"Business Insider Illustration Alongside salaries, many multinational companies consider profitability as a key factor to consider. While many share reports to investors of how many customers are buying their products, it is equally important for them to understand where their earnings are coming from. Business Insider recently spoke to experts to find out if there is a threshold of profitability that needs to be reached before analyzing financial reports becomes worthwhile for a business. The business landscape is constantly evolving. One big change is that many firms, such as Amazon, are starting to take stock of how much profit they are generating from their sales and take the necessary steps to increase that profit further. In the era of big"

"The top analysts at Citi Research said more cautious growth outlooks in emerging markets and European markets mean that analysts will earn slightly less next year than they did in 2014. At least some analysts may be short-selling stocks, an increasingly popular approach that involves buying stock with the aim of selling it before it rises and pocketing the profits. Data from Thomson Reuters shows that more than 100 investment banks around the world began buying the shares of debt-laden companies that are struggling to service their debts during the third quarter. The research makes them marginally profitable but not generally profitable. That would be the case, of course, if the debt-laden companies did not continue to borrow and, at times, incur further losses. There have been a handful of instances in which brokers short-sold a stock to the finance research outfit IBT Media, and, unsurprisingly, the stock has often had a catastrophic result. Such sharp declines would bring the finance business of the analysts into disrepute, or, in the words of CNBC, "rank as disastrous, even on the Citi scale." Finance executives might disagree. "This sell-off of high-yield [debt] is only in the beginning," said David Ritter, president of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. To be fair, the finance expert could very well be right. After all, he has earned the right to his opinion, earning a career as a finance banker at JPMorgan and running an investment banking branch at Credit Suisse. See Also: Citi Says Hedge Funds May Have Beaten Bullish Oil Outlook Finance In New York Isn't As Easy As You Think"

"Advertisement Furthermore, the first team to profit from superintelligence will be those who conduct very robust and valuable research. Profitability alone will not be enough. Superintelligent technology will be extremely expensive and their profits could not solely be spent on research and development – the companies would have to finance their technology as well. The research fund would have to provide a significant return to investors as a proportion of their initial investment to justify the launch of a profitable superintelligence investment fund. Analytical research will create a demand for investment funds over and above the demand created by any benefit to the investors – it is up to investors to keep profits in proportion to the investment"

"On Monday, MIT announced it is launching a comprehensive analytics research center aimed at developing cutting-edge technologies to help financial institutions, governments, and the private sector make better and more profitable decisions. The center will be overseen by MIT Sloan School of Management professor Erik Brynjolfsson, who is also director of MIT’s Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI). In a post, Brynjolfsson expressed his excitement and described the mission of the center: “Analytics, at its most basic, means dealing with complex datasets to predict and understand real-world situations. The center will use advanced analytics and the technologies that emerge from this field to help organizations better understand their customers and their businesses, and also to gain new insights to further strengthen financial institutions and businesses.” However, he added, the center will provide a research platform to examine emerging financial technologies: “The objective of this research center is to identify and build the best analytics and technology that will ultimately give finance organizations what they need to be successful – earn a good, profit, and improve the lives of their clients, both within and outside their organizations.” All finance professionals understand the need for analytics, but the main issue has always been how to put the techniques into practice. This is where the mission of the new center kicks in. All finance professionals understand the need for analytics, but the main issue has always been how to put the techniques into practice. This is where the mission of the new center kicks in. Brynjolfsson and his team will seek to bring cutting-edge analytics tools and technology to finance professionals and help them translate them into insights. He also described how the center will help address the widening divide between finance and the analytic sectors. “Our new center is an opportunity for MIT to step up its commitment"

"The demand for analytics services has been on the rise, thanks to a surge of financial data being transmitted across the Internet. The data is generated through analytics engines built by the financial industry, government organizations, media outlets and private companies, according to research firm Gartner. Analytics analytics analytics Investment banks, risk managers and financial institutions are expanding their investment in analytics to evaluate risk and production efficiency, Gartner analyst Massimo Carmo says. But the research firm found that financial institutions’ analytics operations have been structured in such a way that the number of analysts is steadily falling, while the demand for analytics software, cloud analytics and predictive analytics services is increasing. Investors typically need financial analytics"

