From Data to Decisions: Why Knowing Big Data Challenges is Vital for Tech Career Growth

Recently I shared a blog with the quick ways to boost your career and add value ASAP in a company. Whether you’re in a new role at your company, or starting at a new company. 

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When you know business challenges, it can help propel your career because this is the main ingredient to why you’re employed. Read more in depth about what learning about business challenges can do to boost your career here. 

This post I will focus specifically on data business challenges, because data is a growing area in tech. Yes, it’s been around for many many moons, but data is the heart of a business, and transformational big data heading to the cloud skills are in demand more than ever. Opportunities and roles are growing in this space, so this blog is ideal to help you learn more about this if you want to excel in a career in data.

Data is the heart of all businesses

Just think to the basic level of a business, for example, buying and selling goods, well without the DATA that shows you different challenges/opportunities such as who will buy your goods? Where will they buy them? Are they sellable? Are they in demand? Then if you sell them, how many are you selling? Does your stock need to increase with demand? Can you invest in other products? This is very much all data you collect to make good business decisions. You might have a role where you don’t work directly with capturing this kind of data but overall a company has data flowing through every department and every process in the company, so it’s important to have a grasp on those data challenges. 

By understanding and discussing these topics in your company, or with a future employer, it signals to them, you have a good broad (t shaped) skill set, maybe you’re working towards being super technical? Or maybe you just want a high level understanding of tech, knowing these will cover all bases. 

If you’re in a role in Data, then these will stick out to you specifically, if your working in tech or aiming to work in tech, you will need to know about these, big data business challenges.Let’s dive into some big data business challenges.

1. Data Management: Managing big data in a company comes with big processes, and big costs. Because there is so much data to manage, storage and processing usually is a complex and expensive process, having the right tools in place to do this is imperative to business process. Understanding management of data can help you in many roles, because you might need access to data, and you will need to know whether its raw data, or maybe processed data you might need. 

2. Data Quality: The quality of big data can vary widely, and businesses need to ensure that the data they are using is accurate and reliable. Data quality issues can arise due to errors in data collection, data processing, or data storage. 

3. Data Security: Big data can contain sensitive information, such as customer data or intellectual property, and businesses need to ensure that this data is protected from unauthorised access or theft. Data security breaches can result in significant financial and reputational damage to businesses.

4. Data Integration: Big data is often generated from multiple sources, and businesses need to integrate this data to gain insights and make informed decisions. Integrating data from different sources can be challenging, and businesses need to ensure that the data is properly formatted and compatible with their analytics tools.

5. Talent Shortage: a problem with the transformation of data, is there is a shortage of skilled professionals in the field of big data analytics, and businesses need to invest in hiring and training the right talent to manage and analyse their data effectively, which means great opportunities are here. 

6. Regulatory Compliance: Businesses need to comply with various data privacy and security regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, when collecting, storing, and processing big data. Failure to comply with these regulations can result in significant fines and legal penalties. Business’s want to know that you know and understand these regulations to make sure you’re doing your due diligence. 

By learning and understanding these areas, you can propel your career in data, as these are the foundations that employers are looking for in data skills. It’s important to understand the high level business problems, because these do filter down into low level detail in roles too. If you want to read more about why it’s important to understand business challenges, and how it can boost your career, read about it here! 

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Thanks for reading! Rachel