Building Data Science Competency for a post-COVID Future
This article is originally published at https://www.mango-solutions.com
Written by Rich Pugh, Chief Data Scientist, Mango Solutions (an Ascent company)
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted supply chains and markets and brought economies around the globe to a standstill.
Overnight, governments, public sector agencies, healthcare providers and businesses needed access to timely and accurate data like never before. As a result, demand for data analytics skyrocketed as organisations strived to navigate an uncertain future.
We recently surveyed data scientists working in a variety of UK industry sectors, asking them about:
- how their organisation’s reliance on data changed during the pandemic
- how their teams are having to re-align their skills sets to deliver the intelligence that’s needed; and
- top trends on the horizon as organisations pursue a data-driven post-COVID recovery.
What they told us offers some interesting insights into the fast-evolving world of data science.
Decision intelligence gets real
Our findings highlight how the sudden disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic brought the importance of data analytics sharply into focus for business leaders and decision makers across the enterprise.
Almost two-thirds (65%) of those surveyed said that demand for data analytics rose across their organisation. The top request areas for problem-solving and enabling informed strategic decisions included:
- Immediate crisis response (51%) – risk modelling, digital scaling and strategy as organisations looked to make near-term decisions to address key operational challenges.
- Informing financial/cost-efficiency decisions (33%).
- Logistics/supply chain (26%).
As reliance on data became mission-critical, data scientists in some industry sectors were at the nerve centre of COVID-19 response efforts as organisations looked to solve real-life problems fast.
Data scientists are adapting their skills sets quickly
As organisations beef up their data strategy to better prepare for future disruptive events and thrive and survive in the new normal, data scientists are having to adjust to new ways of working and adapt their skills sets fast. Indeed, 49% of data scientists say their organisation is now investing in building their internal capabilities through learning and development programmes, with 38% actively recruiting to fill gaps.
Now part and parcel of the enterprise decision-making team, data scientists confirm they are having to hone their business and communication skills to ensure they are able to support business leaders across the organisation better. Indeed, an impressive 34% identified working more effectively with business stakeholders was now a top priority. With data now being used more broadly across the organisation, one-third (33%) of the data scientists confirmed that they plan to boost their own communication and business skills so they can interact more cohesively with business leaders – and collectively identify the right problems to solve for their organisation.
Top data trends for 2021
As organisations continue to push ahead with operationalising their data and analytics infrastructures to handle complex business realities, data scientists are scaling up their deployment of machine learning algorithms to automate their analytical models.
According to our poll, upskilling their machine learning (ML) skills was identified as the #1 priority for 45% of data scientists as they look to accelerate their AI and ML computations and workloads and better align decisions throughout the organisation.
Similarly, big data analytical technologies (such as Spark, Storm and Fink) was the top priority for 39% of UK data science teams, as was getting to grips with deep learning (39%) as analytics teams look to jointly leverage data and analytics ecosystems to deliver coherent stacks that facilitate the rapid contextualisation decision-makers need.
Finally, with more people across the organisation becoming increasingly dependent on data-driven decision making, data scientists are having to find new ways to present data in ways that business teams will understand.
In a bid to democratise data and support faster decision making on the front line, they’re working on increasing their skills in areas like data visualisation (27%) and modelling (23%) so they can tease out trends, opportunities and risks in an easily digestible way that makes it easy for decision-makers to consume and engage.
New opportunities on the horizon
In a post-COVID world, organisations are looking to tap into an increasing number of data sources for the critical insights they’ll need to tackle emerging challenges. In response, data scientists are having to extract and analyse data quickly – even in real-time – and in the right way. Integrating data-driven insights into the decision-making process.
In response, data scientists are having to upgrade their technical and business skills as organisations look for efficient and innovative ways to use the big data at their disposal.
In summary, the research highlights both how important it is to align central data communities in order to boost and demonstrate value across the business, while ensuring that investment in L&D programmes is fully aligned with developing trends and business objectives.
The post Building Data Science Competency for a post-COVID Future appeared first on Mango Solutions.
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This article is originally published at https://www.mango-solutions.com
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