"In 2016, the fastest growing segments of the loan industry are home equity loans, consumer credit cards and credit cards for cars, consumer electronics and other items. In 2016, aggregate consumer credit card payments in the US climbed to $312 billion, compared with $212 billion in 2015. This marks the first year that payments on home equity loans are projected to exceed credit card payments, albeit by a small amount. The number of home equity lines of credit, or HELOCs, grew faster than overall consumer credit card payments in 2016, marking the first time since the financial crisis that they exceeded credit card payments for consumer credit. As we've covered in the past, the growth in HELOCs is driven by a combination of low rates and consumers'"

"The idea is relatively simple. The business analyses the investment, devises a risk model, processes the data and generates a forecast on how long that investment is going to take to earn back the investment cost. That enables the finance group to set up proper cash flow forecasts to plan and monitor the repayment to avoid any disruptions. Analytics not only allows businesses to generate insights and make better business decisions, but it also helps to keep costs down and enhance employee productivity. Research findings The analysis on finance in the IT space in Singapore underscores the significance of effective analytics to improve the overall business processes. Of the 79 finance professionals surveyed by IDC Singapore, 63 per cent believe that analytics are critical to the future growth of their companies in Singapore. With this kind of intent and determination to engage in such research, it is worth acknowledging that the country is on its way to become a major player in the finance sector. The report found that Singapore ranks second out of 19 Asia Pacific countries in the acquisition and retention of finance professionals. Business analyst roles were in particularly high demand, accounting for 24 per cent of the IT salary spending in Singapore, with finance professionals in Singapore earning an average of US$97,000 a year, according to the report. The finance department is earning a higher return on investment than other corporate functions in Singapore. Based on the analysis, it is possible that, for Singapore, the difference in cash flow of financial products could be even greater. These findings are supported by the research conducted by Global Accounting and Finance Technology magazine, which reveals that in 2016, the financial analyst job market in Singapore witnessed strong growth of 21 per cent from 2015, after experiencing year-on-year growth of 20 per cent since 2013. This was supported by the fact that financial analysts are the ones who are making the business forecasts and projections that ultimately decide the volume of finance spend by the finance department in Singapore. Analytics can support the finance function by providing objective, independent insights to guide future investments, and by helping to reduce the risk of investment. This, of course, is something that can potentially increase the cash flow of businesses, not only for those business in Singapore but also for businesses all over the world. Final thoughts As organisations are struggling with short-term difficulties and the threat of disruption is becoming an ever-present risk, analytics has become an important tool in improving the overall efficiency of businesses, particularly finance departments. In Singapore, the tax department and the legal department also rely heavily on analytics to make timely decisions about tax collections, and to serve as a supporting structure for legal advice. Such analytical support for analytics is both"

"Logic software developer Workfront has introduced analytics tools that allow organizations to monitor, analyze and improve sales and marketing results. This service is provided through Workfront Analytics, a new analytics platform. "Most companies have a disparate set of tools to work with data, so most analysts are only concerned with consuming that data," said Aaron Stuntz, CEO of Workfront. "This type of unified approach to analytics unlocks insights that allow you to solve business problems." The Workfront Analytics platform enables users to build dashboards with more complex analytics that can determine the relationship of marketing activity, including spend and conversions, to the marketing performance. Workfront Analytics offers deep insights into how marketing impacts sales, and provides an analytic guide on where to spend marketing dollars to drive higher profits and increase customer retention. This provides analytic support for both marketing and sales organizations, as they earn from delivering tailored content and implementing a consistent strategy. The analytics platform goes beyond basic spreadsheets and offers a variety of analytics tools for managing, analyzing and analyzing marketing data in order to understand the marketing campaign, improve its performance and accelerate sales, according to Workfront. Research says that with the world being more competitive in the marketplace, companies should implement a modern and scalable analytics system that offers more options in the collection, analysis and sharing of data. "There's a lot of competition out there," said Spencer Patterson, senior analyst at Forrester Research. "To compete, companies need to spend more on analytics, and with this suite, they can help their teams figure out why they're doing what they're doing and make the best decisions." About Workfront Workfront combines advanced analytics and real-time marketing management to provide real-time decision support for every"

