The terms business analysis and data analysis have traditionally seemed different. With the increasing amount of data available, stored and the need to analyse that data and gain business insights out of it, a new role, Business Data Analyst is critical. Companies lacking the business data analysis talent pool have a lower ROI and will lose out to companies hiring analytics talent.
Most companies, even today, have the two competencies separate. Business analysts analyze functional requirements and help translate the same to technical specifications while data analysts are more technical, gathering, cleansing and analyzing data. To increase the analytic throughput of a company it is vital to combine the business and analytic competencies to be able to analyze the data from a business aspect, being able to draw conclusions about consumer behaviour, find trends and accordingly make business decisions with targeted marketing campaigns.
As this is an emerging field, it can be challenging to find right people with both the business acumen as well as analytics skillset. There can be myriad ways to bridge this gap. One strategy can be to create teams of people with direct marketing roles along with data analysts and data scientists to utilise the combined specialised competencies. Another strategy can be to train the management team’s analytical skills or beefing up the business knowledge of data analysts.
No matter which strategies are adapted, the new role of Business Data Analyst is paramount for enabling a company to make the right investments at the right time to yield an ROI. Building a data driven company is more than identifying the right BI tools, it’s about driving business through customer behaviour feedback by analyzing data.
Sudipa's Bytes 