MSc Business Intelligence

In 2010 DNV Academy CIBIT will be the first Dutch training institute to start an official Master of Science programme in Business Intelligence. On 12 March there was an information evening about it, where they explained roughly what the programme will contain.

In the Netherlands there are many different Master of Science programmes these days that can be useful in our business in one way or another. Utrecht University has an MSc Informatics, TU Eindhoven has an MSc Business Information Systems and the University of Amsterdam has an MSc Information Science. But all these Masters cover only a part of the wide world of our daily work: Business Intelligence.
A short search worldwide even told me that there is currently only 1 MSc with Business Intelligence as its subject, and it is taught at the Daniels College of Business in Denver, Colorado (USA).

DNV plans to change this by starting a real, official MSc Business Intelligence in the Netherlands. A good reason to go to the information evening and see if DNV Academy - CIBIT can offer a programme that fits my daily BI work.

DNV Academy - CIBIT

DNV Academy - CIBIT is a part of DNV that focuses on training inspired by practical experience. The trainers who work there also work as consultants, so besides the theoretical knowledge they need, they have a great deal of practical experience. In recent years DNV Academy has already started a number of Master programmes, in areas such as IT Architecture and IT Management.
Together with Middlesex University in London, DNV is now setting up the Master programme in Business Intelligence, as the first training institute in the Netherlands.

The information evening

A Master programme in Business Intelligence does not exist yet in the Netherlands, so DNV was working out what exactly such a programme should look like. To test this, they organized an information evening that was meant to work in 2 directions. On the one hand, DNV presented their idea of the programme. On the other hand, the people present were expected to give input on what they would like to see in such a programme. In the end this made for a very valuable evening, where a lot became clear about what an MSc BI should look like, according to both DNV and the people from the business itself.

Practical matters

The target group of the programme is people with a higher professional or university education and 4 years of work experience in Business Intelligence. Because Middlesex University backs the programme, it uses English material only. This also means that all assignments must be written in English and, in the case of the thesis, defended in English. The MSc title you get at the end of the programme is therefore a fully internationally recognized title.
The programme itself is fully modular. A number of elective modules give you the chance to specialize to some degree within the Master programme. The required modules include, among other things, the Masterclasses that CIBIT teaches.

Structure of the programme

As it looks now, the programme will focus on the following 3 core areas:

Business
The Business area focuses on organizations and BI: what are the ways to embed BI in an organization, and how does an organization get the most out of BI applications? How can we determine the ROI of BI, and when can we say that BI has been implemented successfully?

_Technology
_This is not so much about learning to work with existing technology, but about gaining the insight to judge the value of existing and new technologies. Besides that, the focus is on subjects such as Architecture (TOGAF), IT Organization (ITIL and TMap), Infrastructure and Data Modelling. An important point in this area is that it looks mainly at how the business can deal with the BI techniques that are available.

_Analytics
_Analytics is about the research uses of available data within BI. How can we analyse the data, why do we analyse it, and what advantage can the business get from these analyses, in the context of things like Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley?

What is important to note in all these areas is that the most important component of Business Intelligence, the business, is present everywhere. At DNV they clearly understand that the organization that in the end must do something with the BI is vital in our field.

After the information evening

One thing is certain: DNV is setting up a good programme that can prove very valuable for people who work in Business Intelligence.
Now we wait for 2010, when the programme starts and the first people can really get going with it.