The growth of data volume has been exponential over recent years, organisation’s are flooded with data, but it is often unstructured and scattered… ultimately, meaningless. To capture data from every corner of a business and package it up into transformative information brings innumerable benefits, including:
Better, faster decisions
Having data displayed in a digestible format (and in a timely manner), allows businesses to make informed, strategic decisions and changes in business critical time-scales. This avoids inefficiencies, reduces costs, keeps a competitive advantage and streamlines processes.
Customer Insights
Understanding customer behaviour is crucial for businesses. Gaining insights into preferences, buying patterns, and satisfaction levels, allows companies to tailor their products and services to meet customer needs.
Predict trends
Data can show patterns and key trends, helping to understand the market and predict business needs. This allows for advanced preparation and minimal disruption.
Compliance
Compliance with laws and regulations is business critical. Data analysts ensure that organisations adhere to data protection laws and industry standards, providing accurate and timely reporting.
Risk Management
Data analysis is essential for assessing and managing risks. Whether it’s financial risk, cybersecurity threats, or other potential challenges, data analysts contribute to identifying and mitigating risk
Key challenge: Security
Data analytics, although separate to cybersecurity, the two roles are intertwining. As hackers become more sophisticated and data becomes more valuable (and often sensitive), it is crucial data is collected, prepared, stored and reported securely for the integrity of a company.
Demand for talent
The data analyst job market is predicted to grow by 23% between 2022 and 2031 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. To put this into perspective, the average growth rate for all occupations is 3%!
In the UK, the market is mirroring this competitiveness. Looking at ‘Data Analysts’, there are 30,818 professionals in this field, 7,638 of these changed roles in the last 12 months, with 848 vacancies still live and looking to be filled.
Looking at the Data Management job title, (including Data Manager, Senior Data Manager, Data Warehouse Manager) there are 7,767 professionals in the UK, 962 of which changed roles in the last 12 months with 166 job vacancies still advertised.
The competitive nature of the market has resulted in companies willing to pay high salaries for this talent. The market is over-loaded with resource solutions so pinpointing accurate salary data, that is in-date and relevant, is a real challenge. To overcome this, our team of experts collate live-data from our client base that are hiring NOW, along with both active and passive candidate expectations. Our most recent salary report (Nov 2023), really demonstrates value these professionals can add to a business. In Yorkshire, a ‘Head of Data’ can be expected to be paid anything from £70,000 up to £120,000, in London a Senior Data Architect can expect £90,000 – £110,000.
Summary
It is clear businesses across all industries are valuing data more and more and are striving to become truly data-driven. The role of data professionals is becoming increasingly important for business growth, they supports everything from customer experience, efficiency, cost reductions and strategic approach. They ultimately define how a business is operating and supply the tools and information to map out an improvement plan at speed.
Data visualisation is key for being a data-driven business. As 2024 quickly approaches and businesses are mapping out their 2024 strategies, data is going to be key in critical decision making and allowing a more pro-active approach to the year.
Source: LinkedIn talent insights (Oct/Nov 2023)