The Citizen Data Scientist Role and Benefits and How to Get Started!

How Can Citizen Data Scientists Help My Business Succeed?

Gartner has predicted that, ‘90% the world’s top 500 companies will have converged analytics governance into broader data and analytics governance initiatives.’ If you wish to compete, your business will want to follow the lead of these top companies. By incorporating analytics into day-to-day activities and allowing access for business users, the business can encourage the transition from business user to Citizen Data Scientist and create a comprehensive system of analytics with governance and collaboration to ensure security, appropriate access, mobile use and fact-based decision-making.

‘The path to Citizen Data Scientist does not have to be fraught with uncertainty.’

If you are a team member in a business environment, your role within that business is unique. But, it doesn’t matter what your role is or what your responsibilities are, it doesn’t matter what tasks or activities you must perform, you need good, solid data to make effective, fact-based decisions. And, your decisions must be swift because business is moving at the speed of light! Add to this the fact that your responsibilities seem to grow in scope and depth every day, and you can see how crucial it is to have the right support and solutions to help you achieve your goals.

If you are considering a transition to Citizen Data Scientist, or your business management team has informed you of their intent to make that transition, you probably have a lot of questions about the process and the role.

The What, Why and How of the Citizen Data Scientist Role

What is a Citizen Data Scientist?

Citizen Data Scientists are not business analysts or data scientists. They are business users and team members 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. To fulfill the role of Citizen Data Scientists, business users will 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.

Why is it important to implement a Citizen Data Scientist Program?

Business users can leverage domain and primary skills and expertise to gain insight into results using augmented analytics. Your team can interact with and collaborate with IT and data scientists to define business use cases and refine outcomes, and users are empowered to use analytical tools to hypothesize, prototype, forecast and predict, so the organization can identify issues, challenges and results prior to implementing changes in pricing, products, customer outreach, organizational structure, and all manner of operational decisions. The Citizen Data Scientist initiative will improve the accuracy of decisions, and allow users to share data and models with other users, thereby adding value to the organization. The enterprise can create and manage goals and objectives using measurable data and can improve time to market and make better decisions. The Citizen Data Scientist approach is crucial to sustained competitive advantage and to nurturing human resource assets, improving productivity and making the right decisions at the right time. Businesses and users can get ahead of the curve in the market and enable true collaboration.

‘The business can encourage the transition from business user to Citizen Data Scientist and create a comprehensive system of analytics.’

When a business makes the decision to implement a Citizen Data Scientist initiative, it must have a clear vision of the path to get business users to a new role, and to support those users with the augmented analytics tools and cultural changes required to encourage user adoption of analytics solutions and techniques. The path to Citizen Data Scientist does not have to be fraught with uncertainty. With the right cultural changes and management and technology support, the team can improve data literacy and encourage data democratization. Training is a key component of this success. But it needn’t be a lengthy, complex process.

An in-person or online training program that introduces the role and provides examples of Use Cases and Case Studies can help business users see how these tools might be used within the confines of their own role in the organization.

Explore the options her: One-Day In-Person Or Online Workshop For Citizen Data Scientists or Self-Paced eLearning Citizen Data Scientist sessions.

Find out more about the Citizen Data Scientist Path, Citizen Data Scientist Training and Augmented Analytics. We can help your business succeed and improve user adoption and data literacy.

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