The Data Scientist: A New Breed of Marketer

The data scientists and data analysts we have on our teams are the best of the best.  Many times, CEOs and other high level execs hit the pillow thanking the heavens above that they have a team of people who can make some kind of sense about all those numbers coming in.  Raw data looks like alphanumeric soup to most businessmen and women who are not in some way directly involved in the world of business intelligence or big data.

So you’ve hired a total brainiac whiz kid, and you are just loving his reports and what he is able to reveal about inventory, employees, management, turnover, quality control, and so much more.  Just one little problem: you’ve asked him to present his report to the board and he ran off screaming and ripping his hair out.  Yikes.  Now what?

in search 4 data by verbeeldingskr8, on Flickr.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Suck it Up

To reduce their fears of presenting, there’s one key that is fail-safe — as long as you can get your analyst to buy into it.  So what’s the magic secret?  Confidence.  Confidence about their own level of knowledge, what they know about the company and the industry outside of analysis or big data, and how well they work with simpler programs for the presentation of data reports.

Can your analyst take his or her super brainy report written in tech-ese and translate it to a simple spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation?  It may sound archaic and terrible to them, but not everything can be conveyed via tweet or from behind the safety of a keyboard.  They’ll have to suck it up, suit up, and show up to the boardroom.  This doesn’t mean we expect them to be fearless, so if you’re their main liaison, have their back in during the presentation to make it as painless as possible — for the analyst AND the executives being presented to.

Hold Their Hand

Getting them out of the comfort of their laboratory (so to speak) and into the environment the rest of the company operates in is essential, and not something you’ll want to do the day of the presentation.  Not unlike reintroducing an animal back into the wild, hold the hand of your analysts and walk them through — from the break room to the boardroom and beyond.  Let them get to know their new habitat and let them know they can socialize with the rest of the staff and interact freely with anyone they need to in order to get their job done.

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Above all, your analysts probably already understand that what they are providing is literally the picture of what your company is on paper.  Think of it like this: if your business were to be hit by a bus today, the data collected and analyzed by your team would represent a full and precise list of assets and liabilities.  Let them know that you know this, and let them know they matter a lot for providing this.  But remember who’s in charge, and remind your analysts that what they do is about the entire company, not the confines of their cubicles.  They need to be providing forward-facing data that can be used to define the company and forecast the future.

The work of analysts needs to be presentable to others who don’t understand how they draw the conclusions that they do — so being able to understand how to convey the data in plain language is key.  Tell them they can do it, assure them of their talents, and tell them to remember:  not everyone is as smart as you; help us understand.  Because the bottom line is, if the company doesn’t succeed, they’ll be out of a job.  Confidence is worth a lot to your analysts, to you, and to the longevity of your brand.

Related Reading: 

Why Should You Care About Business Intelligence? – Business 2 Community

Data Visualizations, the Future of Business Success – Business 2 Community