Surbhi Aggarwal

In Accenture, the tag of PGP-BABI course from Great Learning helped me a lot.

My Journey So Far

I was already working as an ETL developer at Accenture when I first started using Analytics. After a while, I knew that in order to advance my career, I needed to gain more knowledge and an analytical skillset. Most of the post graduate programs are very expensive and time consuming. I wanted to learn something along with my job. That’s when I heard of Great Lakes. Upon the successful completion of the PGP-BABI program, I applied to an Analytics role in the Marketing consulting team at Accenture and they facilitated my internal transition after three or four rounds of interviews. In Accenture, the tag of PGP-BABI course from Great Learning helped me a lot.

I Joined Great Learning Because of Its Outstanding Faculty and Curriculum

While deciding which program to pursue, I referred to several portals like Analytics India Magazine and Analytics Vidhya and the unanimous advice for an analytics program was the Great Lakes Business Analytics Program. I went through the course structure, and spoke to several people in the industry. They all suggested that Great Lakes offers the best faculty and course curriculum. That’s when I decided to join Great Learning’s Gurgaon center.

I Liked the Program Because

The industry mentors assigned during the program were excellent. Also, for the capstone projects, I had the freedom to choose my own partners, topic, and domain. I did my capstone in the tourism department and our mentor guided us a lot during discussions about the project. Our capstone project turned out really well and it was gratifying to see our efforts shaping up into a real project. Also, Analytics is being used in every stream whether it is marketing, customer experience, finance, or operations. So my batch mates also came from different domains altogether. It was an enriching experience to interact with them and learn how each industry is using analytics in their own unique ways. There are so many techniques that are domain-agnostic.

My New Role as a Marketing Analyst is Going Well

Marketing was new to me but working on R was not a pain-point, thanks to the exhaustive analytics program at Great Learning. I was asked a lot of questions in my interview about my assignments that were industry-relevant. The course gave me perspective on what is happening in the analytics industry and what sort of work or projects will we be expected to do. We did the same exact things during the program. So, I am managing well in my new role.

Tools and techniques I Use in My Current Role

I use R and SAS extensively in my current role. Using tools to find insights in a new domain (like marketing was for me) can take some time. However, the tools themselves are not difficult to learn and apply.

Advice to Aspirants Looking to Transition to Analytics Roles

There are two things you can focus on – domain knowledge and the technological aspects of analytics. Usually you enter a particular domain first and then learn to use technology in it. My advice to professionals wanting to pursue analytics would be to pick a tool and master it to get started. At Great Learning, we were able to master different tools like R, SAS, Tableau, Spark, etc. and at the same time learn about different domains through industry and classroom sessions, mentors, and capstone projects. You will keep on gaining more and more knowledge of the domain as well as learn newer and advanced ways of using tools and technologies if you put in effort.