https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/data-analytics-skill-moving-from-good-have-towards-must-hussain/
In the late 80s and early 90s, one would depict offices as people having a stack of physical files lying on their desk and these files were physically moved from once desk to another.
With the invention of computers and software applications, in the 90s, Microsoft bundled and launched one of the most dependant office software called Microsoft Office 92 (It contained Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Mail 3.0 bundled). It was released on 30 August 1992 and was little known as Nuclear bomb in the white collar community. Why Nuclear bomb? For a simple reason that people weren’t comfortable learning these new office software applications and, higher management were expecting their staff to learn and use them in their daily office routine.
Later on, there was a time when some of the elite white collar staff started learning this office software and usage of Word, Excel or PowerPoint in their work activities. Just within few months, Microsoft Office gained so much importance that, if one had to pick up ‘office’ related jobs (advertised in newspapers), it would had been mentioned in the JD, ‘Mandatory to have working knowledge on Microsoft Office tools – Word/Excel/PowerPoint’
My question is ‘Now do we see any job description/requirement that states something like working knowledge or mandatory knowledge on any Office products like Word/Excel/PowerPoint required?’. The answer is ‘Almost No’ (other than some secretarial job positions – where JDs are merely copied and pasted from two decade old write-ups). It is assumed that by default one would be having this basic ‘Must-have Office” skill set. And we see that this skill has got commoditized.
Now coming to the current era, wherein almost every activity of the organization is moving into digital space and is getting digitized (-corporate buzz word ‘Digital Transformation’). With this wave there is no doubt that we tend to capture a lot more data in digital form.
The question comes what are we doing with this data. As one can see that in a person’s job role, he/she is exposed to different types of data or events or IT logs etc., but unfortunately the current situation is that very few people rightly make use of this data (to analyse or make data based decision). In fact, we have seen that due to lack of “Analytical” skills, many of them tend to ignore this data and go with gut feeling (oops the right word is experience).
From the above if we have to fast forward the 1990s era, in today’s world, we see similar situation arising. With advent of ‘Digital Transformation’, one of the key skill set emerging – is “Data Analytics” or sometimes just referred as “Analytics”
If we go by the Wikipedia definition “Data Analytical skill is the nothing but the ability to visualize, articulate, conceptualize and solve both complex and uncomplicated problems by making decisions that are sensible, given the available data “. In this definition the one word that I want to highlight is ‘Data’
Off lately (In 2011 McKinsey’s famous report – The Age of Analytics), this skill ‘Data Analytics’ is now regarded as one of ‘THE’ most sought skill sets that one sees in most Job descriptions. Right from ‘Analyst’ level position up to ‘CXO’ position level, this is one of the most frequent and explicitly defined skill set.
Going forward for a person to be effective in his/her role, irrespective of function/domain one needs to Analyse, Articulate and Visualize the data. Importantly, communicate the data findings and/or take necessary decisions based on the data analysed. With the trend (also based on our history) we see that this skill set ‘Data Analytics’ will sooner or later (may be in next couple of years) be commoditized and organization will start expecting that every person (irrespective of the function) must possess this skill.
So, now is the right time for each of us learn or upgrade our “Data Analytics” skill and excel in respective functions.
There are plenty of free online “data analytics” courses available, offered by Coursera (coursera.org), Edx etc. For any help/guidance/resources in learning data analytics feel free to reach me at safdar.oxford@gmail.com or iit.safdar@gmail.com
Happy Analytics!
Complete Article Available on
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/data-analytics-skill-moving-from-good-have-towards-must-hussain/