyond taxation policy and accounting rules.
“If you want to really pick up the pace as an accountant, you have to know database systems,” Tallon said. “You have to know that in a lot of companies data today is a strategic asset.”
Students can use the course to maintain professional certifications or add skills to advance their careers. They can pick and choose which courses to take.
Data analytics offers instruction in Tableau data visualization, Structured Query Language in Microsoft Access and application development in Oracle.
Tallon encourages executives to bring their own data sets so they can see real-world challenges and solutions.
The school also has the ability to design a custom course for a company or team encountering a specific challenge with data.
“This is the way the world is today: we have data, data and more data,” Tallon said. “The idea of companies drowning in data is absolutely true.”
Loyola’s courses can be taken in a self-paced online format. Students can also arrange a face-to-face traditional course or an online course where they log on at a specific time. But in any format, Loyola offers a “high-touch” environment.
“So it’s not as if we’re just throwing the content at you and then saying there it is, best of luck. If there’s something that people don’t understand, it’s please reach out to me, please don’t hesitate to contact me,” Tallon said. “We’re always available.”
