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The Missing Data Scientists

P. Srinivasa Rao, Vice President & Global Business Head
Analytics and Information Management, Wipro Technologies

Table of Contents
1. Introduction ...............................................................................................................03

2. Why is Big Data taking on a larger-than-life role? .............................................03

3. 6 Dimensions of the Big Data Scientist ...............................................................04

4. Creating the analytical skill sets of tomorrow ...................................................04

5. Conclusion .................................................................................................................05

The Missing Data Scientists

Global business leaders acknowledge the importance of Big Data which
holds the key to remain competitive and profitable in a consumer driven
world that is evolving by the second. However, while companies are
sourcing and storing these tremendous volumes of data they are at a loss
when it comes to deriving real insights and business value from it.
This paper examines the need for a new breed of professionals - The Data
Scientists, who can decipher this data and turn it in to a valuable
business asset.

Why is Big Data taking on a

larger-than-life role?
As global, economic and physical walls disintegrate; hitherto strongly
positioned companies are facing new sets of challenges associated with
changing consumer behavior & business model innovation powered by
disruptive SMAC technologies (Social, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud).
While data analytics is not new, the disruptive SMAC technologies have
enabled a consumer revolution which has pushed companies to find new
ways of doing business. Caught in this customer centric economy,
organizations are searching for ways to capitalize information assets and
squeeze business results out of the same. Across varying roles, there are
wide-ranging examples of how data is being used. The CFO of a Fortune
100 chemicals company says his function has been significantly increasing
its use of data to improve its competitive intelligence and thus pricing
structures. As weve begun to learn more about data opportunities, its
allowed us to better analyze the competitive set that we play against in

terms of pricing, cost structures, the ingredients of their products versus

ours, cost positions, and market approaches, as he explains it. This is all
analyzed in the pursuit of competitive gaps. Further downstream, it also
drives other finance-led forecasting, such as how projected demand is
affected by price shifts, the ability to supply that demand, and where excess
capacity might lie. It gives us a better sense of our capacity to respond
he says.1
While data and analytics have always been utilized by organizations what
we are witnessing now is a tectonic shift in the 5Vs that capture the
imperatives of Big Data - Volume, Velocity, Variety, Variability/Veracity and
Value. For example, a decade ago a terabyte of data was considered as high
volume, but now we are generating terabytes of data by the minute. The
measurements have consistently moved up from PetaBytes, ExaBytes,
ZettaBytes to YottaBytes. And soon we will have to come up with terms
that can describe even higher volumes! There is also more variety. Earlier,
Data Warehouses were built on static data. Now, with organizations
needing real time insights, there is a need to analyze the data in motion.
Hence, in-process analytics is becoming critical. Also, structured data
available in databases is no longer the main and only source of data for all
analytics. Data is available in varieties of structured, semi structured,
unstructured, internal & external, text, voice/audio, pictures/video, human
generated/machine generated etc. leading to better analytics driven
insights and business value. Organizations are also looking to capture
variability/veracity of data types such as weather, economic, social etc. that
are thought to be inherently unpredictable, to thrive in this new economy.
Big Data represents the ocean of unstructured, voluminous data out there.
Whether social media sentiment, machine-generated data via sensors, staff
emails, market data or otherwise, firms of all shapes and sizes are now

1.The Data Directive - An Economist Intelligence Unit survey, 2013, commissioned by Wipro Technologies

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collecting more information than ever before. At least seven in ten

companies collect syndicated third-party data, such as weather
information (72%), or government data (70%), while many gather anything
from internal staff data (66%) to some kind of location-based information
(41%), among many other types. Two-thirds of business leaders say the
range and types of data have expanded in the past two years, while about
three-quarters expect this data stockpiling to expand yet further in the
coming two years. Every day, Google alone processes about 24 petabytes
(or 24,000 terabytes) of data. Yet very little of the information is formatted
in the traditional rows and columns of conventional databases.
Organizations are struggling to make sense of this data overload and most
firms are yet to figure out what data is actually useful for them. The EIU
report, commissioned by Wipro, confirms that only a small minority (12%)
of executives think their organization has been highly effective at
translating data into useful and insightful information so far. Access to data
is no longer a challenge these days. We have a tremendous amount of
access and we can measure just about anything, says Xeroxs Ms Carone.
To me, where we continue to have some challenges is how to translate
this data into real, actionable results for the company, she says.
Data should help drive revenue and sustainability in the long term for the
organization. As you go higher up in the data value chain (figure 1), the
value increases exponentially. Most organizations today operate at the
Information level. Those who can move up to the Wisdom level leveraging
insights from analytics will be able to fine tune their business strategy
holistically and build a sustainable organization. Traditional analytical skill
sets are falling miserably short on these expectations. As a result, most
organizations have only been able to use this data for optimization
purposes and are yet to employ it for strategic insights. To achieve
Wisdom, organizations need to have suitable processes, technologies and
human resources that help create these data driven insights. This paper will
talk about the people aspect of an organizations data strategy.

