Analytics Insight explores career opportunities for a data analyst and a business analyst

A common factor between a data analyst and a business analyst is data science. Data science is already thriving in the emerging data-driven culture and has instigated companies to play with real-time data to drive revenue. Some organizations have started recruiting both data analysts and business analysts to gain a competitive edge in the market through customer satisfaction. A career as a data analyst and a career as a business analyst have shown huge potential and opportunities with lucrative salary packages. It may be a bit confusing to students who have just entered the domain of data science. Let's explore some career opportunities available as a data analyst as well as a business analyst.

Career opportunities for a data analyst

A data analyst has to deal with data analytics that involves analyzing enormous and complicated datasets from multiple sources to generate the upcoming trends and meaningful insights to affect a business decision. The primary role of a data analyst is data storytelling to empower the decisions with more minute details.

There are a lot of responsibilities for a data analyst— designing data systems and databases, troubleshooting potential data concerns, data analytics, data mining for analysis, preparing reports with interactive dashboards for the management and stakeholders, and many more. It is essential for a data analyst to have sufficient technical skills and data visualization skills with one programming language.

A data analyst needs to have a Bachelor's or Master's degree in data science with an extensive background in mathematics, science, database, data modeling, and many more. A number-driven mindset will give better career opportunities to a data analyst in reputed organizations across the world. This job role has a higher potential to earn more in the future because there are opportunities for improvement with the learning of additional programming languages such as R, Java, C++ besides Python.

There are multiple career opportunities for a data analyst who loves to work with real-time data— data scientist, data engineer, data analytics consultant, data journalist, database admin, data visualization specialist, and many more with lucrative salary packages and recognition from reputed organizations.

Career opportunities for a business analyst

A business analyst needs to work with different kinds of information and data to make meaningful and accurate data-driven decisions for an organization efficiently and effectively. These data reports can modify the implementations of existing processes to drive higher revenue in the competitive market. The job role is needed to draw in-depth insights from data analysis to identify opportunities and weaknesses and provide effective strategic solutions.

A business analyst is also known as an operations research analyst, management analyst, and business data analyst. There are multiple responsibilities of a business analyst— evaluating business processes with real-time data, communicating in-depth insights to affect business decisions, preparing strategic solutions for better performance to drive customer engagement, and many more.

It is essential for a business analyst to have sufficient technical knowledge in data science including programming language and software for dashboards. Aspiring business analysts can gain a better understanding of mathematics, analytics, and computer science to thrive in this field and have better career opportunities in the future. This job role needs a business major with a Bachelor's degree to know about business operations and processes of the corporate world. The starting salary of a business analyst is less than data analyst. If there is the completion of advanced certification courses then business analysts can shift to an analytics-driven career in the future.

There are multiple career opportunities for a business analyst who loves to work with real-time data with a business mindset— business analyst manager, data business analyst, data analysis scientist IT business analyst, quantitative analyst, management consultant, process analyst, and many more. These career opportunities offer lucrative salary packages from reputed organizations and drive growth in a professional career.