By Nisha Arya

What tools do you need to know to be a successful data analyst?

You may want to transition into data analytics, or it could be a completely new field for you. Regardless, being prepared is always crucial. The majority of people who enter a new career are looking at the end goal: getting a job. However, some are so focused on landing their dream job: they forget that they need to be proficient in the required skills and tools.

What is a Data Analyst?

A Data Analyst is someone who looks through data and provides reports and visualisations which explain the data.

A data analyst does not typically spend their day coding. Their responsibilities involve using their technical mindset along with their excel, coding, or SQL skills to identify trends, patterns and solutions that can aid a business’s decision-making process. They are also responsible for turning these findings into visualisations to present to stakeholders.

Now let’s get into the must-have tools that a data analyst needs to be successful in their job.

What tools do you need to know as a Data Analyst?

Excel

Type of tool: Spreadsheet software.
Availability: Commercial.
Use: Data wrangling and reporting.

Excel has been frequently used by many people from different industries – it is a staple in most fields. If you remember in school, you probably used it but didn’t realise its full capabilities. Apart from sorting and organising data, it also has calculation and graphing functions which are very ideal for data analysis.

Although Excel is popular and uses a lot of useful functions and plug-ins. It also comes with its downfalls. Due to its capabilities and processing power, it runs very slowly when dealing with big datasets and can lead to calculation errors and inaccuracies.

Python

Type of tool: Programming language.
Availability: Open-source.
Use: Developing websites/software, task automation, data analysis, and data visualization

Python is a general-purpose programming language known for its simple syntax making it easy to learn a programming language. It is currently the most popular programming language due to its intuitive syntax. It contains a variety of libraries, such as NumPy to help process computational tasks.

As a Data Analyst, you can use Python to help with your data analysis, such as importing and filtering data, statistical tests, finding correlations between the data and producing visualization.

R

Type of tool: Programming language.
Availability: Open-source.
Use: Statistical analysis and data mining.

A lot of people have trouble choosing which programming language to learn – Python or R. Python is known for being a general-purpose programming language, whereas R is a statistical programming language.

The syntax for R is more complicated in comparison to Python, but this is due to it being built specifically to handle heavy statistical computing tasks and create data visualizations.

SQL

Type of tool: Standardized programming language.
Availability: Commercial.
Use: Communicate with a database

As a Data Analyst, you will spend a lot of time communicating with databases. It is used to perform tasks such as updating data on a database or retrieving data from a database. It provides you with a simpler way to scan through your database and explore new findings with a few lines of code.

Jupyter Notebook

Type of tool: Interactive authoring software.
Availability: Open-source.
Use: creating and sharing code/computational documents.

Jupyter Notebook is an open-source software which provides interactive computing and is compatible across different programming languages. It can create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations, and text between members of the team.

Its top uses are programming practice, collaboration across projects, data cleaning, data visualisation, and sharing. It also integrates with big data analysis tools such as Apache Spark, which we will speak about next.

Apache Spark

Type of tool: Data processing framework.
Availability: Open-source.
Use: Big data workloads.

Apache Spark is an analytics engine that can process large-scale data, quickly and effectively. It is known that Apache Spark can help you run your workloads 100 times faster. As a Data Analyst, you will use it to process various datasets and analyze unstructured big data, along with machine learning.

The framework is compatible with programming languages such as Python, R, Java, Scala, and SQL.

Tableau

Type of tool: Data visualization tool.
Availability: Commercial.
Use: Connect data, and build workbooks, stories, and dashboards.

Tableau is one of the market-leading business intelligence tools which is used to analyze and visualize data in an easy format. If you are a data analyst that doesn’t have proficient coding skills but you still want to be able to create interactive visualizations and dashboards to present to stakeholders, Tableau is here to save you.

It contains features such as machine learning, statistics, natural language, and smart data prep. It has not only made life easier for data scientists, but also for business users.

SAS

Type of tool: Statistical software suite.
Availability: Commercial.
Use: statistical analysis and data visualization.

SAS is a command-driven software, only for Windows operating systems. It stands for Statistical Analysis System and is a group of programs that work collectively to store and retrieve data, be able to modify it, compute statistical analyses, and create visualisations and reports.

The software helps you to gain quick insights into your data, in which you can then use automated analysis which is backed by machine learning, to then produce reports that are easy to understand for the decision-making process.

KNIME

Type of tool: Data integration platform.
Availability: Open-source.
Use: access, blend, analyze, and visualize data

KNIME is an open-source software, that allows you to build analyses at any complexity level. You can either use the:

KNIME Analytics Platform – to clean and gather your data, analyze it and make it accessible to everyone using visualisations.
KNIME Server – the deployment of workflows, whilst making them accessible to the team for collaboration, management, and automation.

Microsoft Power BI

Type of tool: Business analytics suite.
Availability: Commercial.
Use: Transform data into visually immersive, and interactive insights

Microsoft Power BI allows you to take your data and create interactive visual reports and dashboards to share your findings more comfortably. It operates with Excel, text files, SQL, and cloud sources. Your data is safe with Power BI as it uses sensitivity labelling, end-to-end encryption, and real-time access monitoring.

You have a choice between their range of products such as Power BI Desktop, Power BI Pro, Power BI Premium, Power BI Mobile, Power BI Embedded, and Power BI Report Server.

Conclusion

As you continue your journey as a data analyst, you will see these current tools advance and new tools emerge in the market. Your skillset is dependent on where you want to be in the next 10 years. The more you know, the better.

If you are still unsure about the path to data analysis and need more guidance, have a read of:

Top Data Analyst Certification Courses for 2022

Feature Image Credit: Author

By Nisha Arya

Nisha Arya is a Data Scientist, Freelance Technical Writer and Community Manager at KDnuggets. She is particularly interested in providing Data Science career advice or tutorials and theory based knowledge around Data Science. She also wishes to explore the different ways Artificial Intelligence is/can benefit the longevity of human life. A keen learner, seeking to broaden her tech knowledge and writing skills, whilst helping guide others.

Sourced from KDnuggets

By The Young Entrepreneur Council

Marketing is a crucial element of any successful business, and even small business startups will need to begin building their marketing department as soon as possible. However, some marketing roles are more critical to your business’s success than others. To help you determine which role you need to hire for first, 13 experts from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) answer the following question:

“When building a marketing division for your company, what’s one important role/position you should hire first, and why?”

Consider their suggestions to help determine the right first marketing hire for your company.

1. Data Analyst

“The first important position that I would hire for my marketing team is a data analyst. This position is like the core of the marketing department and can help us gather insights into the current marketing scenario. Knowing this will help us understand what’s happening in the marketing world and come up with a more powerful strategy to combat our competitors.” ~ Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster

2. SEO Analyst

“For my marketing team, I would definitely hire an SEO analyst first. This is one important position that can work closely with the rest of the team to get our business to the top search results of Google and bring in more traffic to our websites.” ~ Josh Kohlbach, Wholesale Suite

3. Graphic Designer

“All roles within marketing represent an important element to starting the process effectively. However, a graphic designer would be my first choice, because that is who will give shape to the main ideas that you have for the development of a brand. Later, hire a person who will be in charge of the content. These are two basic aspects of marketing and they must be perfectly combined to achieve success.” ~ Kevin Leyes, Leyes Media & VVS, by Leyes Empire

4. Product Manager

“A product manager is a useful position to hire first for your marketing department. A product manager is in charge of product strategy, including vision and development. They work with other departments to ensure that the products your brand creates have market demand and will do well with customers.” ~ Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms

5. Branding Expert

“I think that one of the first people to hire for a marketing department is someone with solid branding experience. A person who understands how branding works can take your goals and clearly but broadly inform the direction your brand takes. Then, when you hire content writers, social media specialists and others, they’ll have guidelines that direct their work and also keep them consistent.” ~ Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner

6. Creative Lead

“I suggest hiring a creative lead to help you chart the direction of your marketing. This role is essential to fill first because you might not need as many people in your marketing division as you thought. A creative lead can help you figure out how many people you’ll need to turn your marketing plan into a reality, which makes filling other positions easier.” ~ Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights

7. Editorial Director

“It’s important to have an editorial director on board as the head of content. An editorial director ensures that your brand has a content plan that will boost traffic, grow your email list and produce sales, among other things. Hiring them first allows your company to start from the top and work its way down.” ~ Jared Atchison, WPForms

8. Content Marketing Expert

“If you are running a bootstrapped startup, your first marketing hire should be a content marketing and organic promotions expert. You want someone who is an amazing storyteller. You want someone great at earning free press. If, on the other hand, you have a bigger budget and ambitious goals to match, you want to hire someone who has proven they can build, manage and lead a team.” ~ Ben Landers, Blue Corona

9. Demand Generation Marketer

“The first marketing hire any business should make is a demand generation marketer. Demand gen marketers understand that marketing needs to carry a bag and deliver revenue to the bottom line. The first marketing hire sets the tone between the marketing and sales teams, and a demand gen professional will set the role of marketing appropriately — to drive leads that convert to the bottom line.” ~ Kara Brown, LeadCoverage

10. Marketing Generalist

“Your first marketing hire should be a marketing generalist, someone who knows their way around all the marketing channels. They don’t need to be an expert in a specific channel, but someone who can at least operate in those channels. As you continue to grow, then you can hire specialists who can optimize those specific channels.” ~ Jared Brown, Hubstaff Tasks

11. Marketing Strategist

“One important role or position to hire first when building a marketing division is a marketing strategist. It’s important to have a very clear target audience for your business, channels of communication that will be used and key messages. From then on, you can build a team around the marketing strategist so you can build what you and your team have planned.” ~ Alfredo Atanacio, Uassist.ME

12. Marketer With Sales Experience

“Hire a marketer who knows how to sell and can think backward from the close. Effective marketing is about understanding and reverse-engineering the customer journey toward your product or service, and then generating awareness and opportunity pathways to that end. Any cornerstone marketing position must balance and build both brand growth and sales activation initiatives.” ~ Magnus Simonarson, Consultwebs

13. Marketing Director With Management Experience

“I would look to hire a marketing director with previous experience managing a team. Make sure they have hands-on experience with the areas you want them to focus on. For example, if you are going to focus on paid media to grow, then hire someone with previous experience managing large budgets on Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Then task this person with hiring the team, with your input and involvement.” ~ David Boehl, GoLastMinute

Data Analyst