In the data-driven world, every small and big name is utilizing data analysis to improve their businesses. Data Analysis helps businesses identify their requirements, customer needs, and reviews, improving ROIs, efficiency, and productivity.
“Data Analytics is the future, and the future is NOW. Every mouse click, keyboard button press, swipe, or tap is used to shape business decisions. Everything is about data these days. Data is information and information is power.”
- Radi, Data Analyst at CENTOGENE
You can notice the power of data analytics in the quote mentioned above.
Today, we generate massive amounts of data, more than 2.5 quintillion bytes per day. Can you imagine the various types and chunks of data as a quintillion has 18 zeros?
Analyzing the data has become a crucial need of the hour because the findings of data analysis significantly help in smart decision making, and increasing the sales and productivity of a business.
This is why data analysts are highly in demand in every corner of the world. A report by IDC predicts that revenues in Big Data and Analytics software are going to hit USD 66.8 billion this year and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.7% through 2024.
Professionals around the world are looking for appropriate, top-class Data Analytics courses such that they can make a lightening career in data analysis.
Let us explore data analysis in brief and the roles and responsibilities of a data analyst.
What is Data Analysis?
Data Analysis is the process of identifying meaningful insights from data to help businesses make informed decisions. The five iterative phases involved in Data Analysis are:
- Recognize the data that is required to be analyzed
- Gather/collect the data
- Cleanse the data to prepare for analysis
- Analyze the cleaned data
- Interpret the results in some user-readable format
The steps involved in data analysis can take different forms based on the questions you are required to answer. They are categorized as:
When you need to answer what happened, you use Descriptive analytics.
When you need to answer why something happened, you use Diagnostic Analysis.
When you want to form projections about future events, you use Predictive Analytics.
When you want actionable suggestions regarding what actions should be taken, you use Prescriptive Analytics.
Data Analyst Role
Data Analysts are people who work with an organization’s structured data. As a data analyst, you need to create reports, dashboards, graphs, and other visualizations on data related to customers, market economics, business processes, and specifically to provide findings and insights to senior management, stakeholders, and business leaders to support strategic decision making.
Data Analysts work with all forms of data, including the logistics and transportation costs, inventories, sales figures, market research, etc. You have to use this data to help businesses project market share, time sales, price products, optimizing transportation costs, etc.
Responsibilities of a Data Analyst
Some of the crucial responsibilities of a data analyst are:
- Determine Organizational Goals
This is one of the most important responsibilities of a Data Analyst. Determining organizational goals requires you to work with Data scientists, Management teams, and IT teams.
Once you are done with determining organizational goals, it becomes easy for you to focus on further steps required for analyzing the data.
- Data Mining
Data Mining refers to the process of organizing the raw data to make it structured so that you can identify different patterns in the data via computational and mathematical algorithms. With data mining, you can generate the latest information and extract meaningful insights. So, it is the crucial responsibility of a data analyst to mine or collect data. Mining the data from the company database and extracting it from external resources is the major task of a data analyst.
- Data Cleansing
When you need to prepare the data for analysis, you need to first clean the data. The important steps in cleaning the data involve analyzing, recognizing, and organizing complex or chaotic data. Then this organized data is analyzed to help make strategic decisions. The clean data makes analysis easy and simple. While cleaning the data, you remove all the data that distorts analysis or you can standardize your data into a single, uniform format.
- Data Analysis
This is the most important step and the primary responsibility of a data analyst. As you already know, data analysis is the process of exploring the facts and figures from the data such that a specific answer can be obtained for a specific question. It is the process that involves evaluating the data with the use of analytical and logical reasoning. This helps you examine each component of the data provided. You typically need to use statistical tools to analyze and visualize the data to interpret it. Data analysis requires you to use various tools and programming languages such that analysis is performed precisely.
- Identifying Trends and Patterns
By identifying trends and patterns you can analyze the performance of your business and predict where your business will reach with current practices. Also, trends and pattern analysis give you an idea of where you should improve your actions.
- Data Visualization to make clear reports
For creating reports you have to translate raw data into information. You have to create a compelling report that tells everything like a story. Being easily understandable and attractive, these reports will definitely impress your seniors.
- Maintain Databases and Data Systems
You are required to ensure that the availability, storage, and coherence of digitally stored data meet the needs of an organization. You should gain technical skills in data modeling, and database design to accomplish these tasks.
Becoming a Data Analyst
If you wish to become a data analyst, it is the right time now. This is because data analysts are highly in demand, and they are greatly paid. To have a lucrative career as a Data Analyst, all you need to do is register yourself in an online training course.
Go with hassle-free learning, hands-on with real-life projects, and get certification added to your resume.
Enroll Now!
