Understanding the role of a Citizen Data Scientist and the opportunities provided by this approach is the first step in leveraging the Citizen Data Scientist approach. Engaging a vendor and choosing the right Augmented Analytics Business Intelligence tools, services, training and deployment will ensure success. The prospect of transforming business users into Citizen Data Scientists may seem daunting but, with the appropriate planning and support, and the appropriate Augmented Analytics solution, the initiative can be extremely successful.
Fact-Based Analytics and Citizen Data Scientists = Results
So, you want your business users to embrace and use analytics? You want your business to enjoy the benefits of fact-based decision making? You want your business to use the tools of business intelligence to improve market presence, customer satisfaction and team productivity and collaboration?
‘Whether you are trying to solve a business problem, get to the heart of that problem, find a business opportunity, predict the need for resources, new products or locations or understanding changes in your customer buying behavior, you don’t have time to learn complex tools or take training in analytics.’
Gartner has predicted that, ‘a scarcity of data scientists will no longer hinder the adoption of data science and machine learning in organizations.’ And that is the good news. But, if the business is to leverage the potential of analytics within the organization, it must choose the right analytics tools to ensure that business users will adopt analytics in day-to-day tasks.
If your enterprise wishes to transition business users into Citizen Data Scientists and use augmented analytics to gain a competitive advantage, it must provide easy-to-use tools that do NOT require team members to be business analysts or IT professionals – tools that allow users to quickly gather data using self-serve data preparation, using data integrated from disparate data repositories with smart data visualization to view, format and share results that are clear, concise and actionable.
The business market is more competitive than ever and in today’s environment it isn’t enough to simply analyze historical data. To make good business decisions, adjust strategies and forecast and plan, you must use that historical data to plan for the future.
Businesses that can gather data from disparate sources and use historical data to understand trends and patterns and forecast for the future can establish and sustain a competitive advantage and plan more effectively and accurately, avoiding missteps in the market and costly mistakes.
If your business wishes to sustain a competitive advantage, if you as a user wish to advance in your career and build your value to the organization, it is incumbent upon you to embrace the trend of data democratization, data literacy and self-serve, augmented analytics.
Today, augmented analytics and smart data discovery make it easier for business users, data scientists, IT staff and the organization to benefit from fact-based decision-making, collaboration, data literacy and the ability to easily, gather, integrate and analyze data.
Whether you are trying to solve a business problem, get to the heart of that problem, find a business opportunity, predict the need for resources, new products or locations or understanding changes in your customer buying behavior, you don’t have time to learn complex tools or take training in analytics.
What you need are apps and solutions that allow you to ask easy questions in your own words and receive guidance and recommendations on how to best visualize and present your data and what techniques to use to gain the most insight.
Use a simple low-code, no-code analytics platform and augmented analytics and BI tools designed for business users with real-world business cases to find answers and solve problems. You can untangle quality and maintenance issues, refine customer targeting and marketing optimization, make appropriate financial investment decisions, and even use external data to analyze trends and patterns and make forecasts and predictions, helping users and the business to achieve success in industries and businesses like retail, pharmacy and wellness, insurance, manufacturing, government and public sector, utilities, and other industries.
‘If your enterprise wishes to transition business users into Citizen Data Scientists and use augmented analytics to gain a competitive advantage, it must provide easy-to-use tools that do NOT require team members to be business analysts or IT professionals.’
To find out more about how to ensure Return on Investment (ROI) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) results, gain a competitive market advantage, and enable user adoption, read our free White Paper, ‘A Roadmap To ROI And User Adoption Of Augmented Analytics And BI.’ Explore The Benefits of our Augmented Analytics And BI Tools, Contact Us. Keep pace with changing enterprise needs and support business agility. Let us help you realize your business goals and objectives with fact-based information, and flexible, scalable technology solutions that will support Citizen Data Scientist initiatives, and improved data literacy and data democratization.
If you don’t find what you need in the Support Portal, we hope you will contact us with your questions, comments or suggestions. We are here to help and to support your business goals and success!
Ensure ROI, TCO and User Adoption with the Right BI Tools
When a business sets out to implement BI tools or self-serve augmented analytics, it must consider the entire technology landscape of the business, the expectations of end-users, the cost of the solution, how easily it can be upgraded and integrated and, well…so much more!
‘To ensure user adoption and achieve the ROI and TCO the business deserves, take the time to do the work. Develop requirements, consider the features and functionality of a solution and compare those to your use cases and your user expectations.’
Management teams do not take kindly to poor Return on Investment (ROI ) or Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and if the business has had difficult projects in the past, the next time a software solution is presented for approval, senior managers will remember the challenges and failures of the past!
