Business leaders are increasingly relying on internal and macro data to improve organization performance. Naturally, the effective use of data depends on how successful an organization is in applying data analysis tools in addition to data management. Since the data relating to a firm’s business activities in most cases involve elements of uncertainty, statistical and probabilistic tools have been widely used to model the collected data. Short, medium and long term business strategies are then developed based on these models in order to maximize performance.

The scale of the data currently being collected by a vast number of businesses is enormous. The basic analytical tools such as Microsoft Excel and Access are no longer a match for the challenges facing these businesses. Luckily, there exists many software to help with such challenging tasks. Pursuing a minor in Data Intelligence will allow you to  learn to use Statistical Analysis Software (SAS), the world leader in analytical software, which is widely and increasingly being used by businesses, governments and academia around the world.

How is the weather today? Is it consistent with the forecast you read on your phone widget yesterday? Weather forecasts are created by collecting data at a large scale about temperature, humidity, wind and many others factors, in a specific location, over time. A variety forecasting tools and techniques are used to generate weather forecasts. 
In order for a product or service to be successful, it is mandatory that demand is properly researched and forecasting methods are used before tackling the planning and production phase.