The landscape of business and industry is continuously evolving. Organisations, right from their design, to their supply chains, are facing innovation disruptions from technology every day. The current pandemic has only pushed this into force with remote working and excessive dependence on data analytics. Therefore, it becomes essential for business leadership and management to inculcate a basic understanding of technical tools.
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It is only apropos if we equip our future leaders and managers with these technical skills right at the initiation. MBA curriculums should focus on imparting technical literacy to students coming from all domains of education. Similarly, the onus of learning lies in the MBA students too.
The market for MBA is expected to grow rapidly in coming times. MBA graduates in today’s times are given responsibility to takeover important tasks that utilises the skills they learnt during MBA. Also, MBA graduates are given responsibilities and are preferred to climb up the ladder to take the leadership roles.
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Every MBA student must hone their skills and shape their career trajectory with some basic, but extremely relevant tech skills. Some of them are:
Tech Skills MBA Students Need
1. Data Analysis
The mantra ruling the business world currently is “Data is the new oil.” Certain industries are booming, and data is the reason behind their exponential growth. One of the top tech skills for management students is to command proficiency in analytical tools like R, SPSS, Tableau, etc.
Today, companies require managers to work on large datasets for various functions like forecasting sales, understanding market patterns, predicting consumer demand, future trends, and stock ordering, etc. Therefore, MBA students should learn some of these tools beforehand, differentiate themselves from the crowd, and add value to their core competency.
The most basic and commonly used tool in organizations for data handling in MS Excel. Due to its widespread popularity, knowing Excel is a must these days in tech skills for MBA students. Excel isn’t just very easy to use, but it is also logical to implement. You don’t need to memorize the formulas; just build logic on the data you are conducting. Having a good command over excel can make you the star performer of your team!
The basic skills for mba students is the data analysis skills that the professional shohould be aware of. The data analysis allows the users to make sense out of the data. Data analysis very systematicallya nd logically applies the reasoning and logic in order to ana;yse the data. This data then is interpreted, created into reports for effective decision making.
The researchers look for the patterns or gaps in order to understand the logic behind the data. But before anything else, they clearly set the objective fo their research so they can identify if the research has met the set objective or not. With the help of relevant tools and languages the data can not easily be analysed but can also be visualised.
In the end after all the efforts, the analysts are expected to infer correctly from the research which they are supposed to communicate to the concerned stakeholders. In today’s times data analysis is used in every field or industry. Companies optimise the performance of the businesses by taking aid of the data analysis.
2. Programming Languages
While this is not a must-have for MBA candidates in company JDs, still this is an added advantage. As a manager, you will work on various projects where your deliverable will be a software interface or an app. Or you might be deployed in a cross-functional team.
While you will be having a team of engineers for the coding part, but as a manager, you cannot understand and review your deliverable unless you know the basics of what problem you are solving or the requirement your product is fulfilling.
Therefore, having a basic idea of languages like Python, SQL, PHP, etc. and knowledge of Relational databases are highly beneficial tech skills for MBA students.
The programming skills comes as an added advantage for the MBA professionals, they can showcase their skills to get an advanced leverage at the workplace. A manager can lead their team better if they have a bsic understanding of the programming languages. If the manager does not have any knowledge of the programming languages they would not be able to suggest anything to their team members and they would appear clueless if their team mates come to them for any guidance. Also, with the lack of this skill the manager has chances to lose the confidence in oneself and of the team as well. During MBA software courses can be invested upon in order to get the best out of one’s capabilities.
The requirement does not confine to the managers but also the fresh graduates as well. There is a tougher competition to make a place for oneself at the work. In order to set oneself apart from the crowd the knowledge of the programming languages play a big role. Also, this attracts positive attention from the employers. Programming skills become one of the important skills required for mba graduates.
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4. Presentation and Design
Good working knowledge of presentation tools is one of the most important tech skills for management students. Presentations are critical in the corporate setup as they are an official form of communication between a client and a business.
