Postgraduate - Area of study Business systems

Business analysis helps a business organisation to improve how it conducts its functions and activities in order to reduce overall costs, provide more efficient use of scarce resources, and better support customers. It introduces the notion of process orientation, of concentrating on and rethinking end-to-end activities that create value for customers, and these tasks are carried out by a business analyst. It is essential that the modern business analyst has strong IT skills and is capable of approaching these tasks from an information perspective. The main focus of units in this specialisation is to provide students with the practical IT skills and knowledge of latest techniques and technology to effectively carry out business analysis, and managerial advisory duties in business organisations.

The goal of the business systems specialisation is to provide students with essential skills required by the current day business analyst. Depending on their qualifications and experience prior to graduate study and the nature of their elective study, graduates could be employed in a variety of roles ranging from business systems analyst, systems analyst, and functional analyst through to senior management and management advisory roles.

In addition to entry-level system analyst/programmer knowledge and skills, and the desirable generic graduate attributes identified by the University, graduates should be able to:

• understand business operations and project management techniques and calculations including the financial aspects involved in quoting and operations management tasks
• understand and provide advice on functional and process oriented structuring of business processes and systems
• use new technology and techniques for understanding customers and customer needs, and be able to advise management on these issues
• understand and use core technologies that support financial analysis and decision making and advise management on these issues
• carry out business process modelling and analysis using new technology and tools to provide advice on business process design and re-engineering.

Graduates of the specialisation will also have a strong theoretical knowledge of systems thinking, business dynamics and business processes as well as latest cutting edge intelligent data mining and customer relationship management technology. This will enable them to easily adapt to the fast changing and evolving field of business IT - an essential requirement for a modern day business analyst.