"If you get your trading right, you will be able to earn lots of profit. You need to make sure that you use proper analysis techniques and analyses and then break it down to simpler and simpler levels. You can earn a lot of profit with these basic principles if you use them properly. By reading articles, analyzing charts, taking professional analysis calls and managing your portfolio intelligently, you can have a fruitful trading year. Find out the following differences in these two basic principles. Inferment versus Forecasting Predicting the outcome of events or forecasting is like inferring what a person or a company is likely to do. Forecasting relies on averages. Inferment considers facts and uses statistical and analytical"

"To gain more insight into this, we conducted a survey of Canadians to find out what they do with their free time, including weekends and evenings. We also asked respondents how they could earn a little extra cash for things they like to do but don’t earn a lot for them. Here are the top five things Canadians buy, based on survey results: What Canadians buy, based on the numbers: 1. Food, alcohol, and entertainment, which earns Canadians an average of $12 a week 2. Traveling, which earns Canadians an average of $13 a week 3. Pet care and dog grooming, which earns Canadians an average of $7 a week 4. Beauty and personal products, which earns Canadians an average of $2 a week 5. Gardening, which earns Canadians an average of $2 a week Results were based on 763 responses, and are accurate to within three percentage points,"

" expertise is The humble strategic analyst'san under-rated element of any company's core competence. However, finance is losing its relevance to strategic research and analytics as powerful analytical tools have become more accessible to the broader market. The question therefore is how finance can regain its place at the strategic table. Financial analysts are potentially some of the most valuable members of a strategic research team, particularly in industries like financial services and health care. In health care, there is an acute shortage of market research analysts and such skills are commonly acquired as part of the finance curriculum. In the insurance sector, the ability to calculate the
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"1. Keywords: dominate, gain, beat, indicate, limit, gain, attain, easily, easily, let 121216_NS_ValueKeypoints_11040.JPG A multi-billion dollar investment firm with a vested interest in the financial services industry has hired finance professor James R. Lucas to build a new research and analytical platform aimed at analyzing businesses and financial markets. S&P Global Market Intelligence (SPGI) said Lucas is helping the firm develop a new data-driven analytics platform that will help drive investment decisions. Lucas will serve as the chief analyst at a new S&P division called S&P Analytics & Research Group. "Scott Rochelle, S&P Global Market Intelligence's chief executive officer, has been on a year-long quest to discover a new breakthrough methodology that will help advance the company's core mission," Lucas said. Lucas said his research and analytics division will analyze the financial services industry to gain insights about the sector and to identify securities that could help companies and investors profit from the trends that are shaping the marketplace. Lucas said the finance industry is "rich with examples of growth fueled by the analysis of information." The data-driven technology that Lucas is developing for S&P has the potential to bring huge gains to financial services companies. Analysts and analysts from traditional firms like JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley are already making millions for their research and analysis work. But those gains are likely to come at a cost. Analysts that work for traditional firms are required to give away their proprietary information in exchange for pay and income. Those working in traditional firms like JP Morgan have some protections against harm from bad companies that outwork them. But a fully independent entity that stands apart from the investment banking industry could easily provide more competitive services. Lucas said he already has a client list that includes financial services firms across the globe. He said he plans to change that. "There are a lot of things that I've been considering for a number of years that I'm now able to put together," Lucas said. "So this is probably just another observation that this is very much a business that could support a highly competitive platform for researching information." What do you think of Lucas' work? Let us know in the comments below.
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"It's the magic of finance: It takes analysis of data to make the best possible decisions based on accurate and unbiased information. And when you combine that with machine learning, artificial intelligence, and big data, you create a powerful solution. And that solution is providing finance experts with the right information when it comes to earning a premium rate. The difference? Data science. Industry data suggest that finance professionals will earn 4.4% more on investments like stocks, bonds, and mutual funds after implementing a data-driven recommendation system to optimize their investment decisions. Data science experts give their insights into which business analysts need data science and how it can help them get the information they need to maximize their earning potential. Data Science vs. Finance Analysts: The Numbers Experts say that some business analysts need to get paid even more. John Mitchell, Director of Analysis for ThoughtWorks, says the finance staff is in a precarious position because most are paid on a margin, or rather a margin-to-salary ratio. The median salary for finance analysts is $52,922 per year. On the other hand, most data scientists, at least at this moment, earn in the high six figures. Matthew Savoca, Data Science at Bank Of America, says, ""You should pay for expertise, so there is a premium for professional finance professionals."" But that's just average pay. According to ThoughtWorks, ""Analysts make $60K – $100K a year on average in financial services. If you're a data scientist earning the high six figures, you're making upwards of $120K."" That's the benefit of expertise. But do data scientists need to be paid more than analysts? ""A data scientist's exact salary depends on how the financial industry markets and identifies data scientists. To some organizations, a data scientist may be in a marketing or finance role,"" said Mitchell. For instance, Bank Of America pays top analytics employees as much as $100K a year, while others may be paid lower salaries. By the way, that's the cash you'll need to really compete for the right employees, because many job postings offer no salary information at all, or make it hard to earn a wage. Is it really that hard to make the difference? Absolutely. Like any other business, the success of the financial industry depends on bringing in new talent to help with your analytics. The big players in the financial industry make lots of money and have a massive advantage when it comes to convincing top-level data scientists to work with them. According to Lou Ferrigno, Founder and President of Algorithmia, ""If you bring in a top-level data scientist to work for an organization, it gives you a huge competitive advantage."" It's the same in tech. Anthony Casalena, CEO of Affinity Plus, says, ""You can build a team to do everything from start to finish in a fraction of the time and achieve superior results."" The Importance of Data Science High-level data scientists""

