Business Administration Scope with Marketing Specialization - Essay Example

My fascination with commerce has always incited me to pursue a career in business administration. I think my fascination with Business Administrationbegan when I realized that there is a huge scope of putting business with technology together. The demand for Business Administration undoubtedly has boomed over the recent years along with marketing. It is one of the best scope in the commerce market for various reasons. First and foremost, the specialization of marketing in BA is a perfect fit in e-commerce. I will be exposed to many realms of technology that exploits many channels of the business. In the modern century, internet marketing has become one of the most hottest trends that has allowed organizations to pursue this avenue. As of now, search engine optimization is the dominating factor that is prevalent in the e-marketing realm. SEO allows marketers to be the number one source of B2B and B2C. SEO When it comes to Business Administrators who are in marketing, they must understand the elements of SEO. One of the key elements that drives SEO is blogging. The whole essence of search engine optimization is to drive traffic to another website through blogging. It is beneficial that most individuals acquire some sort of HTML programming to facilitate this cause. Blogging allows individual and corporations to make good money, granted they are able to drive traffic. As a Business Administration major along with marketing will tru PPC Pay-per-click is another aspect of SEO that has dramatically enhanced over the last few years. PPC allows companies to set competitive variable rates that is utilized to drive traffic to a website. In a ppc model, websites such as Google commonly display advertisements that are similar to the words entered in the search query. The Google AdSense program has met with definite success as more companies are taking advantage of this idea. Social Media Social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter have become a marketing phenomenon. Facebook in particular makes money through self-service ads. In addition, Facebook has now implemented a smart database that scans through an individuals page to generate advertisements based upon browsing history. This allows marketers to not only conduct viral marketing, but utilize a social network for their business needs. With Facebook spearheading the way, Google must make an effort to generate some revenue of the newly launched Google plus. Kotler( 1991) One of the most crucial elements of BAs who understand marketing is that they also understand the customer-perceived value is a marketing and branding concept that correlates a link between the products and whether customers believe it can satisfy their needs. It is clear that when a company develops and attempts to sell its products, customers must react how to react to these messages. Without a doubt, companies invest millions of dollars and time researching and understanding the customer demographics to understand their respective markets. Need to transform business As a matter of fact, Amir seemed to be fascinated about his job. One of the most fascinating aspects of business analysts is their innate ability to be liaisons in both technical and business realm. Kotler( 1991) This is truly amazing because it allows a business analyst to work in cross-functional teams. He loved the fact that he can schedule his time according to his own time, work from home at days and collaborate with all necessary stakeholders. This gives him a lot of flexibility for time management, which is an element that everyone desires. Scope of the demographic A distinguishing element that allows BA with marketing to utilize different scopes is Business Intelligence. As I conducted more research in this realm, I realized that my degree with my specialization will be a best fit for BI. Business Intelligence is one of the most prominent and critical field as Information Technology emerges in the 21st century. BI is pivotal in many organizations because it allows respective stakeholders to view and analyze data. Before the advent of BI, information about customers and business were overwhelming. With BI, stakeholders can truly take this raw information and convert into data that can assist them in making real-time decisions. The challenge in many organizations is the fact that majority of decisions are made based on estimated guesses. Britt (2007)One of the best elements of BI is the fact that it reduces any ‘guesswork’. Moreover, it allows the organization to understand customer behavior in a much meaningful way. Another huge aspect of BI is the collaboration aspect as it allows users to interact and use this data. Imagine an organization in which the marketing department requires key reports from the technology department. Clearly, the issue of latency can be a factor that can delay essential decision making. With the boom of e-commerce, this has become even more pivotal. For many decades, companies have established itself as one of the most premiere companies internationally. From the demographics standpoint, BAs are usually males and females as it is bit skewed. As a matter of fact, University of Maryland confirms that gender distribution entails 32.2 percent male students and 67.8 percent female students. What do organizations want out of this major? Most organizations run an Agile environment that allow BA’s to be fully functional in both technical. With the technical advancements in marketing, SEO and e-marketing is more of a theme now. Organizations wants business individuals to bond business and technical elements in an intricate manner. Creating a solution in the realm of BI that will allow e-commerce websites to obtain customer information via adhoc basis. A solution would consist of a centralized information from all the sources (e.g. point-of-sale (POS) system, equipment monitoring, etc) where all sorts of information, real-time feeds and legacy information, can be monitored and analyzed in most efficient and precise way via data warehousing. As this project progresses, the manager will verify the project deliverables against the original scope. In addition, the manager should serve as a mediator between the business and the developing team. All activities should be analyzed by the Businesss Administrator who understand the requirements of the project. The BA might also create a Scope Management Plan provides all the information for