THE RISE OF THE

DATA-DRIVEN PROFESSIONAL:
6 NON-DATA ROLES THAT
NEED DATA ANALYTICS SKILLS
INTRODUCTION
What is the company’s current position and market worth? What if tomorrow
the scenario changes? What strategic decisions can add value to clients and
stakeholders?

Historically, answers have been sought for these critical questions through a
simple balance sheet analysis and rampant speculation about the company’s
growth potential, expected future revenues, and profits.

Business analysts also used to make wild assumptions about a company’s

intangible asset value, such as customer loyalty, employee skills, or intellectual
capital, forecasting a highly subjective assessment.

Today, all sectors are experiencing dramatic disruption, with Industry 4.0
enveloping businesses at a dizzying speed — an epochal transformation
driven by emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine
Learning, the Internet of Things, and robotics.

Stakes are higher than ever, and businesses that succeed in adopting
innovative technologies will enjoy a decisive advantage over their
competitors. Those lagging behind will have a greater risk of becoming
irrelevant — a staggering “40 percent of all businesses are likely to die if they
fail to accommodate new technologies,” according to Cisco Chairman, John
Chambers.
As the world continues to generate huge amounts of data from millions of
sensors, smartphones, and payment systems, many
far-sighted organizations are turning to data analytics to boost data-
driven business intelligence for tackling disruptive challenges, unlocking
new resources, and identifying future opportunities.

By providing businesses with real-time, actionable insights on market

conditions, operational processes, customer preferences, and potential
risks, data analytics optimizes growth and profitability while completely
eliminating the reliance on intuition-based decision-making. 90%
of business professionals believe data and analytics are key to their
organization’s digital transformation initiatives.

According to a survey, the number of companies investing in big data and

related technologies have jumped from 27 percent in 2018 to 33.9 percent
in 2019, while the global spending on big data analytics is more than US$
180 billion in 2019. With growing investment in this field, the global data
analytics market that promises to surpass $77.64 billion by 2023, at a
CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 30.08 percent.

Although the technology sector is at the forefront of implementing

data analytics, multiple non-data enterprises are also ramping up their
investments to leverage data analytics for creating value across all
business processes. In fact, data analytics today has gone beyond the
territory of specially trained data scientists. Here’s why. With data and
digital information burgeoning at a lightening pace, relying solely on
analysts to perform data analysis tasks is no longer viable.

This eBook explores how the data analytics has become an in-demand
skill in many popular job roles/functions that traditionally weren’t so data
driven.
THE IMPACT OF
DATA ANALYTICS ON
NON-DATA FUNCTIONS
In the past, data was handled in silos; it was unreachable by anyone
outside of the analytics department. Today, when data fuels real-time
business decisions, there’s a growing need to be more agile when it
comes to gaining actionable insights from data. As such, more and more
professionals in non-data roles are stepping up to take responsibilities
in their own hands, which is further driven by the availability of suitable
technologies. Thus, we see the rise of a cohort of professionals that
Gartner has termed as “citizen-data scientists — they are non-data
technology experts who get to a realization that the future of their
technologies is in analytics”.

Let’s take a look at six traditional industries that are being transformed
by data analytics and how data analytics skills are becoming vital to fill
important job roles in these industries.
MARKETING
AND ADVERTISING
The field of marketing and advertising is one where it pays — and is even
critical — to have an accurate picture of how all the working components of a
particular campaign drive sales and how to tweak them for better outcomes.

A decade or so ago, marketing and advertising was a guessing game. The

biggest ‘blind spot’ in this sector was the lack of reliable, actionable data
based on which marketers could make decisions. How many people saw
that banner? How many of them watched the advert on TV? No one knew
for sure. How many people ended up buying after seeing the ad? This
was even beyond the realm of guessing.

Digital marketing enabled marketers to monitor every mouse click,

making it easier for them to tie consumer action with purchase
behavior. But it is data analytics that has truly been a game
changer.

