How to start with an analytical career? Am I making a right choice? These were million dollar questions for me when I have first time think of becoming an analytics professional. Ages have passed and the questions remain the same, as many of the aspirants keep popping the same question in many of the seminar I took.
Let me answer those by below one liner from one of giant, Salesforce, Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) estimates adding analytics and Business Intelligence (BI) applications will increase their Total Addressable Market (TAM) by $13B in FY2014. (Source: Forbes)
89% of business leaders believe Big Data will revolutionize business operations in the same way the Internet did. (Source: Wikibon)
Let us start with, what is SAS, more importantly, why SAS?
If you are a programmer, you must be knowing, what UNIX is for the modern IT industry? SAS can be described same as UNIX for Programming and IT. This is the software where whole analytics industry was built around and SAS has 55 to 60 % of market share which roughly makes around $20 billion (US).
Well, that may be an exaggeration for someone, but SAS commands on overwhelming market share in the advanced analytics tools and big data analysis and this is a fact from last more than 45 years.
So what does SAS do?
SAS originally stood for "Statistical Analysis System", which as the name suggests was used for Statistical analysis. Today it has evolved to become a ubiquitous Business Intelligence (BI) tool which is used for Data analysis, reporting, predictive modeling, data mining, econometric and time series analysis. Almost everything and anything related to Data Analytics. In a simple word, it can create sensible stuff out of the huge and unmanageable data.
How to learn SAS?
Now, this completely depends on your expertise and level of understanding as well as grasping power. Thousands of students prepare themselves and same many go to tutorials and class. There are many good sources available on the internet to study on your own and many of the students do so as SAS training are really costly!! You can test your certification exam readiness at www.anlyticsexam.com
As we already talk about SAS certification, the next million dollar question is,
How useful are SAS certifications?
An SAS certification definitely adds value to your overall profile. It’s a validation for self also about the concepts learned and how well you know the tool, to be able to answer questions, manipulate data and do the analysis. It varies for each organization if they choose to or give weightage to certified candidate vs non-certified however till the day my experience suggest to get certified to increase your visibility in job market also there many more benefits, some of them are listed below.
- Improve your skills and expertise and increased your marketability
- SAS skills are in high demand around the globe Try ‘SAS’ because SAS credentials are job & role focused, with immediate relevance to real world needs. Just search SAS in any of Job portal to see the demand
- SAS certification credentials can increase your earnings
- SAS certified individuals can qualify for discounts on other SAS training
- SAS certified individuals are listed in the Directory of SAS Certified Professionals which can be accessed by employers to validate your credentials