Tag: Advanced Analytics for Business User

BI Tools and Augmented Analytics That Ensure User Adoption and ROI

author_img
by |
May 7, 2025

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.
To Achieve User Adoption, ROI and TCO Goals, Select the RIGHT BI Tools and Augmented Analytics
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.

 

Original Post : BI Tools and Augmented Analytics That Ensure User Adoption and ROI!

Is the Citizen Data Scientist Approach Right For My Business?

author_img
by |
March 20, 2025

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?

What Does the Citizen Data Scientist Concept Entail, and Can My Business Capitalize On Its Potential?

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.

Original Post : Is the Citizen Data Scientist Approach Right For My Business?

Predictive Analytics Supports Citizen Data Scientists!

author_img
by |
February 20, 2025

Use Predictive Analytics for Fact-Based Decisions

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 is Beneficial for Every Industry and Business Function

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.

Original Post : Predictive Analytics Supports Citizen Data Scientists!

Mobile BI Tools Solve Many Enterprise Issues!

author_img
by |
February 11, 2025

Incorporate Data Into User Roles with Mobile BI

If you are a business executive or an IT professional, you have probably seen a number of articles about the importance of Business Intelligence in industry publications and trade journals. If you are still unconvinced or uncertain about the critical importance of business intelligence (BI) and analytics for businesses like yours, here are some sobering, surprising and impressive statistics to ponder.

  • The global business intelligence adoption rate is 26%.
  • Organizations use 4 or more different business intelligence tools on average.
  • Organizations leave 97% of gathered data unused.
  • 74% of employees feel unhappy or overwhelmed when working with data.
  • Businesses using business intelligence are 5 times more likely to reach faster decisions than those that do not.
  • Bad data costs the US economy $3.1 trillion each year.

When you review these statistics, you will notice that some of the issues described can be resolved by the careful selection of the right software and solutions to satisfy your business, your team needs and your data infrastructure.

Why Mobile BI? Because it Solves Common Business Analytics Complaints!

If you are planning to acquire or upgrade a business intelligence or analytics app or solution to provide self-serve augmented analytics for your business users and improve productivity, access and data sharing, you will want to include the review of mobile business intelligence solutions in your requirements.

‘Mobile business intelligence (BI) solutions improve user adoption, ensure access to data from anywhere and encourage the use of data-driven information across the enterprise.’

The right mobile BI tools can address the issues and statistics listed above in the following ways:

  • The global business intelligence adoption rate is 26% – Mobile BI tools will increase the user adoption rate by providing intuitive data analytics that users can access from anywhere at any time, making these tools an important part of each team member’s tool box.
  • Organizations use 4 or more different business intelligence tools on average – The right mobile BI solution can integrate data from disparate data sources, and allow users to visualize in a way that is meaningful to each team member. It can optimize technology infrastructure and mitigate the issue of data silos and complex data mining and data gathering.
  • Organizations leave 97% of gathered data unused – Data is often misunderstood, misused or unused simply because team members and the enterprise do not know how to leverage, gather and analyze the data, or because the IT and/or data science team is short on resources and does not have the time to produce reports. Mobile BI tools are designed to be used by business professionals on a daily basis and to encourage data literacy and data democratization across the enterprise.
  • 74% of employees feel unhappy or overwhelmed when working with data – Understand and address your business user concerns and make data more accessible, easier to understand and use, concise and clear, so that every user can optimize data, make confident decisions and share and collaborate without data science skills or sophisticated data analytical experience.
  • Businesses using business intelligence are 5 times more likely to reach faster decisions than those that do not – Improve productivity, time to market and return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) to gain a competitive advantage with mobile tools and easy-to-use techniques that will enable fact-based decisions.
  • Bad data costs the US economy $3.1 trillion each year – Banish bad data by integrating your data sources and analyzing and presenting data in a mobile environment to gain insight into trends, opportunities, issues and problems and reveal clear, concise soluti

‘If you are planning to acquire or upgrade a business intelligence or analytics app or solution to provide self-serve augmented analytics for your business users and improve productivity, access and data sharing, you will want to include the review of mobile business intelligence solutions in your requirements.’

Mobile business intelligence (BI) solutions improve user adoption, ensure access to data from anywhere and encourage the use of data-driven information across the enterprise.