Today, with an overabundance of data and availability

of new analytical methods to crunch huge data sets,
marketing and sales experts have much more precise
control over their ad campaigns, making them more
targeted, responsive, and personalized to the
consumer’s changing needs. Knowing what works
and doesn’t work allows them to establish a
clearer relationship between advertising and
purchasing.

With 40 percent of organizations pouring

money into data-driven marketing
strategies, it’s not hard to imagine that their demand for data-skilled
marketers is soaring. Therefore, for the marketers of the near future, the
knowledge of basic data concepts and skills such as data visualization,
analytical thinking, use of data-driven technologies, and above all, a growth
mindset will determine their career graph and success.
SALES AND BUSINESS
DEVELOPMENT
The pre-data days of sales are notorious for creating the stereotype of the
pain-in-the-neck salesperson. However, those days of cold calling and pushy
sales tactics are over.

Data-driven systems such as business intelligence and predictive analytics are

opening new frontiers in sales and business development. One of the biggest
benefits of these new technologies is providing organizations the capability to
study past behavior of prospects to uncover patterns that suggest how likely
they are to turn into customers, allowing sales and business development
teams to target high-quality and convertible leads.

In addition to saving resources that would otherwise get spent on

chasing dead-end leads, analytics-based approaches also enable
companies to improve their sales and unlock new business
opportunities through a broader view of the target market.

Because change is already in motion (79% of high-

performing teams currently use predictive analytics,
according to Salesforce), sales and business
development professionals must be savvy in
analytical skills to boost their careers and excel in
today’s landscape.

Forward-thinking organizations and hiring

companies are looking for professionals with the
ability to collect and analyze data pertaining to the
target market, customers, key metrics, revenue, the
sales pipeline, etc. to man their sales and business
development departments.

These professionals must also know how to track returns

on investments (ROI), how to clearly correlate strategies with
company progress, and how to present use case models to engage
top executives and stakeholders.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
50 percent of customers await a reply from the customer support
department within an hour of making a query, says a survey by Edelman
Digital.

In a similar vein, a report from Freshdesk shows that 71 percent of

customers feel frustrated if businesses do not provide personalized
services.

Forbes’ research reveals that 85 percent

of marketers reported great success
applying customer-centric personalization
strategies. The study also highlights that
up to 50 percent of customers switched
companies because of substandard
customer support.

In recognition of these emerging trends,

organizations are investing heavily in data analytics to improve real-time
analysis of customer data, which helps implement data-driven policies
that increase personalization and enhance customer experience.

Businesses, to deliver optimal support to customers, rely on three types of

data analytics - descriptive analytics, predictive analytics, and prescriptive
analytics.

Of these three, predictive analytics is the most effective tool for enabling
high-grade customer support, as it makes proactive predictions about
customer needs based on past trends, thus optimizing customer service
and user experience.

Whether it’s intelligent call routing or AI-based chatbots, data analytics

tools and techniques allow organizations to quickly identify, respond, and
resolve customer queries, revolutionizing the way enterprises interact with
their customers.

Global research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc. forecasts that by 2020,
25 percent of all support operations will use virtual assistants or chatbots,
a significant jump from 2 percent in 2017.
HR, RECRUITMENT AND L&D
Over the past few decades, Human Resources Management (HRM) witnessed
drastic changes. It evolved from being one of the operational disciplines
to a dynamic, strategy-based discipline. The growing popularity of SHRM
(Strategic Human Resources Management) serves as an example of this.
Data-driven HR analytics is at the center of SHRM.

When businesses use data analytics, they can take the guesswork out
of HR functions. Analytics-based Human Resources Management allows
organizations to convert data into valuable knowledge and knowledge into
actionable insights that enable more informed decision-making.

