Education & Training
“Augmented analytics using machine learning and ‘no code’ ELT platforms have raised the bar in terms of how easily data can be integrated into a business, without requiring gruelling technical work, coding or specialist teams.”
Data leadership amid a skills shortage What businesses need now is someone to lead them into the future when it comes to data. Tey need to understand both sides of the data equation: the ‘heavy liſting’ of data engineering, but also what the business needs to derive from their data warehouses. It’s one thing to build a dashboard - but it’s entirely another to teach a whole organisation to use Tableau. Most organisations still face problems in terms of data literacy
within their workforces, with Gartner suggesting that the majority of CDOs will struggle to foster the data literacy needed to achieve data- driven goals until at least 2025. Data leaders need to instinctively understand the full picture.
For far too many companies, data is still an aſterthought, especially in their early months and years. Te company builds its business, builds its technology, and only then will business leaders start to look for data analysts, and start working out how to learn from
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their data. Tat’s the wrong approach. Data needs to be a priority, and needs to be integrated into the business model right from their earliest days. Having a data leader within a company can help with data discoverability - working out what data exists internally and how that can get the company to where it needs to be.
What data scientists and engineers need Data scientists need to understand not only their business and what it needs, but also have an understanding of the organisational problems they need to solve. Tat understanding can turn raw data into insights the business can use. Data engineers need to ensure they have the right skills for both
the technical and the business side: an SQL background, coding big data with Python or Spark and the tools to use those languages in the right way (for example, Snowflake and DataBricks). Ideally, they’ll also offer skills, which will enable that crossover to the business side, such as understanding the best tools and practices to visualise business insights (for example, Tableau and Looker). Data leaders need all of this, plus the interpersonal skills required to secure board-level buy-in for the technologies they need.
Data and leadership Forward-thinking companies need to have the data team speaking out at a leadership level. Tose conversations need to be happening throughout the organisation. It’s not enough to have the data: people within the organisation need to understand how to use what they’re presented with. Te whole organisation needs to be enabled with the tools they need to dig into this data, and have an understanding of the data points that matter. To an extent that’s something that can be built into data products themselves - offering actionable insight to the end user. Tis is where data leadership comes in: to become a truly
data-driven company requires change management within the organisation. For this to happen, it’s not simply a technology issue: it’s a people issue. Hiring the right data professionals, with an understanding of both the latest cloud technology and the business sense to know what to do with it, is going to be a key challenge for businesses in every sector in the coming years.
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