What is Data Analytics?
Data Analytics everyone's talking about it but what exactly is it perhaps you've heard that Data Analytics is the next big thing for business and want to find more about what the field involves by the end of this blog you should have a better understanding of what data analytics is and you'll have a better understanding of what you'll be doing in the role in this blog. we're going to cover five key points to give you a better understanding of what it is to be a Data Analyst and how you start working in this field.
Step number one perhaps you're thinking about becoming a data analyst and want to know exactly what a career in the field involves. Most companies are collecting loads of data all the time but in its raw form, this data doesn't mean anything. This is where data analytics comes in. Data analytics is the process of analyzing raw data so that we can pull out insights that are useful to companies these insights are super important to drive smart business decisions what a data analyst does.
they take all this complex jigsaw of data they take it out and they make it into something which you can really use having interpreted the data the data analyst can then pass these insights on so that the company can then make the most informed decisions so you can think of data analytics as a kind of business intelligence used to solve problems and challenges that every company has it's all about finding patterns in the data which can tell you something useful or relevant about the business operations so for instance how customers engage with a particular product or employees engage with a particular tool armed with the insights of data companies are then able to make better decisions about their audience company as a whole and the industry in which they work in Step one we looked at what Data Analytics actually is in step two we're going to look at how data analytics is used so what does data analytics actually look like in action and how is it used in the real world so the fact is data is everywhere so it actually has an infinite amount of uses across all kinds of businesses and organizations globally broadly speaking.
data analytics is used to make faster and better business decisions to reduce overall business costs and to develop new and innovative products and services in more specific terms data analytics might be used to do the following to predict future sales or purchasing behaviors for security purposes to help and protect against fraud to analyze the effectiveness of marketing campaigns to boost customer acquisition and retention or to increase supply chain efficiency so that gives you a little bit of an overview of what data analytics can be used for in the real world Step three let's dive into what a data analyst does on a day-to-day basis if you're thinking about becoming a data analyst you're probably interested in the roles and responsibilities that you'll have in the field based on some real job ads.
here are some typical roles and responsibilities that you'll have to undertake as a data analyst manage the delivery of user satisfaction surveys and report on results using data visualization software work with business line owners to develop requirements define success metrics manage and execute analytical projects and evaluate results monitor practices processes and systems to identify opportunities for improvement translate important questions into concrete analytical tasks gather new data to answer client questions collating and organizing data from multiple sources design build test and maintain back-end code establish
data processes define data quality criteria and implement data quality processes work as part of a team to evaluate and analyze key data that will be used to shape future business strategies so those are just some examples of what a data analyst would be doing in any given role to learn more about the kinds of things that you'll be undertaking as a data analyst why not search on job boards like linkedin indeed and icrunchdata.com so that was step three it was just a broad overview of what you can expect to be doing as a data analyst So now we've looked at data analytics as a role we're now going to go into the process of data analysis so now we're going to outline the five main steps a data analyst would take when approaching a new project step one define the questions that you want to answer you need to answer why you're conducting this analysis and what questions and answers you need to find at this stage you'll take a clearly defined problem and then you'll make a hypothesis or research question that you can go on and answer you'll then need to identify what types of data you'll need but importantly where it will come from for instance a business problem might be that customers aren't subscribing to a paid membership once that free trial ends your key question can then be what kind of strategies can the business implement to retain their customer base step two would be to collect this data with a clear question in mind you're ready to start collecting that data.
data analysts will usually gather data from primary sources or internal data that the company already has such as CRM software or email marketing tools they may tend to secondary or external sources such as open data sources so this can include data from government portals tools like google trends but also data from international organizations like the world health organization so step three you need to clean scrub that data once you've got that data you need to prepare it and ready it for analysis your original data might include duplicates anomalies or missing data which could distort how the data is interpreted these all need to be removed data cleaning can be a manual task and it can take some time but it's crucial if you want to get the right business insights step four is to analyze the data now for the actual analysis how you analyze the data will depend on the question that you're asking and the kind of data that you're working with but some common techniques include regression analysis cluster analysis and time series analysis to name just a few.
we're going to go into these analysis terms much deeper in future videos but if you have any specific questions now drop us a comment in the comments below moving on to step need to interpret and share the results the final step in this process is where data is turned into valuable business insights depending on the type of analysis conducted you'll present your findings in a way that others can understand in the form of a chart or a graph for example at this stage you'll be able to say what the data analysis actually shows you in regards to your initial question or business challenge and you'll collaborate with key stakeholders on how to move forward this is a great moment to reflect and look at the limitations of your data and what further analysis might be conducted rounding off step four we're going to move on to the next step what skills you need to actually become a data analyst in addition to the role description and the processes that we've described so far data analysts are also expected to demonstrate certain skills and abilities here are some of the most important hard and soft skills that you'll need to become a data analyst you'll need to have some mathematical and statistical ability data analysts spend a lot of their time crunching numbers so you'll need to have a mathematical brain.
you'll have to have some working knowledge of programming languages such as python oracle and SQL data analysts rely on a number of programming languages to carry out their work this may seem daunting at first but it's nothing that can't be learned over time with practice you'll also need an analytical mindset it's not just about crunching the numbers and sharing your data sometimes you'll need to dig deeper to understand really what's going on it's all in the name an analytical mindset is a must remember data analytics is about answering questions and solving business challenges and that requires some keen problem-solving skills data analysts have a wide variety of tools at their disposal and you'll need to know which one to use and when you'll also need excellent communication skills once you've harvested your data for valuable insights it's important to share your findings so that it benefits the business data analysts work in close collaboration with key business stakeholders and they may be responsible for sharing their insights to those stakeholders but also the entire company.
so if you're thinking about becoming a data analyst you need to be comfortable with this aspect of the job so that summarises some of the key hard and soft skills you'll require as a data analyst. I hope this has been of value this isn't a broad overview of the field at hand if you've enjoyed this video we've got an in-depth article covering the points which I've mentioned in the video and we go into much greater depth the link for that is in the description below career foundry also have a fantastic five-day data analytics short course so if you're interested just sign up in the description below if you've got any questions about the field or the topics that we've covered in this video please just drop them in the comments below thank you so much.
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