Praveen Kumar V

Great Lakes' professors are not just academicians, they have the greatest industry experience in their domain.

What were you doing before you enrolled to PGPBA program?

I have over 7 years of experience working in Business Analysis and Software Development. During all this time, my work was around arranging project requirements in the programming sequence by analysing requirements; preparing a work flow chart and diagram using knowledge of computer capabilities, subject matter, programming language, and logic. In addition to the above mentioned responsibilities, I was also involved with developing and maintaining applications and databases by evaluating client needs; analyzing requirements; developing software systems.

What made you opt for this Analytics program?

After spending 7 years in IT services, I had reached a crossroad with one question occupying my mind – ‘Where do I see myself in 10 years from now?’ I wanted to nudge my career in a direction where the world was moving and analytics was the foremost option that interested me. This is when I decided that if I need to build my career in analytics, I need to be skilled at it and started exploring programs that would equip me for the same.

And then, Why Great Lakes?

Well, my experience says that, Analytics professional should have better business knowledge, good analytical & logical thinking, strong statistical skills, visualization and storytelling skills. After doing a lot of research and consulting with peers and seniors, I came to the conclusion that the Great Lakes analytics program is structured to cover 360 degrees of analytic sphere and a professional enrolled with this program get to learn analytical, data mining and visualization concepts.

TOP 3 takeaways from GREAT LAKES PGPBA?

1. Capstone Project that brought the best of everyone. As a team, we were able to collaborate more, share, and apply our knowledge in the given business hitches. We submitted the report on ‘Utility Analytics to Optimize Asset Efficiency in Manufacturing Sector wherein we applied time series algorithms, clustering and optimization techniques to solve the business problems. 2. Hands on SAS, R, Tableau, Web analytics (Google Analytics and AdWords). 3. Program blends with business (Finance, Marketing, Supply Chain Management, and Retail), Statistical, Predictive analytics and Data Mining Concepts.

How did Industry exposure during the course assist you evolve in analytics?

Industry lecture sessions were instructive and provided the evidence on how analytics has been applied in real time to solve business problems. Industry talk from Madhusudhanan (Head- Analytics, Ford Global Financial Service) enlightened us to understand how FORD applies analytics to spot their market and thereby, increase the revenue.

Share your experiences where you have actually applied analytics skills to solve the real-time business problems?

Our Capstone project is the classic example wherein we provided the utility level insights and forecast to the leading US manufacturer which helps them to plan the demand, classify the machines and prepare the shut down plan at machine level.

Any pearls of wisdom for aspiring data analysts/business analysts?

The dynamic field of Analytics brings in plethora of opportunities for data scientists, data engineers and statisticians. However, to be a Data / Business Analyst, its extremely important to possess knowledge of the business context and basic analytical skills. Organizations are interested in capturing and analyzing the data because it can add significant value to the decision making process. After all, at end of the day every business wants to boost up their revenue through analytics.

You have seen analytics evolve over the years? Any Insights?

Contrary to popular notion, Analytics isn’t a new phenomenon, it keeps evolving based on trend and technology. Today, technologies and tools (Big data, R, SAS and Visualization tools) are assisting business to take pragmatic decisions on right time by applying analytical concepts. Insights can be extracted from any source of data today, therefore analytic industry is getting rationalized.

Which faculty has inspired you the most and why?

I don’t want to limit with a single professor. Dr. Suresh - Business Finance, Dr. Sriram - Marketing and CRM, Dr. R.L. Shankar - Financial Risk Analytics, Dr. P.K. Viswanathan - Statistical Methods and Advanced Statistics. These professors inspired me the most because of their extensive domain knowledge, interpretation skills and eagerness to teach students with patience. Also, these professors are not just academicians, they have the greatest industry experience on their domain.