Business Analytics focuses on data-driven decision making with the ultimate goal being the conversion of data into context-specific information to facilitate high quality, timely, value-added business decisions. The BA concentration at the University of Vermont is designed to develop and improve students' technical, quantitative, and analytical abilities as well as their critical thinking skills through courses emphasizing the use of data, technology, optimization and statistical analysis, and predictive and exploratory modeling. Data and numbers are only part of the solution however - students must also understand organizational business models, information flows, and the importance of business processes within the organizational value chain.