If you want to support your business user team and provide a foundation for BI tools that will better serve your team and your customers, explore Smarten Mobile BI benefits and features, with powerful functionality and access for your business users including out-of-the-box Mobile BI and advanced analytics for every team member. For more information on Mobile BI and Augmented Analytics, read our article, ‘Mobile BI Business Use Provides Real Advantages.’

Original Post : Mobile BI Tools Solve Many Enterprise Issues!

Why Should Business Users WANT to be a Citizen Data Scientist?

author_img
by |
November 7, 2024

Making the Case for Citizen Data Scientists!

When a business decides to undertake a data democratization initiative, improve data literacy and create a role for Citizen Data Scientists, the management team often assumes that business users will be eager to participate, and that assumption can cause these initiatives to fail.

Continue reading “Why Should Business Users WANT to be a Citizen Data Scientist?”

Understanding How Businesses Use Mobile BI to Achieve Results!

author_img
by |
October 2, 2024

Mobile BI Business Use Illustrates Real Advantages!

Mobile Business Intelligence (or Mobile BI) is defined as ‘a system comprising both technical and organizational elements that present historical and/or real-time information to its users for analysis on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets (not laptops), to enable effective decision-making and management support, for the overall purpose of increasing firm performance.’

Aberdeen Group reports that businesses adopt Mobile BI to:

  • Improve business process efficiency
  • Improve employee productivity
  • Make better decisions, more quickly
  • Provide better customer service
  • Deliver real-time bi-directional data access to make decisions anytime and anywhere.

‘Mobile BI benefits go well beyond simple reporting and the sharing of data across user groups, to address real business issues and to keep users up to date and allow them to respond to real world, real-time issues.’

As local and global competition increases, most businesses are looking for ways to improve their competitive advantage, and to quickly adapt to the changing market, to employee needs and to customer buying behavior.

It can be helpful to consider some real-world business use cases, in order to understand the value and benefit of incorporating a Mobile BI solution within your technology landscape and your analytics approach.

The advantages of Mobile BI go beyond team collaboration and individual reporting needs, to provide the background and foundational information needed to make decisions on business strategy and to understand customer preferences.

Real World Business Use of Mobile BI Reveals Benefits and Advantages

The following list of companies represents a small sampling of businesses currently using Mobile BI to improve business results and efficiency:

Amazon – Amazon analyzes purchasing behavior and browsing history to predict what products a customer might want to see, and what they are likely to buy, personalizing the customer experience and making it easier for customers to complete a transaction. BI tools help the business to forecast demand and ensure that stock is available.

Starbucks – The business has implemented a loyalty program to help with customer engagement and sales, personalizing marketing strategies and allowing customers to order, pay and receive rewards. It gathers data using its digital channels and uses that data to create targeted offers and to improve customer retention, as well as increasing the amount customers spend during a visit.

Netflix – The company uses BI tools to personalize the viewing experience and to analyze customer viewing preferences and push specific options to the customer based on viewing history. Mobile BI tools allow teams to analyze and share information regarding regional viewing and to make decisions on the fly.

Uber – The company business model is dependent on the rapid changes and shifting behavior of customers from one local and regional area to the next. Real-time pricing and operational decisions are made to support surge pricing and driver deployment for high demand areas. The back-end systems and BI tools allow drivers to access information using the Uber app so that they can quickly respond to the changing environment.

Tesla – Mobile BI and wireless car data analytics allow Tesla to connect remotely to corporate offices and collect and analyze vehicle data to address issues and update customers on maintenance etc.

X/Twitter – Mobile BI provides support or moderators to identify and quickly address platform safety issues, violations, etc. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with BI tools allows the business to quickly respond and ensure a safe user experience.

Mobile BI provides the background and foundational information needed to make decisions on business strategy and to understand customer preferences.

These examples illustrate the many ways in which Mobile BI can be used to address business issues, providing user access and analytics for team members no matter where they are and how they need to use the data. Mobile BI benefits go well beyond simple reporting and the sharing of data across user groups, to address real business issues and to keep users up to date and allow them to respond to real world, real-time issues.

If you want to support your business user team and provide a foundation for BI tools that will better serve your team and your customers, explore Smarten Mobile BI benefits and features,  with powerful functionality and access for your business users including out-of-the-box Mobile BI and advanced analytics for every team member. For more information on Mobile BI and Augmented Analytics, read our article, ‘Understanding The Truth About Mobile BI.’