Still, when you are attempting to transition business users into Citizen Data Scientists, there is bound to be some pushback from users and that pushback, combined with senior management concerns can and WILL bring your project to its knees if you do not anticipate and address these concerns.
Here are some statistics that will help you to understand the issues faced by businesses in implementing BI tools and analytics:
The global BI adoption rate is 26%
On average, businesses use at least four different BI tools
97% of the data gathered by businesses is not used
74% of employees express dissatisfaction and are overwhelmed when working with business data
In order to assure successful deployment, user adoption, improved Return on Investment (ROI) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), the business should include detailed requirements in its solution selection. When choosing a BI tool and augmented analytics solution for your business, one of the most crucial concerns is the features and functionality of the prospective solution and how this solution will meet user and organizational needs. When planning for deployment of BI tools and augmented analytics, the business should take the time to work through a process, ensuring that it has considered what users need and want to ensure user adoption and the ease-of-use and features the solution will provide.
It is important to remember that there are also specific features a business should consider, like embedded BI and easy-to-employ Integration APIs, that will assure user adoption and appropriate ROI and TCO. These considerations will affect how well the solution is received, whether users will adopt it and be satisfied with the selection, and how the investment will perform when considering total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI) when compared to other possible uses of the same investment funding.
With this foundation of documented features, services, skills and capabilities, the business can implement, manage, upgrade and support Business Intelligence and Augmented Analytics capacity and growth within the organization.
‘When you are attempting to transition business users into Citizen Data Scientists, there is bound to be some pushback from users and that pushback, combined with senior management concerns can and WILL bring your project to its knees if you do not anticipate and address these concerns.’
To ensure user adoption and achieve the ROI and TCO the business deserves, take the time to do the work. Develop requirements, consider the features and functionality of a solution and compare those to your use cases and your user expectations. INVOLVE your users and middle managers in planning to understand how and when to deploy the tools and how to support your business users as you transition them into Citizen Data Scientists.
To find out more about how to ensure Return on Investment (ROI) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) results, and enable user adoption, read our free White Paper, ‘A Roadmap To ROI And User Adoption Of Augmented Analytics And BI.’ To find out more about our Augmented Analytics And BI Tools, Contact Us. Keep pace with changing enterprise needs and support business agility. Let us help you realize your business goals and objectives with fact-based information, and flexible, scalable technology solutions that will support Citizen Data Scientist initiatives, and improved data literacy and data democratization.
The Client is a prominent engineering company in India, renowned for its extensive history. For over 160 years the Client has delivered bespoke design engineering and precision manufacturing solutions, specializing in enabling seamless motion across industries that include automotive, agriculture, marine, light construction, firefighting, and railways. The Client provides cutting-edge power solutions for critical installations and diverse applications, with expertise in fuel-agnostic engines and precision manufacturing of key engine components. It has expanded offerings in electric power train for mobility and other industrial power applications and a strengthening position in the motion control solutions space with strategic acquisitions, empowering progress across multiple sectors. The Client business is publicly traded on the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and a robust distribution network including 200 distributors, 8000 retail stores and 20,000 mechanics across India.
When a business sets out to initiate data democratization and improve data literacy, it must choose the right approach to business intelligence and select an augmented analytics product that is self-serve, intuitive, easy to implement and easy for business users to embrace. Transitioning business users into the role of a Citizen Data Scientist can be challenging.
‘If the organization wishes to convince its business users of the importance of data analytics and fact-based decision-making, it must provide tools that are intuitive, easy-to-use and can be established within the parameters of the user’s day-to-day tasks as an integrated part of their workflow.’
To ensure user adoption of BI tools, optimize return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) and successfully deploy business intelligence and augmented analytics, businesses often choose Embedded BI.
Gartner defines embedded analytics in this way: ‘Embedded analytics is a digital workplace capability where data analysis occurs within a user’s natural workflow, without the need to toggle to another application.’
Embedded BI solutions differ from the typical business intelligence solution in a number of ways. Here are just a few examples:
User Experience (Ux) – In the traditional BI environment, business users must learn a new solution and interface and may be required to among other solutions and software products to use that data within the BI tool. Users with average or poor technical skills are not likely to adopt a solution that requires additional training and multiple steps to accomplish a task. In the Embedded BI environment, analytics is accessible from within a familiar enterprise solution using a single sign-on and tools that are intuitive, so the user can quickly find information and analyze it all in one place.
User Adoption – In a traditional BI environment, users must invest time to learn a new BI tool and work within data silos to try to analyze information and share that information with others. Embedded BI allows users to leverage analytics within the natural flow of their daily tasks and easily share that data with other users, so the team and the individual user adoption is supported.