WISDOM
APPLIED
KNOWLEDGE

KNOWLEDGE

6 Dimensions of the Big Data

Scientist
Some of the key challenges in deriving insights from big data include
underdeveloped tools, limited expertise and domain knowledge, and the
challenges of dealing with IT itself. BI professionals who can summarize
historical data and draw summaries may not be the answer any more.
As leaders seek to make the evolution from optimization to strategic use of
data they need to bring in advanced new skillsets matched with deep
industry expertise. A data scientist weaves together the following 6
skillsets:

Business Analysis
Data Analysis
Data Architecture
Mathematics / Statistics
Data Interpretation and Visualization ( BI )
Social / Behavioral Analysis

Since data is complex, the role of a data scientist also assumes complexity.
A data scientist while incorporating the traditional skill sets of the business
analysts, data analysts and data architects must also have competency in
statistical tools and techniques and human behavior. These are required
for them to run statistical models such as probability theory, operations
research etc. on structured data as well as make sense of the unstructured
social data. These people must understand the psychology of the audience
and tie in a social update with sentiment analysis and analyze sociological,
demographical and psychological trends.
Can we find individuals with all the above skills required to manage data?
Not where we stand right now. Instead organizations are looking at
multidisciplinary teams with data architects, visualizers, change agents, data
engineers/operators, stewards and data virtualization / cloud specialists.
However, teams come at a higher cost and the answer to finding the
enigmatic and elusive big data scientist may lie in technology after all.
Industry experts are optimistic that a few years down the line technology
convergence will enable tools that will provide a single interface for all
analytical needs of an organization. People trained on these tools will be
able to perform the role of a data scientist with ease. However, a
McKinsey's report states that by 2018 the US alone could face a shortage
of 140,000-190,000 "deep analytical talent" and 1.5 million people capable
of analyzing data in ways that enable business decisions.

STRUCTURED
INFORMATION

INFORMATION

Creating the analytical skill

sets of tomorrow

LINKED UNITS

DATA
DISCRETE UNITS

Figure 1: Data to Wisdom Pyramid

According to The Data Directive, EIU report, 35% of BI professionals lack

the necessary skills to take on the daunting task of unraveling and
understanding big data. The same report also says that creating a leading
data competency requires investment in both technology and skills, which
lower-margin sectors will find more challenging. We see the need to
move into the 21st century and a much more advanced IT setup, which we
know holds huge possibilities, explains the CFO of a major Spanish
retailer, but the fact is that these are not the best times, which makes the
investment into the technology, and the talent needed to exploit that,
difficult to justify.

04

Creating the requisite analytical skills needs a three pronged approach:

Get a leadership buy-in the top management must understand the
importance of data driven insights and the need to invest significantly and
strategically to harness this data potential. There must be an organization
structure to bring in all data analytics efforts under one organization led by
a CXO role that may evolve in to the Chief Data Scientist of the future.
The charter of a Chief Data Scientist would be to provide data driven
insights to senior management to shape the business strategy
Bring in a data culture The organization structure needed to support
data scientists is currently missing in most companies. And even a
realization of this need is visible only in the high growth companies.
Organizational silos, legacy and incompatible systems, bureaucratic
procedures must be broken down to create a seamless information flow
across the company. As analytics get embedded into data in motion and
business processes, every single user in the organization needs to
understand the importance of data and how it can be leveraged to meet
operational, tactical and strategic business objectives. It should be
institutionalized as a culture, rather than limiting it to a few data scientists

Conclusion
Data driven insights will shape the organizations of tomorrow.
Organizations must bring in more strategic support and optimize the cost
for data management and analysis. Additionally, data has to enable
revenue growth, create competitive advantage, new pricing models, and
foster innovation. This is only possible with an organization culture that
thrives on data. And to build this culture, apart from 6 dimensions of core
skills required for data scientists, they also need highly sophisticated soft
skills around communication, collaboration, creativity, discipline and
passion to drive business results by deriving value out of data analytics.

Invest in people and technology Skill, re-skill and cross-skill people on

tools and technologies that make data structuring and analysis smoother.
Train these people to garner business insights from data and create
meaningful reports that can be used in strategic decision making.

05

About the Author

P. Srinivasa Rao (PSR) is the Vice President & Global Business Head for Analytics and Information Management (A & IM) focusing on Banking, Insurance,
Securities, Retail, CPG, Transportation, and Government customers.
A&IM helps customers derive valuable insights out of integrated information by bringing together the combined expertise of Analytics, Business Intelligence,
Performance Management and Information Management. The group provides consulting, business centric and technology specific analytical solutions and data
management frameworks developed through a complete ecosystem of partners, focusing on industry specific analytics, optimization and operations analytics,
Enterprise Data Warehouse, MDM, Data quality and data life cycle management.
PSR has 20+ years of experience in IT industry, and is one of the founding members of Business Intelligence and Data warehouse practice in Wipro. He has
authored many white papers on Business Intelligence and received several recognitions for his contribution to business growth at Wipro such as CEOs letter
of appreciation, difference in action, best people manager.
He holds Post Graduate Diploma in Software Enterprise Management from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, M.Tech from the Indian Institute of
Technology, Delhi, and Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Osmania University.

About Wipro Council for Industry Research

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