The
media update team explores why the role of the data scientist is vital in today’s competitive marketplace.
Big Data is everywhere, and every business owns data in some form or another. Letting these large amounts of valuable information lie untouched in a database is no longer an option. Competitors are leveraging their data for insights, and if you’re not delving into your database too, they will gain the competitive advantage.
Data science is one way in which businesses are exploiting their data to find information that will make their strategies and operations better. It takes a team of specialists to extract valuable insights from your data – from data analysts and data engineers to scientists.
The data scientist relies on the work of the analyst and engineer to deliver actionable insights. From the data and infrastructure that these workers compile and build, data scientists can draw conclusions that can help companies and organisations.
As
media update wrote in a previous article,
What is a data scientist?, one of their main goals is to connect data with business outcomes to drive strategic decisions.
Data scientists ensure that the data that companies have gets used to its full potential. Here’s why businesses and organisations that have access to large sets of relevant information need them:
Data scientists extract value from your data
Processing a company’s data in a way that delivers usable information requires an individual or team that understands the value of that resource.
Data scientists often have experience in business, which places them in an ideal position to understand the various insights that can be extracted. These specialists can then envision the potential conclusions that can be drawn.
The ability to imagine the possible applications of a dataset is what makes a data scientist an “idea person”, as Alex Castrounis, an analytics executive, author, and educator,
writes.
Data scientists align data insights with your business goals
Data scientists not only understand the possible ways in which data can be used, they also know which of these applications will best suit the needs of the company.
Because of their business backgrounds, they are able to match the needs of the company’s leadership with the insights that can be extracted from the data.
Once they’ve outlined these business requirements, they build computer models that can accurately process the database into knowledge that executives can use.
Data scientists bring your data alive
The data scientist delivers these insights in a way that is easy to understand.
This means not only presenting the raw data output that their models deliver, but also helping business stakeholders visualise this output. Through storytelling, the data scientist can help decision makers envision how they can apply the insights gained.
In a nutshell, data scientists envision the knowledge that can be extracted from data, understand how businesses can use it, and provide the results of the insights in a way that business leaders can easily grasp and apply.
Note that these scientists never work in isolation, and their achievements are always tied to the ability of team members to deliver clean and useful data and infrastructure. This team effort is what delivers insights – and allows businesses to make data-driven decisions that give them the competitive edge.
The process of extracting actionable knowledge from data falls within the field of data intelligence. Read what data intelligence can do for business in our article, What is data intelligence?
Image designed by Freepik