I have always really enjoyed working in the data industry. By data, I mean data warehousing, big data, business intelligence and data analytics.
In general, data-driven solutions can positively impact the quality of the customer experience, enabling long-lasting business-to-customer relationships that benefit both parties. There is also the concern that these solutions are extremely expensive to implement. Of most concern to me, is that often the company feels these solutions do not address its core business challenges.
I believe that sooner or later, something is going to give. Either business will completely lose faith in the industry, which will result in many not investing in these data solutions. They will go back to small, independent silos, point-to-point type data solutions. Or, business will continue the status quo, allocate a default budget to build the “obligatory” data solution, but have no faith in it, and return to implementing “shadow BI” solutions.
From a technology perspective, we have never had it so good. Infrastructure costs keep going down, we have great quality infrastructure to choose from, and with infrastructure automation and the cloud, the ability to deliver solutions on technology has never been better. Cloud and the open-source community also mean there is access to cheaper software.
I would like to propose and advocate that we are data professionals, but as data professionals we do not have a professional body with real teeth and clout. We are data professionals; however, there is nothing enforcing our behaviour, our engagement with business, the nature of work that we do, or how we perform that work.