Critical insights, derived from data analytics, are redefining key HR roles
including Learning & Development (L&D), recruitment, and performance
management. In the same way data analytics is revolutionizing sales,
marketing, and customer support domains, it is transforming human
resources as well, enabling HR professionals to:

Make better, data-driven decisions

Develop business cases for Human Resource interventions
Check the efficacy of interventions
Determine the real impact of Learning and Development (L&D) budget
Forecast which new recruits will become the highest performers
Foresee when employees will leave the company

HR analytics is the future of Human Resource Management. It helps

organizations identify new talent and future leaders while building a data-
focused work environment.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Data analytics empowers project management teams to efficiently handle
challenging projects, keep projects on the right track, and within their
specified budgets.

Using data analytics, project managers (PMs) can gain the ability to
transcend the usual limits of just capturing data. Analytics streamlines
the process of analyzing data, allowing PMs to make real-time decisions
based on actionable insights, track project performance, avoid unforeseen
events, and check whether projects are consistent with the company’s
objectives.

By implementing data analytics, project management professionals

can disintegrate complex, massive datasets to assess KPIs (Key
Performance Indicators), gauge project viability, create strategies, and
predict outcomes, besides monitoring resource
allocations, deliverables, and team
engagement.

Whether a project’s goal

is to resolve system
problems, improve
operations, increase
quality, or prevent
business losses,
data analytics
can equip
project
managers with
the knowledge
needed to
make projects
succeed.
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
Not so long ago, many product managers and developers were probably
not familiar with the term “analytics”.

Since the start of the digital age, analytics came to prominence, and
today, as the world witnesses a surge in data, data analytics has become
imperative to improve product management and drive success.

Without accurate measurements, the product team cannot determine

whether the products they develop meet the requirements of end users.
Here, data analytics comes to aid.

Data analytics helps measure product status at every stage, provides

vital information to the product team related to customer behavior, and
enhances the ability of product managers to make real-time decisions,
enabling them to draw decisive, data-driven conclusions about product
changes, if necessary.

Eliminating the need to go with “ gut feeling “, data analytics, via live-
data prototyping and split testing, not only provides verifiable data that
facilitates plausible justifications for the implementation of new concepts,
but it also allows product managers to make predictions about the
outcomes of such ideas, supercharging the confidence of the product
management team.
Job Responsibilities of Data Analysts and
the Must-Have Skills

Data analysts possess unique skills to analyze the accuracy and quality of
data, and then, design and model it in a manner that enables enterprises
and governments to make better-informed decisions based on data
patterns and trends.

The Job Responsibility of a Data Analyst Include:

Handling the master data
Supporting user roles
Collaborating with quality assurance (QA) analysts to maintain
imported data quality
Decommissioning and commissioning datasets
Processing confidential information and data according to set
guidelines
Designing and managing a reporting environment that includes data
sources, metadata, and security
Supporting data warehouse functionalities
Coordinating data normalization and data integrity initiatives
Assessing software tests and introducing upgraded software versions
Creating reports from multiple or single systems
Troubleshooting reporting database environments
Analyzing updates and changes to source systems
Offering training on new dashboards and reports
Providing expertise on data mining, data cleansing, and data storage
architectures
Key Data Analytics Skills
Bachelor’s or master’s degree from a college/university or from an
industry-recognized educational facility
Ability to assess business risks
Capacity to work with all departments and stakeholders
Skills to analyze and provide recommendations about databases,
tools, and software solutions
High-level expertise in processes and methodologies for handling
large databases
Proficiency in managing big data sets
Deep understanding of metadata standards
Superb verbal and written communication skills

Where Do You Learn These Data Analytics Skills?

Whether it is for upskilling/reskilling, career transition, or career
advancement in the same field, Simplilearn’s Data Analyst Master’s
Program, in partnership with IBM, will prepare you for the booming data
analytics. This course will equip you with the knowledge of analytics tools
and techniques, working with SQL databases, the languages of R and
Python, creating data visualizations, and applying statistics and predictive
analytics in a business environment.

Other analytics courses we offer include:

Introduction to Data Analytics Course for Beginners
Post Graduate Program in Data Analytics
Business Analytics Certification Course
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