Data-Decision Scientists: The Story Tellers

Though at times they are perceived as Data Analyst, they are the ones who explain the significance of voluminous amount of data, the one who make it talk, the one who continuously strives to enthrall the organization with insights and help us understand it in a way that can be easily understood, I call them- "The Story tellers".

The main tasks of data analysts are to collect, manipulate and analyze data to prepare reports in the form of visualizations such as graphs, charts and dashboards, detailing the significant results they deduced. They are more IT oriented with sharp technical acumen complimented by strong industry knowledge acting as the gatekeeper of the company’s data. Well, if that’s what you thought Data Scientist was all about, prepare to be amazed learning about our Story teller.

Data Scientist – Creating Stories from Numbers

Data Scientist represents an evolution from the Data Analyst and the Business Analyst. While it bears the skills of modeling, statistics, analytics and math, it also carries a strong business acumen, coupled with the ability to communicate findings to both business and IT leaders in a way that can influence how an organization approaches a business challenge.

More than anything, what data scientists do is discover stories while swimming in data. At ease in the digital realm, they give words, figures, forms and action to the large quantities of formless data and convey the insights. With the huge volume, variety and velocity of data they identify the rich sets of data, derive hidden insights by combining one or more relevant data to help decision makers shift from ad hoc analysis to an ongoing conversation with data. Supporting Data scientists towards their novel solutions are the Big Data tools which don’t allow them to get bogged down while managing the Vs of Data.

In one of the post Thomas H. Davenport and D.J. Patil (one of the world’s first practicing Data Scientist) in Harvard Business Review mentions, "Data scientists today are akin to the Wall Street "quants" of the 1980s and 1990s."

Data Scientist is often heavily involved in the cleaning and manipulation of data to support their modeling needs as well as the building and evaluating of model designs which are intended to help guide changes in business decisions. Many define Data Scientist as ‘part analyst-part artist’, as they have the expertise on what data to be looked at, how much of other data to be mixed into, while reasoning out with various what-if situations.

In short they explore, investigate, discover, and visualize using all types of Data- Structured, Semi-Structured, Unstructured using open source and proprietary tools. They have the skills of using applications, modeling, statistics, analytics and math with an attitude of an entrepreneur.

Decision Scientists – Making the Stories Realistic!

In many organizations, especially where business drives big data adoption, decision scientists as a role has emerged. They come from the domain side with specific business problems to solve, but they are equally aware of what data needs to be looked into and analyzed to solve a specific business problem. They are also well-versed in making use of the story, as told by data scientist in their sphere of activity, to improve decisioning. Decision Scientists are arguably the traditional consultants who apply cognitive wisdom, technology and best practices, however with a better grip on the underlying ‘big data’ to aid in decision making. They can optimize the decision and make the story look more realistic from business perspective.

At Flytxt, we have several case studies which showcase the work of Data Scientists and Decision Scientists influencing the Telco decisions and/or solving the pain-point using data. Think of it as an epic war of data and if you want the story to be narrated to build your winning strategy, you need¬ "The Story tellers".

What does a typical customer purchase journey look like? A customer sees your product, buys it then may repeat the purchase if they are satisfied with the outcome.