Mr Chan Lee Mun (left) and Ms Janet Ang at the official launch of the Business Analytics Innovation Centre. |
Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) and IBM have announced the launch of the Business Analytics Innovation Centre (BAIC) – the first on-campus IBM Software Centre of Excellence in the ASEAN region – to help students at NYP develop the business analytics know-how and enterprise skills to meet the growing demand from the industry for such capabilities.
In its Infocomm Manpower Development Roadmap v2.0 (MDEV 2.0), the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) identified business analytics as an emerging IT skillset that is critical for Singapore’s IT manpower to remain competitive both globally and within Singapore.
Mr Chan Lee Mun, Principal and Chief Executive Officer, Nanyang Polytechnic, said the set-up of the BAIC is timely as it will support the delivery of NYP’s new Diploma in Business Intelligence & Analytics, which will be launched in the next academic year.
“NYP is pleased to build on our close partnership of 17 years with IBM with the establishment of the Business Analytics Innovation Centre… With the new BAIC, our students will further hone their skills by applying their business analytics knowledge to relevant industry projects,” he said.
Increasingly, enterprises and businesses are seeing the value of using analytics to harvest actionable business insights from structured and unstructured data generated from their daily business operations and processes. According to a recent IBM global study of more than 3,000 global chief information officers (CIOs), 85 per cent of the CIOs surveyed in Singapore cited “insights and intelligence” as their top focus for the next five years. About 80 per cent of them are also concerned about acquiring the right talents that will help them leverage innovative tools and methodologies to turn data into actionable information.
“Knowing what happened is no longer adequate. Organisations need to know what is likely to happen next and what actions they should take. They need to leverage Big Data being generated by their business and in social networks to gain new insights into their customers and get ahead of the competition,” said Ms Janet Ang, Managing Director, IBM Singapore. “Making sense of these complex data, however, requires a new set of skills that many IT professionals do not possess today. With the largest number of analytics professionals worldwide, IBM sees an opportunity to support our national agenda and help up-skill the IT talent in Singapore through this collaboration.”
Nanyang Polytechnic’s Diploma in Business Intelligence & Analytics aims to train students to implement solutions that can harness data across platforms, and equip them with a good knowledge of data management concepts and the ability to leverage business analytics techniques and tools to gain insights into different business aspects.
Students enrolling in the new diploma will benefit from the practical learning and knowledge application available at the BAIC. Located in NYP’s School of Information Technology, the BAIC will train students through academic modules, project development, internship and professional certifications. Industry attachment opportunities to local and overseas IBM offices will also be facilitated through this partnership to give the students another dimension to their training. The Centre will further act as a platform for industry partners to engage NYP staff and students in industry project development.
The core curricula of NYP’s IT diploma courses are also augmented by the extension of IBM’s professional certification programmes to NYP students. To date, NYP students and graduates have achieved more than 700 IBM certifications.