Integrated Workflow – Business team members are busy, and they are often scrambling to complete tasks on time and to make decisions, create presentations and move on to the next thing. Traditional BI tools require users to interrupt their workflow, and use multiple enterprise solutions to gather and analyze data within the BI environment, so the analytics process is cumbersome and inefficient. Embedded BI allows users to work in an integrated environment, gain data insight and make relevant data-driven decisions without delay or frustration.
‘Embedded analytics is a digital workplace capability where data analysis occurs within a user’s natural workflow, without the need to toggle to another application.’
In a business environment that is more competitive than ever before, team members must have the tools they need to perform tasks and complete activities dependably, and to have a firm grasp on the solutions and tools they use without spending a lot of time in training, or in gathering and preparing data to gain insight into challenges, issues, opportunities or trends that affect business success. If the organization wishes to convince its business users of the importance of data analytics and fact-based decision-making, it must provide tools that are intuitive, easy-to-use and can be established within the parameters of the user’s day-to-day tasks as an integrated part of their workflow. This approach to BI and analytics will ensure user adoption.
You can find out more about the Smarten Embedded BI And Integration APIs solution and add powerful functionality and access to existing ERP, SCM, HRMS, CRM or any other products. Provide analytics capabilities within existing products without major Investment. Your business users and your customers will appreciate the ease-of-use and access and you will gain a competitive advantage. Read our White Paper: ‘Making the Case for Embedded BI and Analytics.’
If you don’t find what you need in the Support Portal, we hope you will contact us with your questions, comments or suggestions. We are here to help and to support your business goals and success!
Find Out the How of the Citizen Data Scientist Approach
In 2016, the technology research firm, Gartner, coined the term ‘Citizen Data Scientist,’ and defined it as ‘a person who creates or generates models that leverage predictive or prescriptive analytics, but whose primary job function is outside of the field of statistics and analytics.’
‘When business users make the transition to Citizen Data Scientists with access to augmented analytics solutions, they can provide additional value to the team, to managers and executives and allow IT and data scientists to focus on strategic goals.’
In the ensuing years, the Citizen Data Scientist role has become more refined, and those businesses that embrace this approach have seen real benefits. But just who are Citizens Data Scientists, and how does a business recognize candidates and benefit from enabling this role?
How Do I Find Citizen Data Scientist Candidates Within My Business? You will find your Citizen Data Scientist candidates among your business users and team members. They are curious and eager to learn new skills to contribute to the organization and to hone their skills for career advancement. Team members who make great Citizen Data Scientists are often power users, and are acknowledged as leaders within their own team. They are NOT IT professionals, analysts or data scientists but they share a common characteristic for precision and wanting to get it right the first time.
What Does a Citizen Data Scientist Do? Within the context of their roles and responsibilities, every business user needs clear, meaningful information to make fact-based decisions and recommendations. Citizen Data Scientists use data to create reports on a daily basis. As the Citizen Data Scientist role evolved, team members have leveraged the advantages of this data to share reports, to create and format presentations for recommendations and suggested changes to support pricing decisions, hiring, production, new products and services, financial investments, marketing and advertising campaigns, and many other decisions. As the movement grows within your organizations, you can enable data democratization and improve data literacy. Citizen Data Scientists can also work with IT, data scientists and business analysts to share their research and analytics when the business feels it is necessary to take the analytics to another level to ensure credibility for strategic decisions.
What Tools and Training Does a Citizen Data Scientist Need? One of the primary reasons the Gartner predictions have come to fruition is he evolution of the business intelligence (BI) and augmented analytics market to support the concept of Citizen Data Scientists. Today’s analytics solutions are easy-to-use, self-serve tools driven by Natural Language Processing (NLP), and machine learning, as well as Artificial Intelligence (AI). All of these technologies come together to support the business user and provide tools that are sophisticated in their functionality, yet intuitive and easy for a business user. These tools do not require IT skills or data science knowledge. When the team uses these tools, they can adopt a common language and techniques to work with IT and data scientists to create use cases and refine and share reports, formats and outcomes. The more complete, and intuitive the solution, the less training and onboard time the user will require. There are simple, Free Training Courses available that can help your business and your team understand the uses and benefits of this approach and enable user adoption.
When business users make the transition to Citizen Data Scientists with access to augmented analytics solutions, they can provide additional value to the team, to managers and executives and allow IT and data scientists to focus on strategic goals. Using Augmented Analytics Tools like self-serve data preparation to gather and prepare data, and smart data visualization to receive suggestions and recommendations on how to best view data, users can combine predictive analytics to forecast and model, and sophisticated tools like anomaly monitoring, key influencers, and sentiment analysis to gain crucial insight into changes in customer buying behavior, supplier issues, product time-to-market, trends, patterns and opportunities with dependable metrics to make data-driven decisions.
