Meeting the needs of data analysts with structured reporting

While business users make use of data to make decisions related to their job in an organization, a data analyst’s full-time job is all about the data – analyzing datasets and drawing out insights for the business.

If you look at various job descriptions for data analysts, you may see a fair amount of variety, but some elements will be common across most descriptions. These include the following:

• Cleansing data and ensuring data quality when working with ad hoc data sources.
• Developing a good understanding of their specific part of the business (sometimes referred to as becoming a domain specialist for their part of the organization). This involves understanding what data matters to their part of the organization, which metrics are important, and so on.
• Interpreting data to draw out insights for the organization (this may include identifying trends, highlighting areas of concern, and...