The Master of IT in Business (Service Sector Analytics) Programme is a horizontal focused degree where students learn the linkages across service delivery process, data, operations, analytics, technology & architecture of several service industries, including healthcare, hospitality, retail, supply chain, transportation and entertainment. A data-centric perspective for understanding service delivery with the emphasis on emerging "next-practices" of real time, adaptive data analytics with massive amounts and multiple types of data.

At the School of Information Systems (SIS), we have a complete ecosystem for Analytics Education, Research and Practice. Our school has strong and internationally recognized research groups in Data Management & Analytics, Intelligent Systems & Decision Analytics, Information Security & Privacy, Information Systems & Management, and Software Systems. In addition to the MITB (Service Sector Analytics) programme, our SIS undergraduates can also choose to specialize in Business Analytics as their second major, which shows our concerted effort in Analytics Education.

In March 2011, the Living Analytics Research Centre (LARC), a partnership between SMU-SIS and the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) was launched. LARC will conduct research on behavioural and social network analytics and behavioural experiments so as to discover and harness the laws of information network evolution for networks of people, organisations and businesses. This effort promises a constant source of new innovations in the areas of Analytics, and makes SMU-SIS a leader in cutting-edge Analytics.

Our highly interactive lab and contextualized learning experience will allow our students to work on lab exercises based on real world cases and data. These cases are crafted together with our industry partners, so that our students can also experience the real business challenges and propose solutions and innovations which will benefit the businesses.

Industry leaders address our students during our monthly seminars in relevant topics including citizen sentiment analytics through social media data, analytics solutions on the cloud, design and data analysis of customer loyalty programmes, analytics in the hospitality, entertainment and gaming sector, and also how to turn big data analytics into implementable actions. Our industry partners also sponsor projects in the courses as well as larger scale capstone projects to ensure that our students get hands-on experience on real projects. Such engagements will provide network opportunities for the students for better career advancements.

The solid foundation which our students establish over their course of study is built with the help of the Unified Service Sector Process Framework (USSPF). The USSPF provides a systematic way of understanding and analysing linkages across key processes, operations, data, technology solutions and management supervision. Our courses are designed to take full advantage of it.

Our students will also be trained in essential business methods and management concepts required for assuming senior levels of responsibility technology and operations. The MITB (Service Sector Analytics) Programme also provides the necessary foundation for understanding and managing technology and operations projects, and using Data Analytics to create more value for the business.

The MITB (Service Sector Analytics) Programme started with the first part-time intake in January 2011. In January 2012, the full-time option will be launched, allowing students the choice of completing the Programme intensively in one year.