‘The Citizen Data Scientist role has become more refined, and those businesses that embrace this approach have seen real benefits.’
If your business wishes to capitalize on the potential of the Citizen Data Scientist approach, it important to work with an IT Partner who can help you define your requirements and strategize for optimal success, providing the augmented analytics tools and knowledge of the industry that is required to position you for success.
This Client is a global telecommunications infrastructure provider, offering comprehensive end-to-end solutions for wireless network planning, optimization, and performance management. It offers services to over thirty (30) Tier 1 and Tier 2 telecom operators and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) worldwide, and excels in advanced 5G NR and LTE-A technologies as well as legacy networks. Business services include RF Planning, Optimization, Quality of Service (QoS) Benchmarking, In-Building Solutions, and skilled Manpower Deployment to provide seamless execution across diverse environments. The Client operates in more than fifteen (15) countries and spans five (5) continents.
Like every other business, your organization must plan for success. In order to do this, the team must have a dependable plan and be able to forecast results and create reasonable objectives, goals and competitive strategies. These plans and forecasts will support investment in technology, appropriate resources and hiring strategies, additional locations, products, services and marketing strategies, partnerships and other components of business management to ensure success.
Forecasting and planning cannot be based on opinions or guesswork. It must be based on historical data, facts and clear insight into trends and patterns in the market, the competition and customer buying behavior. To accomplish these goals, businesses are using predictive modeling and predictive analytics software and solutions to ensure dependable, confident decisions by leveraging data within and outside the walls of the organization and analyzing that data to predict outcomes in the future.
‘Every industry, business function and business users can benefit from predictive analytics.’
According to CIO publications, the predictive analytics market was estimated at $12.5 billion USD in 2022 and is expected to reach $38 billion USD by 2028.
Predictive analytics encompasses techniques like data mining, machine learning (ML) and predictive modeling techniques like time series forecasting, classification, association, correlation, clustering, hypothesis testing and descriptive statistics to analyze current and historical data and predict future events, results and business direction.
When a business selects predictive analytics tools that are suitable for business users and team members, it can leverage sophisticated algorithms and analytical techniques in an easy-to-use environment to enable every team member to contribute to the bottom line by allowing them to gain insight into data and use that insight to make confident, fact-based decisions.
With these tools, users can explore patterns in data and receive suggestions to help them gain insight on their own without dependence on IT or data scientists. The enterprise can provide the tools needed at every level of the organization with tools and data science for business users that are sophisticated in functionality and easy-to-use for users at every skill level.
The benefits of augmented analytics and self-serve predictive modeling include:
No complex algorithms or data manipulation
Auto-recommendations for algorithms to explore underlying data
No advanced data science skills required
Analyze, share, collaborate and optimize business potential
Business users can prototype and hypothesize without professional assistance
Recommend optimal actions to achieve specific goals
Every industry, business function and business users can benefit from predictive analytics. Here are some examples of the use of predictive modeling:
Retail – Predictive Analytics tools can be used to understand customer buying behavior and to suggest products and product bundling based on previous purchases, buying patterns, and demographics. This creates a more personalized and targeted shopping experience that is unique to each customer.
Supply Chain – The organization can forecast demand and manage the supply chain to optimize inventory using machine learning to predict customer demand, seasonality, product trends etc., to that the enterprise can mitigate stock shortages and avoid warehouse and inventory overstock.
Healthcare – By using historical data regarding specific diseases, conditions and treatment plans, providers can forecast treatment outcomes, limit risk and improve overall care, thereby reducing complications, readmission and provider resource, medication and hospital bed shortages.
Energy Infrastructure – Using predictive analytics allows these businesses to monitor and analyze data and performance and to detect patterns and trends that may indicate downtime, breakdowns and maintenance issues.
Financial Services, Banks and Loan Businesses – Predictive analytics provides support for credit risk and fraud mitigation and allows businesses to create scoring models for loan approval, etc. based on credit history, and other financial considerations. Predictive modeling allows the organization to identify transactions that are outside the norm, and alert the business and its customers of hacks, fraud, etc.
‘When a business selects predictive analytics tools that are suitable for business users and team members, it can leverage sophisticated algorithms and analytical techniques in an easy-to-use environment to enable every team member to contribute to the bottom line by allowing them to gain insight into data and use that insight to make confident, fact-based decisions.’
These are just some of the benefits and use cases your business can consider to decide on how best to implement predictive analytics and integrate the use of these tools into day-to-day use for business users to improve data-driven decisions and results.
To find out more about AI And Predictive Analytics, Contact Us. Keep pace with changing enterprise needs and support business agility. Let us help you realize your business goals and objectives with fact-based information, and flexible, scalable technology solutions that will support Citizen Data Scientist initiatives, and improved data literacy and data democratization.
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