the Project Management and ensures that the scope will be verified. It also gives guidance on how project scope will be managed. The Manager must verify these deliverables are those items that have been finished. However, upon the end of implementation phase, closing a project becomes a necessary point. Closing a project requires careful analysis and often misunderstood from a project management standpoint. This paper will discuss some of the project closures that are challenging for project management. As a business administrator, one has to be well-aware of these elements and quickly convey this to all cross-functional teams. However, Amir always had passion for technology and never approached his career based on that time frame. He concluded by stating that most of the time, he gets responses in a timely fashion. However, there have been instances where the latency in responses from his teams have delayed his project closing time, which is an element that business analysts want to avoid. Managing change request is another huge issue that project managers have to be well-aware off. This is problematic because change requests are part of any project management. In order to manage change requests, project managers must collaborate with stake holders in order to remove any unclear understanding that dictates the goals and the objectives of the project. Controlling change requests for creating virtual servers or a software for instance would have to support the elements that the business case possesses can be cumbersome to manage when closing a project. A change request in essence should be handled through collaboration, understanding business needs, looking at prototypes and analyzing the crucial elements that drive the project. However during the closeout phase, this becomes very problematic. In the project management realm, it is clear that the execution phase is the most essential one since it dictates the core essence of the project. The last element of the project milestone that is highly essential is the control. Often time it occurs that the project is challenged with scope changes that can be a deterring factor. Managing change requirements that occur during a project will allow the project to meet the constraints. Making the change at any stage is not easy and must correlate with the change management process, which is an additional burden that must be accounted for. Future Outlook of the work BAs are extremely specialized individuals that can cater to any organization. Conducive research indicates that many organizations have looked into BA as leaders for the future. Britt( 2007) The payscale for BA graduates without experience is around $55,000 without experience. Obviously business administrators also need a fresh outlook in their job scenario. A key aspect to understand is to pursue a higher degree at any cost. As a matter of fact, many scholars agree that pursuing a BA is critical in this element. A new survey published today depicts that more than three-quarters of employers that plan to hire business school graduates. There is definitely scope for BAs, but they must have a specialty as well. Since Business Administrators are depicted as more of “white collar employees,’ there are not many unions within BAs. Additionally, BAs are paid well in a private sector after years of harnessing experience. In upper cities such as Chicago, the payscale is less than California because of the fact that inflations plays a critical role. Major Issues One of the biggest issues with BAs is the fact that they are not specialized in one area such as: HR, finance, accounting, or MIS. This can create problems because BAs must find their niche. They may act as liaisons or embrace other roles such as Project Mangers. The stability in this field is well, but layoffs are inevitable for lack of inexperience individuals. Britt( 2007) A typical career path of business administrator is very lucrative and can be very enriching. Typically, an entry level business administrator starts their functional path and then moves to senior business analyst. After comprehensive years of experience, analysts can often take a higher Technical Project Management path or even take a Technical Director position. One of the greatest flexibility of business analyst is that it encompasses all the methodologies and allows an individual to take more of leadership role. Other roles such quality assurance or programmer do not have this luxury because they maybe too dwelled in the technical elements of the field itself. A key facet regarding this career path is the fact that there is no substantial degree in this realm. Most business analysts have a decent foundation in Management Information System or Computer Science. As I conducted my due diligence, I realized that many schools offer a business analyst certificate, which is something that should be considered. Amir also recommended that I look into MBA or PMP after couple years of experience as it would make supplement my growth. However, most colleges do not have a program that is specifically designed for Business Analyst as they have it for other majors such as accounting, finance, and human resources. References Gale, B. T., & Wood, R. C. (1994). Managing customer value: creating quality and service that customers can see. New York: Free Press ;. Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (1991). Principles of marketing (5th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. What Is Customer Perceived Value?. (n.d.). Small Business. Retrieved May 17, 2014, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/customer-perceived-value-23692.html Phillip, Britt. (Oct 17th, 2007).McDonalds Credits Business Intelligence for Recent Growth. Retrieved from http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News/Daily-News/McDonalds-Credits-Business-Intelligence-for-Recent-Growth-43484.aspx McDonalds Credits Business Intelligence for Recent Growth - CRM Magazine.( Nov 3rd, 2013) CRM Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. Retrieved from: http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News/Daily-News/McDonalds-Credits-Business-Intelligence-for-Recent-Growth-43484.aspx. Marymount University. (n.d.). Retrieved November 26, 2014, from http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/marymount-university-3724 Role of a Business Administrator. (2008, December 19). Retrieved November 26, 2014, from http://www.ehow.com/about_4685610_role-business-administrator.html Read More