What is a data analyst? A key role for data-driven business decisions
Data analysts work with data to help their organizations make better business decisions. Using techniques from a range of disciplines, including computer programming, mathematics, and statistics, data analysts draw conclusions from data to describe, predict, and improve business performance. They form the core of any analytics team and tend to be generalists versed in the methods of mathematical and statistical analysis.
The data analyst role is in high demand, as organizations are growing their analytics capabilities at a rapid clip. In August, IDC big data and analytics software revenue would hit $66.8 billion this year and would see 8.7% CAGR through 2024.
While organizations have spent the past few years focused on data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), the pendulum may be swinging back to analytics, says Caroline Carruthers, director at consulting firm Carruthers and Jackson, former chief data officer of Network Rail, and co-author of The Chief Data Officer’s Playbook and Data-Driven Business Transformation: How to Disrupt, Innovate and Stay Ahead of the Competition.
“We almost took our eye off the analytics ball because a lot of people got excited about machine learning and AI and suddenly went, ‘Ooh, we have to do all these wonderfully whizzy-bang things.’ We forgot that actually there is a tremendous amount of value organizations get from analytics,” Carruthers says. “We’re starting to move back to how can we really drive analytics throughout our organizations.”
While data analysts and data scientists may be commingled on analytics teams, their roles differ considerably.
Data analysts seek to describe the current state of reality for their organizations by translating data into information accessible to the business. They collect, analyze, and report on data to meet business needs. The role includes identifying new sources of data and methods to improve data collection, analysis, and reporting. Data scientists, on the other hand, are often engaged in long-term research and prediction, while data analysts seek to support business leaders in making tactical decisions through reporting and ad hoc queries.
Hillary Green-Lerman, lead data scientist at Looker, says the difference between data analysts and data scientists comes down to timescale. A data analyst might help an organization better understand how its customers use its product in the present moment — what works and doesn’t work for them. A data scientist might use the insights generated from that work to help design a new product that anticipates future customer needs.
Data analysts mostly work with an organization’s structured data. They create reports, dashboards, and other visualizations on data associated with customers, business processes, market economics, and more to provide insights to senior management and business leaders in support of decision-making efforts.
