By the end of the programme, students will have an in-depth understanding of the stakes, challenges, and open issues of gathering and analysing large amounts of heterogeneous data for decision-making purposes, master the key concepts and technologies in information systems, and be able to put in place and conduct both online and offline analyses of strategic data to answer executives needs.

From an industrial perspective, constantly growing amounts of largely unstructured data, rapidly changing economic conditions, and an emerging trend of incorporating unstructured data into analytics bring new challenges to BI, and new opportunities to qualified practitioners. Notably, statistics on employability of graduates from the `Master en Systèmes d\'Information et Analyse Décisionnelle' at University François-Rabelais of Tours (a BI specialisation of the Computer Science Master) showed that in 2010, 97% of graduates were employed 6 months after graduation (the remaining 3% continues their studies) with a mean initial annual net salary of 30,000 euros.

From an academic perspective, interest in business intelligence is growing and diversifying in academia, with strong interest in the management of unstructured data along with structured data, personalisation and recommendation, graph databases, complex event processing, collaborative aspects, as well as visual analytics. Students choosing to do their master's thesis in a partner's laboratory, will be considered for subsequent enrollment at doctorate in one of the full or associated partner HEIs. 

Finally, the consortium will promote and develop technological transfer from academia to the enterprise. This will be done through various informal as well as formal partnerships, for instance, the academic chair in Business Intelligence at ECP that involve, among other partners, SAP research, with the objective of combining semantic technologies with Business Intelligence.

To conclude, many opportunities are available in the field, for both academic and industrial research. IT4BI will be the best master's degree for learning the skills needed to excel in those jobs.