Companies require managers to make presentations to their clients that put out their business objectives, offerings, and solution to the client’s problem statement, alongside the methodology in a concise, neat, and aesthetic, yet informative manner. Similarly, companies also need an aesthetic design for their website, or social media handles to connect with their consumers. For this, the managers must have some basic knowledge of design tools to effectively communicate with the website developers and implement the company’s idea of a website look and feel.
MBA students get a good deal of exposure on presentations right from their class assignments to business case study competitions. They must utilise this exposure by learning more about the art of ppt making and sharpen their skills on various tools like PowerPoint, Canva, Prezi, Haiku Deck, etc.
The skills of making presentations is very important for the MBA professionals. There are multiple reasons attached to it. First of all is the responsibility factor, in a team the task of creating and delivering the presentations is given to those individuals who are good in them.
Because during the presentation hour, stakeholders are called and the expectation is to deliver the best using the presentation as an aid. Second is the research factor, the one hwo creates the presentation does intense research before putting any data in the presentation. This increases the chances of enhancing one’s knowledge on a given content and gives an added advantage to know the objective better than any other in the team.
Lastly, the one who creates presentation gets additional recognition and appreciation within the team along with the upper management which is beneficial for career progression.
In MBA basic knowledge of the creation of presentation is focused upon so the MBA graduates should focus more on honing this skill and developing more skills along with this. Be it a manger or an associate, everyone benefits from the skills of making presentations. Because this allows the professionals to not remain independent on anyone and they can confidently take the lead of the task to show their skills.
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5. Technical Writing
Managers are tasked with the responsibility of setting goals and objectives on a project. They are required to facilitate cross-functional or cross-divisional team cooperation in a project and communicate the expectations, deliverables, limitations, etc. of one team with the other. They also communicate the technical, budgetary, and other requirements of teams to the supervisors. Therefore, they must know each domain’s technical specifications, such as marketing, accounts, IT, etc. to draft proper communication documents for each of them.
Since all businesses have gone digital in today’s world, Managers must also be equipped with the knowledge of content creation, content marketing, and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to reach their target audience. All this demands professional writing with technical understanding.
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Thus, technical writing ability is a must-have for a manager, as it is a standing stone of effective communication within an organisation. This is why it features in the list of top tech skills for MBA students.
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It is very important for MBa graduates to learn the art of technical writing in order for them to be able to make the most of the opportunity given to them. There is a tone that is attached to the technical writing, that tone could be either assertive, authoritative, or argumentative. Based on the assessment of the situation the professionals can choose to pick any style.
Technical writing allows the professionals to logically create logical reports, views, observe, or supervise their team. This allows the professionals to appear logically sound at the work place. And this becomes one of the important skills required for mba students.
6. Project Management
Managers communicate the information received from top management to the employees. They also create Minutes of the Meeting with the top management, create training and staffing material, make reports on product specifications and terms of service, etc. Managers also create reports on the internal and external process, stakeholder management, competitor analysis, and project documentation.
Although Project management is a specific branch of management wherein the managers are specifically trained for statistical analysis tools, scrum methodology tools, quality control techniques and methodology, risk analysis report generation and communication, and scheduling software, etc. Yet, it is extremely relevant for all managers to grab know-how of all these aspects, and is one of the top tech skills for MBA students to learn.
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There is importance given to the project management in today’s time. The professionals are given a scope to showcase their leadership abilities. That how well they can direct a given task or project and how well they can utilise the resources that are available to them.
In order to take that forward the project management focuses on building the skills of risk analysis, scheduling, negotiation, problem solving, communication, critical thinking, etc. So the professionals carrying out the task can very well utilise the resources by achieving the objectives.
Conclusion
While these are the top five tech skills for management students to know to stand out in the rat race in the corporate world, there are other tech skills too, that MBA students can pursue learning. E.g., Working and delegating work on Cloud-based applications, remote working tools, acquaintance with virtual meeting platforms like Cisco WebEx, social media netiquettes, etc.
We live in competitive times, and every day brings in a new challenge. Today’s most important thing is to constantly update and upgrade yourself with the times to stay relevant and stand out from the crowd.
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