At Samara University, this year, a new educational program will be introduced: business analysts will be trained here. These specialists are currently in high demand in the domestic labor market. Business analysts search for problems in the company’s work and offer methods of solving them, optimizing and increasing efficiency of business processes in a bank or an enterprise, predicting possible risks and proposing ways of developing the organization. It’s like a doctor-diagnostician who diagnoses the whole body, finds problem points, makes a diagnosis and suggests methods of therapy. A kind of Dr. House from the famous TV series, just for business.

“Samara University’s Institute of Economics and Management starts a new educational program intended for training business analysts. Well-known Russian IT companies took part in development and implementation of this program, because modern business analysts must understand not only the economy and business processes, but also modern IT solutions, because now it is hardly possible to imagine any serious business without information technology, digital platforms and applications. Current requirements for business analysts constantly increase, and our graduates in this specialty will have competencies in software development, implementation and maintenance of business applications”, told us Elena Rostova, Head of the Department of Mathematics and Business Informatics at Samara University.

This summer Samara University will begin admission to the four-year training of business analysts under the bachelor’s degree program “Digital Technologies of Business”. Depending on demand, it is planned to enroll up to 50 people, not only on commercial, but also on budget places. In the current academic year, a trial, pilot course of study in this specialty was introduced at the University, and third-year students of the Business Informatics area have already shown significant interest in the future educational program.

Russian IT companies NORBIT and LANIT Omni (part of the LANIT Group of Companies) became partners of the University in preparing and introducing the new educational program. Their specialists, together with the University professors will teach future business analysts. Besides lectures, students will be given practical workshops and project seminars.

One of main themes of the educational process will be business application and development of various models of artificial intelligence. Recently, NORBIT has developed its own large language model – Norbit GPT. It is able to generate texts, process and analyze data, prepare responses to user requests to the support service or to the knowledge base. Using it, Russian companies will be able to quickly implement generative artificial intelligence tools into their processes, increasing productivity, saving time, budget and resources. In turn, Samara University’s level of competence in artificial intelligence is rather high: there’s the Institute of Artificial Intelligence to have been established and to be successfully operating here, researching in this field is carried out for various corporate customers.

Currently, active migration of Russian companies to domestic IT solutions for automation and optimization of business processes continues. LANIT Omni is the developer of the BPMSoft Low-code platform to be in demand in the market, which is already used by the largest representatives of various sectors of the economy: from IT and finance to energy and extractive industries. Students of Samara University will be able to master capabilities of BPMSoft while still studying at the University, which will facilitate their employment in future.

“Cooperation with leading IT companies and the start of the joint educational program will undoubtedly help increase the already high level of demand for our graduates in the labor market”, noted Dmitry Ivanov, Director of the Institute of Economics and Management at Samara University.

* Low-code platforms are application development tools making it possible for IT specialist to create business software using graphical interface.