By Saundra McDavid
Faculty Member, Business Administration at American Public University
Data scientists are in high demand right now. In fact, it’s the #1 job with a median starting salary of $128,240, according to GeekWire.
What is driving this astounding quest for talent? Big Data. Data is rolling in at a rate faster than it can be processed.
When companies combine the data collected on their customers with data collated from other sources, this information becomes unwieldy. Traditional data analysis tools and methods are no longer adequate. Terabytes of data stored on a server are of no benefit to a company until the data is analyzed.
The people capable of doing the analysis are multi-talented. They have graduate degrees and a thorough knowledge of computer programming, statistics and modeling. Hadoop, SQL and Java are part of their vocabulary.
Analytic Tools and Companies Offer Data Insights to Small Businesses
While a small business may not have the resources to hire a full-time staff of data scientists, the benefits of data analysis are still within reach.
Most people are familiar with Siri and Alexa, Apple’s and Amazon’s versions of a virtual intelligence. Ask either of these two devices a question and the answer is usually forthcoming.
Businesses need the corporate version of a virtual assistant for questions such as “What are my customers most likely to purchase next week?” and “If I add another sales representative, what will be my return on investment if I also add a new product line?” While this type of software is not available yet, there are data collection and analysis tools that offer answers to these vital questions. Some of these tools are even free!
Google Analytics is a good place to start for companies on a budget that want more information on attracting and retaining customers on their websites. The program analyzes website visitors and provides insight into what they like and what they want.
When a company desires a more in-depth look at the company operations, it needs to move to a full-scale analytics program and a place to store business data. BigQuery by Google is a convenient data warehouse where businesses can store their data. Once the data is stored there, it can be extracted and analyzed via companies such as Looker, Tableau, Qlik and Talend. Most of these companies offer a tiered approach to data analysis, which is attractive to small businesses.
ClearStory Data is another company that offers data analysis. It evaluates information from the supply chain of a business, along with the company’s internal data to provide answers to the questions that businesses need to operate. The data is compiled from multiple companies in multiple formats along the supply chain and presented in an easy-to-read dashboard.
In the past, companies’ ability to share data was limited, due to complicated data structures and languages in disparate systems across all of the various partners in the supply chain. Trifacta provides a solution to this problem. This company is a data wrangler. It takes information from multiple sources in multiple formats and transforms it into a uniform format that is easily imported into a data analysis program, like Tableau.
Now companies such as ClearStory, Tableau and Insight Squared take this data, analyze it and transform it into easy-to-read reports for their customers. Many of these services can quickly result in a lucrative return on investment.
Data is a vital contribution to a company’s growth because it provides helpful insights for company executives planning business strategies. Even when some small businesses lack the resources to hire data scientists, tools and companies offer small businesses budget-friendly options for closely examining their performance and making necessary changes for future success.
About the Author
Saundra McDavid is a faculty member in the School of Business at American Public University. Saundra has a J.D. and an MBA from St. Louis University. She is a member of the Missouri bar and practices in the areas of cybersecurity and intellectual property law.
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