When a business user is given the mantle of Citizen Data Scientist, they being a journey that can help to advance their career, provide leadership experience and improve visibility across the organization. But, in order to embrace this new part of their position, they must understand a number of things.
When Gartner talks about expanding data analytics to business users, they also talk about how the analytical tools must be suitable for business users. If a business wants to implement a Citizen Data Scientist initiative and encourage their business users to become more productive and valuable within the business environment, that business must provide tools that are easy enough for the average business user and will allow them to easily adopt these tools to make day-to-day decisions.
In a time when eCommerce is exploding, a small business owner with an online store might think that all they have to do is post products or services and wait for the money to roll in but nothing could be further from the truth. There are thousands of businesses struggling to pay their bills and wondering why their beautiful online stores are not producing results.
When a business decides to undertake a data democratization and data literacy initiative, it is important to recognize that not all advanced analytics solutions are created equal. Business users who are expected to take on the task of analytics, will need an augmented analytics solution that can support their needs. They aren’t data scientists. They aren’t business analysts. They are business professionals who will want to use an analytics solution that can give them sophisticated output and information. It has to be easy enough to use without the need for assistance by IT or data scientists and it has to be a solution that can be personalized to produce reports and analytics that are easy for each user to leverage to make decisions, solve problems and identify opportunities.
What Are Citizen Data Scientists?
Citizen Data Scientists represent a new breed of business analysts – a group of individuals with diverse business responsibilities and training, who wield sophisticated analytical tools, and employ complex methods of analysis to improve business results – all without the training or assistance of data scientists or IT team members. Citizen Data Scientists are business users who leverage the knowledge and skill they have developed through professional training and business roles to navigate business intelligence and advanced analytical tools to answer business questions, identify trends and patterns and develop new competitive strategies to support business decisions.
If you follow technology publications and predictions, you know that Citizen Data Scientists are the big news for business. By transforming business users into Citizen Data Scientists, the business can leverage the professional skills and knowledge of an individual team member and combine that knowledge with data analytics to get the best answers, forecast and predict, solve problems and identify business opportunities.
SmartenApps eCommerce Analytics for Shopify provides complete insight into sales trends, KPIs and more with pre-built templates/reports. eCommerce analytics has never been easier. SmartenApps allow every business user to analyze business results, and the tools can be accessed with a simple install. Within minutes, with a single sign-on and registration, you will have access to pre-built templates and reports including: Sales Trends, Customer Lifetime Value, Customer Loyalty & Cohorts, Product Cross-sell Analysis and Business Intelligence Reports
Identify Citizen Data Scientists and Provide the Support They Need to Succeed
When your business decides to begin a Citizen Data Scientist initiative, it faces numerous challenges but the resulting benefits the enterprise will reap from this program are undeniable. With the right preparation, every business can successfully enable this type of initiative and provide augmented analytics to improve collaboration, data literacy and digital transformation in the organization.
When a business chooses to follow the guidance of Gartner and embrace the Citizen Data Scientist initiative to transform business users and provide analytical tools for all team members, it must approach the initiative with appropriate planning.
When asked about using an analytical solution to find and use data and make decisions, many business users feel insecure about the process required to get to the results. Data preparation has traditionally been the domain of a data scientist, a business analyst or an IT professional.