Original Post : Understanding How Businesses Use Mobile BI to Achieve Results!

Use Key Influencer Analytics to Understand Data Relationships!

author_img
by |
September 26, 2024

Analytics Solutions Should Include Key Influencer Analytics!

What is Key Influencer Analytics ? Simply put, Key Influencer Analytics is an analytical technique that helps the user analyze and understand the various factors affecting an outcome, what variables impact the metric, and the ranking of those factors. Key Influencer Analytics takes the guesswork out of decisions by clearly illustrating what factors influence success of a pricing strategy, a business location choice, a marketing campaign, a research project, etc.

‘With the right analytics solution, your users can simply point to the dataset they want to analyze and Key Influencer Analytics will identify the target and the influencers or predictors that will affect the target, along with its impact.’

Grand View Research estimates the analytics software market at nearly 142B USD, with an expected growth of nearly 14% over the next five to six years. The reason for this growth is simple. In order to succeed in their market of choice, businesses must understand the competition, the customer and how their products and services are perceived and embraced in the market, so they can plan for the future and adapt to changes.

Key Influencer Analytics is Key to a Comprehensive Analytics Solution

There are a few factors that will impact the efficiency and effectiveness of the analytics solution you choose.

  • First, the data volume you want to analyze can be very large, and the data can come from disparate systems, so the ability to integrate and gather all data in one place is important. Depending on the size of the dataset a user selects, there may be hundreds or thousands of variables, and business users often find it difficult to identify the rights ones. Yet without the ability to identify the right variables, the business is likely to measure and attend to the wrong things.
  • Secondly, you must provide easy-to-use tools that your team can leverage to find what they need. Users should have interactive features that allow them to see and explore other combinations and impacts and can select target and predictors, and use them for models, reports or KPIs. Influencer Analytics empowers every business user and allows them quickly select and target data to achieve results without the assistance of a data scientist, IT professional or analyst.
  • Third, your team needs key influencer analytics to understand the interrelationships of data points and how they affect outcomes so they can adapt and adjust. With the right analytics solution, your users can simply point to the dataset they want to analyze and Key Influencer Analytics will identify the target and the influencers or predictors that will affect the target, along with its impact and it provides crucial metrics such as mean, outliers, and others and identifies relationship and distribution among variables. The system will auto-suggest relationships and present distribution and impact using the most appropriate visualization.

Here are just a few of the benefits of Key Influencer Analytics:

  • Identify what matters most in your data!
  • Understand the impact and interdependence of variables
  • Leverage auto-suggestions and machine learning to get data insights
  • Identify influencers affecting the target variable with auto-suggestions and quick maneuvers using different combinations

‘Key Influencer Analytics takes the guesswork out of decisions by clearly illustrating what factors influence success of a pricing strategy, a business location choice, a marketing campaign, a research project, etc.’

With Key Influencer Analytics your team can address the right issues and capitalize on opportunities to optimize results. Explore Smarten Augmented Analytics modules and components and the benefits of Key Influencer Analytics for your team and your enterprise.

Original Post : Use Key Influencer Analytics to Understand Data Relationships!

An IT Partner Can Help Your Citizen Data Scientist Initiative

author_img
by |
September 2, 2024

Achieve Citizen Data Scientist Program Results with a Partner

If your business has embraced the Citizen Data Scientist approach and are trying to get started with your initiative, you want to plan for success.

Gartner predicts that, ‘…automation of data science tasks will enable citizen data scientists to produce a higher volume of advanced analysis, than specialized data scientists.’

But if you are to achieve the results this prediction promises, you must ensure that your business has the expertise and the resources to plan for, execute, monitor and upgrade your environment so that you can achieve your goals now and in the future.

‘Be sure the solution you choose has all the features you need and will be easy for your users to learn and adopt. Look for a comprehensive solution suite.’

For those businesses that are planning a Citizen Data Scientist initiative, it is wise to choose an IT consulting partner. You don’t have to go it alone! The right partner can help you with strategies and walk you through the process to build a new foundation and to support your future growth and adapt to changing market environs.

Engage a Skilled IT Partner and Achieve Citizen Data Scientist Success

Capabilities

Choose an IT consultant that can provide data science, analytics, technology, and soft leadership skills to ensure that your project is well staffed, and that you have what you need 24/7. The right IT consultant will have a plan to keep the augmented analytics products evergreen and grow with the field of technology and innovation.

Services

Choose an IT consultant that can help you plan and implement your Citizen Data Scientist initiative with workshops, webinars, and other resources designed to jump start data democratization, help you achieve appropriate data governance and do it all with minimal training and time investment. Services should include onsite, offsite or hybrid delivery, requirements planning, project management, architecture and data management, data science support, business user support, training.

Skills and Experience

Be sure the IT consultant you choose has a wealth of experience and references and a proven track record. Compare their services, fees and staffing capabilities to other vendors and consultants and choose wisely. You will want an IT consultant that can:

  • Encourage Collaboration
  • Engender Accountability
  • Improve user adoption, improve Business Intelligence ROI and overall organizational value
  • Improve Data Literacy
  • Increase Fact-Based Decision-Making
  • Optimize IT, Data Scientist and Business User resources
  • Transform Business Users into Citizen Data Scientists!
  • Provide Mobile Access for Business Users – Anytime, Anywhere!
  • Support rapid implementation and deployment

Select the Right Augmented Analytics Solution

Not all augmented analytics solutions are equal! Be sure the solution you choose has all the features you need and will be easy for your users to learn and adopt. Look for a comprehensive solution suite that includes:

‘If you are to achieve the results this prediction promises, you must ensure that your business has the expertise and the resources to plan for, execute, monitor and upgrade your environment so that you can achieve your goals now and in the future.’

The right augmented analytics solution can make or break your Citizen Data Scientist program. Your users do not want a solution that is hard to learn or takes too much time. They want something that will support their needs and make their job easier – a solution that will give them clear, concise data without the need for advanced skills or knowledge. If you provide them with tools that are easy to learn, and a clear path to complete their transition to Citizen Data Scientist, they are more likely to embrace the concept and support the initiative, and your business will achieve the goals it has established.

For a detailed discussion of Citizen Data Scientists and related topics, read our article: ‘What Is A Citizen Data Scientist, What Is Their Role, What Are The Benefits Of Citizen Data Scientists…And More!’

Contact Us to find out how augmented analytics Technology can support your enterprise, and ensure analytical clarity and results. Discover the next level of Self-Serve Analytics and explore online Citizen Data Scientist Training and the features and modules of a seamless, sophisticated, easy-to-use augmented analytics solution to see how your business can use analytics to achieve its goals. Explore our complementary articles on Citizen Data Scientists: ‘The Importance And Benefits Of A Citizen Data Scientist Initiative,’ ‘What Is A Citizen Data Scientist And How Has Their Role Changed?’ ‘Planning And Preparing For A Citizen Data Scientist Initiative,’ and ‘What Is A Citizen Data Scientist, What Is Their Role, What Are The Benefits Of Citizen Data Scientists…And More!’

Original Post: An IT Partner Can Help Your Citizen Data Scientist Initiative!

Plan Carefully for a Citizen Data Scientist Program

author_img
by |
August 30, 2024

Create a Plan for Citizen Data Scientists

The term, ‘Citizen Data Scientist’ has been around since 2016, when the world-renowned technology research firm, Gartner, coined the phrase. Whether you want to know more about the concept, understand the concept and would like to know if your business can leverage this approach to improve its market position and customer visibility, or you have embraced the Citizen Data Scientist approach and are looking for ways to expand and refine the concept within your own business environment, we are here to help.

As Gartner research states, ‘Early adopters of augmented analytics have the potential to realize more strategic and differentiating business benefits from their analytics investments than those who wait until these technologies are widely adopted.’

Planning and Preparing for a Citizen Data Scientist Initiative

One of the most important aspects of any new, large scale initiative, is preparation and when it comes to the Citizen Data Scientist approach, preparation is equally important. Let’s look at some of the primary factors and considerations you must include in your planning process.

‘Will you deploy the augmented analytics solution across the entire enterprise at once, or will you roll it out by division, department, location, etc.? Who will be in charge of the deployment?’

Review Technology and Business Processes

Look at your current technology and all the places your data resides (data warehouses, the cloud (private or public), best-of-breed software, legacy software, ERP, CRM, HR, SCM, and other focused solutions that support a particular division, team or department. You will want to integrate data from all possible sources in order to give your users the information they need to perform analytics.

Work with your IT team, and (if you have already chosen an IT consultant) with your advisors to analyze the technology and infrastructure and establish a plan of attack. Consider the network, hardware and software, and decide whether you will want Embedded BI within any popular software solution to allow users to leverage a single sign-on environment to access data and analyze it all in one place.

Review business processes, workflow, approval loops etc., and see where you can gain advantage by including analytics and technology to improve productivity and the quality and speed of decisions.

Involving Stakeholders, Customers, Users, IT, etc.

Management and/or IT cannot plan for and execute this type of change alone. You will need to understand how cascading analytics throughout the organization will impact your users, your customers and others. Establish a team that includes representatives from the various functions, levels and areas within the enterprise.

Listen to their concerns and address those concerns with an appropriate plan for deployment, training, ongoing support, etc. Otherwise, you are unlikely to succeed. User adoption is important but you can also use this time to identify and highlight those areas where you can find opportunities and thereby improve the success metrics and outcomes you hope to achieve.

Choosing an Augmented Analytics Solution

Choosing the right augmented analytics and business intelligence (BI) solution will drive success of a Citizen Data Scientist initiative. These solutions are key to helping you achieve your goals and to supporting your business users as they make the transition to Citizen Data Scientists. Look for a full suite of features and functionality to support your users.

Not all augmented analytics solutions are equal! Be sure the solution you choose has all the features you need and will be easy for your users to learn and adopt. Look for a comprehensive solution suite that includes:

Planning for Deployment

Will you deploy the augmented analytics solution across the entire enterprise at once, or will you roll it out by division, department, location, etc.? Who will be in charge of the deployment? Your team should include representatives from the various groups that have a vested interest in the outcome. When you choose an IT consultant, they can help you plan for and execute your strategy so that it is successful and you are not overwhelmed.

Depending on the solution you choose, you will have to consider citizen data scientist training. While there are citizen data scientist certification courses, if you choose the right augmented analytics solution you are not likely to need this type of training but, rather a simple introduction that will explain the new role, how to work with and collaborate with data scientists and IT and how to use the augmented analytics solution to get the information the business user needs in a way that is meaningful to them.

‘One of the most important aspects of any new, large scale initiative, is preparation and when it comes to the Citizen Data Scientist approach, preparation is equally important.’

For a detailed discussion of Citizen Data Scientists and related topics, read our article: ‘What Is A Citizen Data Scientist, What Is Their Role, What Are The Benefits Of Citizen Data Scientists…And More!’

Contact Us to find out how augmented analytics Technology can support your enterprise, and ensure analytical clarity and results. Discover the next level of Self-Serve Analytics and explore online Citizen Data Scientist Training and the features and modules of a seamless, sophisticated, easy-to-use augmented analytics solution to see how your business can use analytics to achieve its goals. Explore our complementary articles on Citizen Data Scientists: ‘The Importance And Benefits Of A Citizen Data Scientist Initiative,’ ‘What Is A Citizen Data Scientist And How Has Their Role Changed?’ ‘Engage A Skilled IT Partner And Achieve Citizen Data Scientist Success,’ and ‘What Is A Citizen Data Scientist, What Is Their Role, What Are The Benefits Of Citizen Data Scientists…And More!’

Original Post: Plan Carefully for a Citizen Data Scientist Program!

What is a Citizen Data Scientist and How Has the Role Changed?

author_img
by |
August 28, 2024

Defining and Understanding the Citizen Data Scientist

The world-renowned technology research firm, Gartner, first introduced the concept of the Citizen Data Scientist in 2016. Since then, the idea has grown in popularity, and the role has grown in importance and prominence.

‘To fulfill the role of a Citizen Data Scientist, business users today can leverage augmented analytics solutions; that is analytics that provide simple recommendations and suggestions to help users easily choose visualization and predictive analytics techniques from within the analytical tool without the need for expert analytical skills.’

Gartner defines a citizen data scientist 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.’

Who is a Citizen Data Scientist? The role of a citizen data scientist is played by a business user or team member within the organization. The typical profile of an ideal Citizen Data Scientist is a person who is respected within the organization, and often shares data and information with other users to collaborate and produce outcomes that are designed to achieve goals and objectives and produce a successful outcome. These individuals may already be ‘power users’ of business applications and may have developed and reported or presented data to others with an eye toward clarifying their decision-making. Citizen Data Scientist candidates may also be IT team members who are interested in data science. In any case, these candidates will typically be uniquely curious, interested in data analytics and devoted to fact-based decisions and team collaboration.

The Definition and Evolution of the Citizen Data Scientist Role

Who are Citizen Data Scientists within your own organization? You will know them by their willingness to learn new things, and to advance their own visibility and their own careers by using new skills to improve results within your organization. What are Citizen Analysts? They are team members who are not IT professionals, data scientists or business analysts but are willing and able to leverage analytics and data science tools to solve business problems.

It took a while for the global business community to embrace the concept of Citizen Data Scientists and, even today, there are those naysayers who believe that the only correct approach to analytics is by using Data Scientists or business analysts or engaging the internal IT team to create reports and provide analytics for decision-making.

But the race to compete and the complexities and rapid rate of change have forced businesses to look for alternatives and the Citizen Data Scientist role has become more popular as those leading the charge prove the value of the role to the organization and to the business users, data scientists and IT professionals.

The role of the Citizen Data Scientist began as a simple augmentation to gather data and create reports for daily use but Interest In The Role Has Tripled Over The Past Decade, and the responsibilities and visibility of the Citizen Data Scientist have evolved.

Much of the evolution and the potential of the role has been driven by the evolution of business intelligence (BI) tools and the introduction of augmented analytics and solutions that employ natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to enable those with average technical skills to gather and analyze data and produce results for clear insight, using sophisticated tools that are designed to be simple enough for the average business user to understand.

As team members perform these tasks, share data and collaborate, the business can engender data democratization and improve data literacy across the enterprise.

To fulfill the role of a Citizen Data Scientist, business users today can leverage augmented analytics solutions; that is analytics that provide simple recommendations and suggestions to help users easily choose visualization and predictive analytics techniques from within the analytical tool without the need for expert analytical skills.

When a Citizen Data Scientist uses these tools, the resulting analysis can be combined with the professional knowledge and specific domain skills of the individual to better understand and gain insight into trends, patterns, issues and opportunities and improve time to market, accuracy of predictions, and metrics and measurements.

Adopting these tools and techniques and actively engaging in augmented analytics allows the Citizen Data Scientist to more effectively interact with and collaborate with the IT team and data scientists to prepare data and use data in use cases, and to refine outcomes and improve data-driven decision making across the enterprise.

One of the most important lessons learned in the past decade is that the Citizen Data Scientist role can be rewarding to the organization and to the business user. But to succeed, the enterprise must plan carefully. It must understand how to use Citizen Data Scientists and create an environment that allows for this transition. Selecting a business intelligence or augmented analytics tool and deploying that tool does not, in and of itself, solve your problems. You must plan for the cultural shift and ensure that the business users have the support they need to transition into the citizen data scientist role.

‘The typical profile of an ideal Citizen Data Scientist is a person who is respected within the organization, and often shares data and information with other users to collaborate and produce outcomes that are designed to achieve goals and objectives and produce a successful outcome.’

For a detailed discussion of Citizen Data Scientists and related topics, read our article: ‘What Is A Citizen Data Scientist, What Is Their Role, What Are The Benefits Of Citizen Data Scientists…And More!’

Contact Us to find out how augmented analytics Technology can support your enterprise, and ensure analytical clarity and results. Discover the next level of Self-Serve Analytics and explore online Citizen Data Scientist Training and the features and modules of a seamless, sophisticated, easy-to-use augmented analytics solution to see how your business can use analytics to achieve its goals. Explore our complementary articles on Citizen Data Scientists: ‘The Importance And Benefits Of A Citizen Data Scientist Initiative,’ ‘Planning And Preparing For A Citizen Data Scientist Initiative,’ ‘Engage A Skilled IT Partner And Achieve Citizen Data Scientist Success,’ and ‘What Is A Citizen Data Scientist, What Is Their Role, What Are The Benefits Of Citizen Data Scientists…And More!’

Original Post: What is a Citizen Data Scientist and How Has the Role Changed?