What Is the Primary Role of a Corporate Data Analyst?
by Abdul Aziz Mondal Job & Career Published on: 23 February 2022 Last Updated on: 27 September 2024
A corporate data analyst handles one of the most important and impactful roles in a company. Many industries benefit from the work of data analysts, be it business, medicine, education, manufacturing, and many more. As the job title suggests, data analysts work with data and its patterns.
Data in this context refers to all types of data. It can be something as simple as which age group buys a certain product the most. It can also be very complex, such as predicting the chances of natural calamities based on historical and climatic data of a region. Such predictions are the backbone of insurance policies.
If you are aiming to start a career as a corporate data analyst, you are in for hard work and even better rewards. Your work can elevate a company to great heights and help is massive scaling. Here we discuss the primary roles of a corporate data analyst and talk about corporate data analytics solutions.
Creating systems for data collection
If you want to analyze data, you first need the data itself. A data analyst is also responsible for creating systems for data collection. However, it is not restricted to creating computer-based tools and software.
Apart from that, data analysts also use a wide range of survey methods to get information about a specific subject. It can be something as simple as getting customer feedback. Alternatively, it might involve developing tools that work for a specific type of data.
Developing these data collection tools and processes occupies a major share of the data analyst’s work. How well the data is analyzed and interpreted depends largely on these tools. For that, data analysts often need coding skills and/or marketing skills. However, a data analytics company would have separate professionals for each role to give the best results.
Processing data
After you have tools for data collection, the next step is to process the raw data. You can think of it as a refinement stage where you eliminate all the errors, mistakes, and exceptions. Since raw data is fraught with errors and miscalculations, it is very important for corporate data analytics solutions to clean the data before it is usable.
Skipping this step is impossible since the results would be misleading without error-free data. For this reason, data analysts spend considerable time cleaning data and arriving at the accurate and relevant parts.
Finding patterns
Now we are at the interesting part of data analysis. A corporate data analyst spends most of their time searching for patterns within the data. It is in these patterns that the true wealth of information lies. Companies spend millions of dollars every year in finding the right patterns from the data.
The resultant information has application in virtually all sectors. However, the most glaring example we can see in front of us is marketing. When a certain product or service is in demand, it is very important to understand where that demand is coming from and why.
Without this information, companies cannot roll out more products in the concerned regions or for the targeted demographics. It would ultimately create a mismatch between sales and demand.
On the other hand, many non-commercial spaces also benefit from data analysts. In a healthcare setup, data analysis can be used to predict the extent and impact of diseases. It allows hospitals and doctors to be better equipped. It also allows insurance firms to make predictions and roll out policies accordingly.
Any sector that can benefit from effectively predicting future growth and demand also benefits from data analysis. Apart from that, data analysts work for any business or service that wants to know more about its customers.
Collaborating with other experts
A data analyst does not work in isolation. On the contrary, they need help from various departments to get their work right. For example, a data analyst would need to be in touch with the marketing team to know which metrics they are looking for in any given data set. If you want to know the age but the data is all about geographical location, it is of no use. Similarly, data analysts need to work in close cooperation with other professionals in any sector.
Presenting the data reports
It often falls within the data analyst’s responsibility to present the data to the rest of the team. The analysis needs to be simplified for a better understanding of everyone, even those not trained in numbers and data. A good data analyst is also capable of explaining data lucidly. Corporate data analytics solutions work at all stages, from data collection to presentation.
Conclusion
The role of a data analyst involves different layers of work. In many cases, the tasks are broken down among team members to arrive at better results. Data analytics agencies also use a team for a complete analysis of all data sets. It is one of the most exciting and impactful roles in the corporate setup and even outside it.
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