Why should you choose to become a Data Analyst

Analysing data for yielding error-free results for the data-driven business is a herculean task, nowadays it is very important to process a huge amount of data for answering several business-related queries on the database from time to time.  Data Analyst performs design and operation of a system or process to make it useful and result oriented in some defined ways. The overall activity of Data Analysts results to help business decision at large scale. The process of data analysing involves defining data analysis why it is needed, storing the data, cleaning the data, analyzing the data and interpret the results. After going through the various stages, the data analyst is able to produce a meaningful and result-oriented data set to solve several business-related queries over the massive amount of data. In general, Data analysts deliver value to their companies by performing optimisation processes over a large data set.

A data analyst may have a different title like Operation Analyst, Business Analyst and Database Analyst. In reality, the data analyst works as a generalist who plays multiple roles to help others to solve database queries for better data-driven decisions.

Data analysts perform several activities throughout the process such as change the traditional business into an advanced data-based business, Keep track of business progress, keep sorting out the data organising problems, transform massive raw data into useful information, assist technical and business teams of Industry, act as a layer between different level of teams in Industry, generating different data reports and translating into outcomes, play a significant role at technical and non-technical sides of the industry, provides the outcome by performing analysis and give the results. Ability to gather data from different sources, store all of that data in a databank, and present it in varieties of modes like charts, graphs, images, etc.

Every profession requires some skill set, similarly to be a Data Analyst one must-have soft skills and some technical skills as well, soft skills such as people skills, communication skills, critical thinking,  analytical skills, attention to information whereas technical skills such as skills in the collection and organizing raw data, describe statistical view to have a clear picture of data, observe interesting information found in the data, representing in a pictorial way to help the company interpret and make decisions with the data and presenting the results of technical and non-technical analysis to business clients or internal teams.

Future & Pathway to Data Analysts

Data analysts will always be in high demand at any level of the industry, because of the regular increase in millions of user data; according to the need of solving business-related queries over accessing massive data, one can think the bright future of data analyst by projecting job growth over the next 15 years—ranging from as a financial analyst to an operations research analyst. Data analysts move to senior positions in industry or an organization focus more on overall data strategy and supervising analysts at different levels. Others will take the specialist route, improve their skills in a specific field—such as the hospital industry, education industry, finance and machine learning. Data analysts are on-demand across a whole world, one can follow a career path that combines analytical skills with a particular area of interest.

About the author

Dr Ahtesham Farooqui is an Assistant Professor & Coordinator at Sage School of Computer Application, SAGE University, Bhopal.

Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s own and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha