Data Literacy

Data Literacy is the key for all Data Initiatives.

We know the difference between Business Intelligence (BI) developers and Business Analysts (BA). In previous eras, BA used to talk to business, create KPI(s) and pass it to BI developers to create reports and dashboards. 90% of BI developers would not know what a report or a dashboard is for. They won’t know the impact of good and bad reports. They won’t know the ROI of information this report, or dashboard can produce due to which they don’t care whether BA has provided right KPI(s) or not. This era was not a Data Era, in that era Reports or Dashboards were good to have. Most of the decision making used to happen in reports extracted in excels 😊.

Now time has changed, we have entered the Analytics era as compared to previous era of Analysis. Difference between Analysis and Analytics is simple but tricky i.e., Analysis is about finding Whys’ and What’s whereas Analytics is about finding How’s from a dataset. In other words, in datasets, Analysis search Questions and Analytics propose Answers.

In the current era, data has become one of the driving-forces of every organization. Everyone must understand data and its value. When we say everyone, it means everyone from ETL developer till bi developer. One can’t create something which he/ she does not understand. Now if someone is creating a report or dashboard, he or she must understand it.

There are many definitions on Google but for me below for me, if you know the answer to the below questions then you are a Data Literal person.

• One must be able to read data.
• One must know where it comes from
• One must know where it will go.
• One must understand who needs this report.
• One must know what’s the purpose of it is.
• One must be aware of the value it can generate.
• One must know what KPI(s) are served.
• One must know what the impact with respect to organization revenue will be.
• And ultimately one must know what impact on his or her annually bonus lolz 😊