Managing the future: Tech and management skills intersect to prepare students for a data-centred world in Master of Management Analytics program

By Suzanne Bowness | April 16, 2024

Owen Petter was already working in his first role after graduation from the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics’ Bachelor of Business Administration (major in finance, minor in economics) when he started to see job postings for data-related roles. "I saw the interest and that it was a growing space. I was working in HR so I got to see the influx of hiring for those roles," says Petter.

Realizing that he too was keen to explore this growing field and seeing the skills requirements from his vantage in HR, Petter began to start looking for further training, which led him right back to the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics. Applying to the Master Science in Management Analytics (MMA) program was a no-brainer.

"I was always more numerically inclined, that was my preference to work with numbers," he explains, adding that his past internships had made him realize that finance math was based more on pre-built models whereas he wanted to work with raw data. "That work leads to a lot more creativity, combined with the theory, which I really enjoy."

MMA program director Mojtaba Araghi confirms Petter's observations about the demand for data and business analysts. "Research shows that Canada will need a huge amount of data scientists over the next five to ten years, people who can understand and work with data, who will derive insights from data in industries from health care to retail to universities, which are producing huge amounts of data day by day," he says. He adds that the MMA stands out for offering a management component whereas many programs offer only the technical side of analytics, how to code and train a model.

With two terms of courses, students learn all the technical aspects plus get to think more deeply about the management side. The program culminates in an eight-month fieldwork project that connects students as consultants with a real-world client. Students can also apply to a double degree with the MMA plus the Master of Finance, where they complete all the courses in five terms plus tackle an MMA fieldwork project that is tailored to the finance field.

Now in his second semester of the program, Petter says his favourite first-semester course was Data Management in Organizations for the behind-the-scenes management knowledge. He also valued Machine Learning for Business for its practicality, and Applied Econometrics for its theory. In his second semester he likes Decision Making with Analytics as well as Legal and Ethical Issues in Business Analytics. "That course is good because the laws haven’t caught up with organizations, so it tries to build a foundation so when we get into practice we're keeping the ethical use of data top of mind," says Petter. The program is also future focused with its Business Applications of Artificial Intelligence course.

In the final term of the program, students take a specialized course in one of a handful of focus areas that include accounting, marketing and supply chain. They also tackle the eight-month fieldwork course, working in teams. Student teams not only solve a data problem for their client, but actually propose the question that they will solve, providing them with experience in identifying problems and outlining a scope of work.

Petter's client is a shipping company that doesn't have a dedicated data team to build models. "They track so much, but don't have a way of pulling direct insights," says Petter. "We're working on building a model to help them better understand total cost of ownership on their assets." The project brings in all of the skills from their decision analytics course, and they use programming languages like Python and R to work on the large unstructured data sets, which is more real-world than the clean data that is the staple of classroom assignments. Students also meet weekly with managers, and Araghi notes that they tend to be exposed to higher-level managers because of the importance of the project to the business. "It's a great resume booster," says Petter.

Having confirmed his interest in this field, upon graduation Petter plans to look for roles that merge business and data. "The program leads well towards that because every time they teach you theory, they try to lead it back to business applications.” He adds that he still sees a vast number of data job postings. "More businesses are coming to realize that they have all this information, but they're just not sure how to use it and they'll fall behind if they're not using their data in the best way possible to make informed decisions."