"While bankers are largely calm about the chance of a financial crisis, analysts from Barclays Research have predicted that the next recession may be as bad as the one that followed the dot-com collapse. In a report released in July, analysts including Mehul Kumar wrote that a broad range of data points have caused them to conclude that one of the world’s top economic events may soon take place. Their conclusion stems from a predicted increase in financial volatility, which has steadily increased over the last eight years, and could raise interest rates sharply. According to the analysts, the onset of a new recession “may coincide with interest rates rising substantially faster than the incremental"

"After hitting a peak of 26,455, analyst Patrick Brown calls it a painful decline: ""The finance sector is almost exclusively dependent on rising income, and the consequences of that is a declining share of total wealth and income."" Brown is director of corporate finance research at CIBC Capital Markets and author of a new report on the Canadian finance industry. The basic conclusion is that Canada's finance sector's woes are as much about the economy as they are the structure. In the last decade, the broad trend for Canada has been a steady decline in real income. He describes this as ""more of a challenging trend to understand, particularly when one is analysing aggregate metrics such as productivity, labour force participation and therefore therefore aggregate incomes."" But the share of national income and the real wealth it produces have changed considerably since 1997. ""Economic growth has shifted substantially away from finance, where investors (and bankers) earned most of their money in the past,"" he said. ""More generally, there has been a significant erosion of Canadians' earning capacity."" The net worth of households fell by $72.3 billion to $63.2 trillion between 1997 and 2012, he calculates. ""The decline is broad,"" he writes, listing the decline of 20 per cent or more for individuals in the higher earnings categories such as managers and professionals; the decline of 9 per cent or more in a range of occupations such as project managers; the decline of 6.7 per cent or more for incomes in the lowest 10 per cent of incomes; the decline of 7.9 per cent or more for incomes in the middle income levels; and a decrease of 3.7 per cent or more for all income levels. Perhaps more importantly, the ""underlying fundamentals"" of the industry have changed. Those financial analysts and bankers earned most of their profits by helping investors make higher-risk, riskier investment decisions, he said. That is no longer possible, he said, ""as those investors themselves have grown less risk-averse."" Brown calculates that only 0.7 per cent of total net wealth, about $45.6 billion out of $900 billion, was earned by the average finance employee between 1997 and 2012. ""The rest of the wealth was earned by investors, real estate and asset managers, retirees and finance executives working at firms outside the finance sector,"" he said. Another indication that finance is facing difficult times is that the finance industry has been pulling back in its income growth over the last year, Brown said. ""They earned 22.2 per cent of overall Canadian income growth between 2007 and 2011,"" he said. In 2012, they earned just 9.3 per cent. Those increases are nearly the opposite of the broader economy, where real GDP increased just 3.9 per cent, earning an average of 11.1 per cent. ""Such income growth is not necessarily bad for the economy. Rather, it is simply an indication that finance has not earned nearly as much in the past few years, as they did in the boom""